People treat single mothers like they’re fucking criminals. I can’t take my kids ANYWHERE without people looking down on us. You’d think my family was radioactive. And it never. Fucking. Stops. Ever.

Ciara’s my youngest, and at her little playgroup, the atmosphere is colder than the surface of Pluto. Trying to make inroads with all the happily married ‘mombies’ is such hopeless, trudging work.

It’s obvious what they’re doing. The sour looks, the conversations that taper off the instant I walk through the door. I went through this back in high school.

Maybe it’s a religious thing? Oh, she’s got four kids with four different men, how scandalous. Or maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe they just don’t like my ‘take-no-shit’ attitude.

We had an especially sticky situation down at the park a few days ago. All eyes were on us from the moment we walked through that gate. I could see the adults muttering as my children took turns on the slides, or played next to the climbing frame. What would it take to get those bastards to leave us alone? Maybe if I surrendered myself to a night in the stocks, or let them strip me naked and then paraded around the streets. Hell, toss in fifty lashes—anything to deflect this awful attention away from my offspring.

As I lifted Ciara and Adrian up onto the swings, two mothers collected their children and made a b-line for the exit. There, they stopped to look back, and the taller of the pair shouted, “What happened to your ex-husbands?”

“Yeah, what did you do with their bodies?” the other added.

I told them all to shut their pieholes, that they didn’t know what they were talking about.

“Oh really?” replied the first. “Then why did the police arrest you?”

With my entire jaw clenched I marched straight up to her, got right in her stupid, ugly face, and shouted, “Check your facts, bitch, they never charged me with anything.”

That wild anger that dwells in the pit of my stomach reared its ugly head, threatening to seize control again. Every adult in the vicinity was staring fixedly now, all either muttering under their breath or shaking their heads, anxious to see what happened next.

They wanted me to confirm their prejudice—to act like some kind of wild beast. Well, unfortunately for them, it’s been YEARS since my last ‘episode’.

Several kids began to cry; mine did as well. I took six deep breaths and slowly exhaled all that toxic, pent-up aggression. Then I gathered my family and left.

Count that as another day ruined because of narrow-minded idiots.

Yep. Like I said: people treat single mothers like they’re fucking criminals.