“Mom, Starting Next Month, We’ll Transfer All Your Money To My Account.” My Son Said That, And I Just Smiled. That Night, As Always, He Came With His Wife For A Free Dinner.

They would arrive, sit down, eat, and leave. Sometimes they would stay an hour, sometimes less. I also noticed that they never brought anything, never a bottle of wine, never a dessert, never any money to help with the food, nothing.

One night after they left, I counted how much I had spent on dinner. $45. $45 that I didn’t have to spare.

$45 that meant I would have to work extra hours to make up for it. And I realized something. I realized that to Lawrence, I had become a service, a free restaurant, a place where he could come to eat without paying, without even really thanking me.

I started to notice other things, too. I noticed that when I asked him for help with something, he always had excuses. That when I needed a ride to the doctor because my car was broken, he was always busy.

That when I mentioned my refrigerator was making strange noises and that I was afraid it would break down soon, he told me to buy a new one, as if I had $500 saved up for emergencies. I didn’t have it. I barely had enough to get to the end of the month.

But what hurt the most was my birthday, my 60th birthday. Lawrence arrived 2 hours late without a gift, without a card, with an excuse about traffic. He stayed for 20 minutes.

He ate the cake that I had bought for myself because I didn’t want to spend it alone. And he left. I cried that night.

I cried like I hadn’t cried in years because I finally understood something that I had been denying for a long time. I understood that to my son I was no longer important, that I was just a resource, something that was there available, waiting to be used when he needed it. And the worst part was that I had allowed it.

I had established that pattern. I had never asked him for anything. I had never told him that I felt used.

I had never told him that I needed more from him than just 20inut visits and Friday night dinners because I was afraid. Afraid that if I complained, if I asked, if I demanded, he would disappear completely. And the idea of losing my son, even this son who barely saw me, terrified me more than anything else.

So I continued to be the convenient mother, the silent mother, the mother who was always there, who always had the door open, who never caused problems. Until that Thursday afternoon, until Lawrence told me he wanted to manage my money. And something inside me, something that had been asleep for years, woke up.

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