{"id":3703,"date":"2013-07-10T10:52:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T17:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2025-11-02T17:13:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T00:13:42","slug":"venom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=3703","title":{"rendered":"Venom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sometimes I wonder if I have a spy in my readership.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of you I know personally or through Facebook, because I honestly don’t believe strangers who don’t know me would find me interesting enough to follow!\u00a0 But sometimes there will be someone I don’t really know who will comment (and they’re NOT spam lol) or who has requested the passwords.\u00a0 I WANT to give the benefit of the doubt, but the doubt is still there saying…\u00a0 did they ask for the password for themselves or are they Agents of the Ex?<\/p>\n

And then I ask myself, “Why does it bug you?”\u00a0\u00a0 Because honestly I don’t have anything to hide.\u00a0\u00a0 For YEARS I let it all hang out on the internet, unashamed of who I am.\u00a0 Not a single password on any blog. \u00a0 Proud to be who I am.\u00a0 Liking myself that much.\u00a0 Hell, the only reason I even put password protection on is to protect my kids from classmates who might discover what I write and use it against them.\u00a0 (Although if anyone knows my kids its only the middle one who would care about taunting.\u00a0 The oldest considers his peers to be idiots & would dismiss it and the youngest, well, if it pissed him off he’d just beat the shit out of you.)<\/em><\/p>\n

But as I’m ever self-exploratory it made me wonder WHY it bothered me.\u00a0 And I realized I really don’t like deceitful people.\u00a0\u00a0 If you read the blog because you enjoy my humor and stories, great!\u00a0 If you request the password so\u00a0 my Ex can check up on me… or his girlfriend can make sure I’m not slandering her, well, I’d rather you NOT and also… shame on you for spying!<\/p>\n

And then I asked myself a new question, “WTF do you care?”<\/p>\n

Oh so clever of me to get to the heart of it all.\u00a0 I should NOT care!\u00a0 Because I’m not doing anything illegal.\u00a0 And in my opinion I’m not doing anything wrong, either.\u00a0 See, “WRONG”<\/em> is a subjective term in my opinion.\u00a0 Wrong by your standards is not wrong by my standards.\u00a0 And conversely wrong by MY standards may not be wrong by your standards.<\/p>\n

I think WRONG is not being true to yourself, honest with yourself and accepting of others and their choices.\u00a0 Wrong is being prejudicial, judgmental, disdainful.\u00a0 Wrong is NOT realizing that just because a choice is NOT one you would choose yourself doesn’t make it any less right for that person.\u00a0\u00a0 And I have to practice that just as much as demand others use it on me, by the way<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s damn difficult NOT to judge those who judge me.<\/p>\n

Yet so many people want others to conform to a standard. They expect me to be a certain “type” of parent, yet I’m different.\u00a0 But different also describes my kids.\u00a0 My Ex is even more so different from the norm… so our children are anything BUT normal.\u00a0 And I see parenting as a responsibility, but it is not my life, my sole definition.\u00a0 And I don’t have to be “perfect” at it.<\/p>\n

I listen to what my oldest son’s shrink says in trying to talk him into the middle of the road of adolescent conformity and I smile.\u00a0 I never conformed… I was never popular…\u00a0 I had maybe 2-3 friends at any given time… I was a VERY angry kid from 14 to 16 years of age.\u00a0 Just like my oldest now, I hated my peers.\u00a0 Yet I managed to grow out of it okay.\u00a0 I say to myself, I’ve been there, I’ll be able to help him find tools within himself to succeed, including ways to socialize that work for him.\u00a0 (And for the most part it works, slow going as it is.)<\/p>\n

So I ask myself who gives a shit if my Ex knows what I write on my blog?\u00a0 Because if you’re going to worry about the imagined you must take it all the way to the logical end to move past it.\u00a0 Worst case scenario My Ex tries to sue for custody… the kids are old enough a judge would ask their opinion and honestly they HATE being at his girlfriend’s house and I don’t really think he could handle parenting them 24\/7!\u00a0 And I don’t see him moving out any time soon, unless she kicks him out!\u00a0 So that worry really isn’t a possible reality.<\/p>\n

Who cares if I think his girlfriend looks like Skelator in an Old Lady Peroxide Blond wig and the long hair look on him adds to the oddness of his flat affect face.\u00a0 Who cares if he knows I find the fact he cannot look me in the eye more a testament to his own immaturity that he can’t even TRY to get over any hurt that I wanted out of marriage to him. \u00a0 Or the fact he can’t apply common courtesy to email or text me schedule changes but relies on verbal information passed through the kids.\u00a0 Honestly… isn’t he HAPPIER with his girlfriend than with a wife who didn’t respect him or desire him?\u00a0 He should be thanking me that I chose singlehood instead of striving to make him into the man I wanted.\u00a0 I KNEW that wouldn’t be fair and it was a choice before me when we went through counseling.<\/p>\n

So WHAT if they think I’m a slut (cuz I am and I’m proud of it!) and disapprove of my boyfriend or the fact we’re in an open relationship.\u00a0 Hell, the only reason I don’t make it more obvious is the kids don’t need to know this fact until they are adults and can make judgement choices of their own.<\/p>\n

So what if the world knows he refuses to take custody of his oldest son, not even on Father’s Day!\u00a0 AND he doesn’t pay ANY child support.\u00a0 And who cares if I think the TRUE reason behind his decision to cut off his son is his girlfriend doesn’t want him in HER house.\u00a0 That for at least 2 years my kids mostly hide in the garage with their beds & their stuff cuz they don’t feel welcome, don’t feel part of the family.\u00a0 And for a while their garage “room” was being used by HER daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend when my children weren’t there.\u00a0 Now they sleep in an room which is essentially a large open space hallway with no doors.<\/p>\n

Who cares if the world knows I think my Ex is stupid for trying to grow a business in a field which takes lots of people skills of which he has little or no ability or understanding.\u00a0 So his income is mostly what he collects from the Army Pension so he cannot or will not move out of the free-ride-meal-ticket of the GF into an apartment so his kids can feel comfortable when he has custody of them.\u00a0 And if his business is succeeding, what then is his excuse for not thinking of his kids happiness?\u00a0 And why can’t he pay child support for the child he refuses to take?<\/p>\n

You can see why this blog is titled Venom.<\/p>\n

Cuz if there IS an Agent of the Ex in my readership, well, I might as well give them something to justify the bad karma of deceitfulness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I wonder if I have a spy in my readership.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of you I know personally or through Facebook, because I honestly don’t believe strangers who don’t know me would find me interesting enough to follow!\u00a0 But sometimes there … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twirling-my-skirt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3703"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5143,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions\/5143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}