It's Hard To Be Dismissed

Yesterday I quit my job.
The graveyard shift, the loneliness of having to black out the windows to get to sleep early, the way you get weird from the lifestyle: the lack of a lifestyle, to be more accurate.
The misery of a giving your all to a job, working overtime to make sure that everything got done, only to be sent home early on another day, to make sure that you don't get more than 40 hours in, so the corporation won't have to PAY you overtime rates; the total lack of recognition. 
I've worked a year and a half without a single weekend off. Missed birthdays, dance recitals, holidays, you name it. In all that time, the amount of "extra" money I've earned, in spite of staying sometimes two and a half hours over, has amounted to, maybe, $15.
I've covered for grumpy coworkers, absent coworkers, coworkers who quit. I've done the work of two people on a single shift. I've done it all with good nature and a can-do attitude. In short, I have done everything "they" say you should do to succeed.
My reward? Nada. Not extra pay. Nary a bonus. No pay raise. Not even an "Attagirl" from my managers. Only, "You need to clock out early because you're going to go over 40 hours".
Everyone has a breaking point, and I reached mine. Over, I need hardly say, something relatively trivial, in its own right.

Today I got to be at home on a Saturday. A Saturday! I got to listen to the NPR radio shows and today they aired this "Sperm" show which was very interesting. One of the segments of this show was about a girl looking for the sperm donor who had made her existence possible. She put in a lot of effort to find this man who could be her "father". (I felt sorry for the man who had raised her and cared for her all the years, the man who had been her Dad, as he didn't get so much as a mention.) I won't presume to say I know how he feels, but I can tell you this.
I was a non-custodial mom.
A suspect creature.
If they gave custody to the father, why, she must have been Lacking, or worse.

My ex got married again, and so my daughters had a step-mother. She did a lot for my girls, and I gave her (give her) full credit for it. I was step-mother to my ex's child from his first marriage, and it can be a thankless task. Nothing a step-mother does is ever quite good enough. I know, I'm a step-child myself. Whether the real mother is living or dead, a step-mother will seldom measure up. An absent mother is fuel for fantasy, a dead mother even more so. You cannot compete with a ghost.

I was religious about my visitation. I took the crumbs of motherhood that the court awarded me. I lost jobs for refusing to compromise on the visitation schedule. I lost work hours and pay, and I sacrificed a decent work history because of it, too. I sacrificed a decent income. And I went without food many a time, to save up the money to take my babies to some cheesy buffet on a Wednesday night so I could spend my precious two hours with them....and their father threatening to call the police on me for "kidnapping" when I got them home ten minutes late.

So, one Christmas, I attended a program at the day care place where Younger Daughter went (she is a handicapped person) and this happened. People were acquainted with Dad and Wife, and not with me. They had come to think of step-mother as "Mom". Somebody saw me walking with Younger Offspring after the show, and they greeted her and then looked at me with a questioning air. "I am her mother" I explained, and the woman (in all innocence) said to me, "Oh, you're BioMom".
 Bio-Mom.
As though I were nothing more than an egg donor.
A surrogate.
A biological convenience.

She will never know how deeply she hurt me.

It's hard to be dismissed. As though all you did was nothing.

One day, Elder Offspring may find herself on the other end of this dilemma. She had a surprise, unplanned baby. She hasn't revealed the "sperm donor". She may have to face some very, very hard questions soon.