My name is Denise, and I am a 49-year-old single mother. For years, I have worked two, sometimes three, jobs at a time to ensure my son, Ethan, could stay in college. When a janitor position opened up on Ethan’s campus, it felt like a monumental blessing. The job offered steady hours, good benefits, and was close to home, meaning I could finally focus all my energy on supporting his education without running myself ragged across the city. This humble janitorial work represented the culmination of my decades of sacrifice, securing his future through my own labor. I eagerly shared the news with Ethan, believing he would appreciate the stability and effort behind my decision, but I had no idea how deeply my choice would wound him.
The moment I told Ethan about the job, his reaction was explosive and immediately defensive. He became furious and shouted, “YOU got a job here? As a janitor? Mom, that’s embarrassing! What if my friends see you?” His words stung so sharply that my throat closed up, and the shock made it difficult to breathe. I instinctively tried to lighten the devastating mood, offering a simple, joking solution: “If it bothers you that much, just pretend you don’t know me.” The gravity of his shame was clear, however, as he didn’t even crack a smile. Instead, he simply turned his back on me and walked away, leaving me alone with the quiet sting of his rejection.
The very next day, I reported to my shift, assigned to clean one of the college’s main administrative buildings. My heart was already heavy, still processing the cruelty of Ethan’s reaction. As I wiped down the glass and surfaces in a long hallway, I saw Ethan and a group of his friends approaching from the far end. My first, painful expectation was that he would simply ignore me, pretending I was a ghost or a stranger to avoid the uncomfortable truth. I prepared myself for the quiet ache of this expected public dismissal, which would have already been hurtful enough to bear.
But what Ethan did was far worse than mere neglect. As he and his friends passed by my position, Ethan looked directly at me—making eye contact as if I were a stranger and not his mother—and then loudly addressed his friends. He said, “Ugh, the cleaning crew always leaves streaks on the glass. Don’t touch anything, guys, you never know what they drag in.” His friends laughed at the callous, demeaning joke, oblivious that they were mocking the mother of one of their own. I felt myself physically shrinking from the blow, wanting desperately to run, but I was frozen, my hands shaking as I kept wiping the same spot on the glass.
Later that same night, still reeling from the devastating humiliation, I confronted him, needing him to acknowledge the profound cruelty of his public act. “Why would you talk about me like that?” I asked, heartbreak plain in my voice. His response, however, was shocking in its utter lack of remorse or accountability. He merely shrugged and shifted the blame back onto me, saying dismissively, “I told you not to work here. You didn’t listen. Don’t make this my fault.” His complete lack of apology and his insistence that I was responsible for his shameful behavior only deepened the wound he had inflicted earlier that day.
I was left completely heartbroken and devastated. I had willingly sacrificed my comfort, pride, and energy for years to ensure his future, enduring two and three jobs just to keep him in that college. Yet, at the moment that mattered most, he had deliberately treated me like dirt—a contaminated stranger—simply to look “cool” and maintain status in front of his friends. The betrayal was complete. Now, I face the crushing dilemma of whether to quit the job I fought so hard to get, confront him even harder about the core issue of respect, or force him to face the painful consequences of his ungrateful actions.
