Escaping Daddy. Maria Landon

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СКАЧАТЬ married and have four children’. I guess that was because Mum and Dad had had four of us and I wanted to make up for all the mistakes they had made, do everything completely differently to the way they had. Perhaps I was hoping to get a childhood for myself through my own children. As I hadn’t been able to do all those great parent/child things when I was the child, at least I would be able to do them as a mum.

      But the reality was that after Brendan’s birth I was lonely and broke, and insecure about my parenting skills. I didn’t even seem to be able to make enough money to keep my new baby warm and safe without having to resort to shoplifting. I can still remember the sick feeling of guilt I experienced when I was caught stealing some bedding from a department store in Norwich. I had Brendan with me at the time and when they took me up to the police station I dissolved into helpless sobbing and hysteria because I thought they were going to take him away from me.

      I was never a good shoplifter, although I was a lot better than my brother Terry in the days when we were both small and Dad used to send us out every day to steal his whisky or some food for our supper. Whereas Dad seemed to see nothing wrong in stealing at all, as though it was just a fact of life that we had to get used to, I always felt guilty and tried to wriggle out of it. I stole an eyeliner pencil for myself once and felt so bad about it I took it back the next day. I was even more scared of being caught returning it than I had been when I originally slid it into my pocket.

      The fact that I was having to turn to shoplifting again in order to provide for my baby made me feel like even more of a failure, as though I was fulfilling all Dad’s worst predictions about how my future would be without him. However much I hated the way things were going, however, I also couldn’t see any way I would ever be able to turn my life round and make everything decent. Once you have become part of that world of thieving and drinking and prostitution, especially when it is all you have ever known or had experience of, it is very hard to break out.

      Although I was physically safe in my tiny flat, and was no longer being forced to climb into cars with strange men, inside I still felt like the same little girl whose father had decided on the day of her birth to turn her into a street walker. Even though I loved my baby, Brendan, more than anything or anyone I often found the pain of living too much to bear.

      Apart from Brendan I had no family to turn to for comfort as the empty hours ticked by in that lonely little flat. Mum was living locally and I could telephone her whenever I wanted but she might as well have been at the other end of the country for all the help she was able to give me. I used to go to see her once a week for a few months after Brendan was born but her new partner had made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with her children from the past so I could only visit when he was out at work. When she saw me struggling to cope it must have brought back memories of how she had been at my age, when she was weighed down with kids that she hardly knew how to look after, and constantly bullied by the man who was supposed to be the love of her life. It’s easy to see why she might want to shut out anything that reminded her of those times, and that perhaps made her feel guilty for the way in which she had abandoned her children. Whatever the reasons, I knew I was on my own with my problems.

      The people at social services did their best to help me in every way they could, which meant we wouldn’t starve and we had a roof over our heads, but I was desperate to do better than that for my precious child. I couldn’t bear the thought that I could do no more than keep him alive. But what could I ever do to earn money? Dad had completely convinced me that I was no use to anyone and had ensured that I had no education or skills apart from street walking. The only thing I knew about was working on the Block, but returning to that option seemed too terrible to contemplate. I knew that I was lucky to have survived for as long as I had selling casual sex to strangers in cars. I dreaded the thought of being forced to go back to taking such enormous risks, but Dad had told me a million times that that was all I was good for, and in the increasingly frequent number of moments of self doubt I believed he was right.

      Most children are lucky enough to have wise and kind guides to help them find their paths through life, mentors who have their best interests at heart and want to see them be happy and want to help them to thrive and succeed at whatever they choose to do. But what happens if the people you are forced to rely on for guidance at the very beginning of your life are not wise or kind? What if they are quite the opposite and do everything they can to tempt and force you down the wrong paths in life, being more interested in themselves and the gratification of their own desires?

      No one can spend their whole lives blaming their parents for everything that goes wrong in their lives; after a while it comes down to the choices you make for yourself as an adult and you have to take responsibility for them, but how good or bad those choices are will very largely be determined by the foundations that have been laid in the early years of your life. I might have been eighteen years old when I had Brendan, but I still felt as completely lost as I had been at eight when I was forced to lie down beside Dad with those magazines and at thirteen when I sat in the cars of strangers and they did whatever they wanted to me.

      One night when I was drowning in unpaid bills and utterly desperate for money, I left Brendan with a babysitter and went out onto the streets in search of motorists looking for business. The despair I felt as I climbed into those strangers’ cars was the deepest and darkest I had ever experienced. I didn’t ever want to go back to being that desperate. I only did it a couple of times but afterwards I sank into the blackest of depressions and decided I would rather end it all and let someone more responsible than me take over bringing up Brendan.

      Since I was twelve or thirteen I had been cutting my arms with knives and any other sharp implement I could get my hands on. I just wanted to hurt myself because I thought I was so worthless I didn’t deserve to be treated any better, to punish myself for being such a terrible person. I suppose it also gave me some kind of control over my body in ways that I didn’t have otherwise. When the blood flowed, I always felt a sense of release, however momentary.

      I started seriously trying to kill myself when I was about fourteen. The first time, I saved up paracetamol tablets by telling different people in the care home I was in that I had a headache or period pains and then swallowed them all one night but I was found and rushed to A & E to have my stomach pumped. I tried again not long afterwards but the same thing happened.

      Whenever I was actually putting the tablets in my mouth I always intended to kill myself, but sometimes I would change my mind a few moments later. A kind of survival instinct cut in, making me panic and tell someone what I had done. They then raised the alarm and I was left with all the shame and embarrassment of having had my stomach pumped out and being given a load of lectures. With each failed attempt my self-esteem would shrink further.

      Now, at the age of eighteen, I decided I had to make sure I died this time. I loved Brendan so much it hurt and I was terrified he was going to end up being damaged by whatever choices I made in life. Just looking at his perfect, innocent little face as I changed or fed him made me cry. But I had become increasingly certain I was the worst mother possible for him. He was helpless and trusted me completely but I believed that I had to let him go in order to give him a better chance in life than I had been given by my parents. I just wanted all the pain and shame to end and there only seemed to be one way to make that happen.

      If I killed myself, Brendan would have a better life than I could ever give him and I would be released from my misery. I didn’t think I deserved to live. I believed I was worthless, because that was what I had always been told by Dad and virtually everyone else I came across, and I now felt that I was so useless as a mother that even Brendan would be better off without me. On the evidence of what had happened so far, I didn’t believe I was going to be capable of looking after him properly.

      I didn’t want to kill myself with him in the flat since I had no idea how long it would be before anyone found my body. My first priority was to ensure that he was somewhere safe before I did the terrible deed and ended the horrible charade of my short life forever.

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