Letter to Twitter

Dear Twitter friends

Thank you for all your support today, and generally in my life. I thought that maybe I’d fill you in on some of the background that led to my sitting in that windowless room today as my solicitor scuttled in and out with various snippets of news that could affect the life of my son and I forever. It was the tail end of a long long drama that was my relationship with Cubs father, D, details of which I may or may not blog about in the future. I am going to attempt a condensed version of the past two years.

Early 2009, we had been sleeping in different bedrooms for quite some time. Our relationship was not even as good as housemates really, I had tired of his ways and we led separate existences, getting together only to argue about some point or other, usually me, probably, chasing him to pull his weight around the house or contribute towards the bills. On the night before his birthday that year, I got a nasty case of sickness and diarrhoea, I won’t go into details but it was so bad I was crying in pain. He actually thought that I was making it up just to ruin his birthday. This is how crazy and self-obsessed the man is. Somehow though, in the midst of this miserable existence, I managed to fall pregnant. I was shocked, as we had must only have shared a bed once or twice that year and what are the chances of an unexpected pregnancy in those circumstances? I found out in Asda toilets, I was too scared to go home because he had made it clear throughout the whole relationship that he didn’t want any more kids (he’d already fathered one son).

The relationship went from bad to worse once I had broken the news – I wanted him to move out, he was impossible to live with and I was worried about the stress that he was causing to my baby. He refused to stop smoking in the house, he said he’d not been smoking but I think anyone that’s been pregnant will agree that you develop a superhuman sense of smell. And not just cigarettes either, he’d been smoking weed after I was asleep, the smell was unmistakable. Quite apart from the potential harm to my growing baby, it was making my all-day-all-night sickness worse. At one stage I enlisted the help of the police to throw him out of the house but like a complete twat I agreed to let him back in for a week or two while he found somewhere else to live. Need I say more? I ended up house hunting and moving when my head and body were both in the most fragile of states and by the time I found a new house and moved in, and incidentally been made jobless as well, I was totally catatonic with depression.

I thought we should be friends for the sake of the baby, I wanted to allow him to prove himself, and wanted to give him a chance to be a Dad, even thought we lived apart. Serious cracks appeared again when I told him that I was going to stay at my Mums for a few weeks after I had given birth He went ballistic and threatened me with all sorts, even emailing my Mum telling her I was too mentally unstable to look after a child (pot-kettle?). I knew what kind of pressures giving birth would have on my body and mind and I wanted to be somewhere safe, where I could be looked after, and I knew he was incapable of providing that support. I went into labour 6.5 days before actually giving birth. He got all excited but after the first 24 hours he got bored of my long labour and cited ‘things to do’ and buggered off. I was left alone with my dog for company, who, incidentally was a wonderful support, but I still had to walk him – trudging across fields in the cold and mud with my dying tens machine and stopping for contractions.

Once my beautiful son had been born, it was glaringly obvious that D had absolutely no clue when it came to babycare, making some blinding errors which I won’t go into here today but which scared me enough for me to realise that there was no way on earth that this man was going to be left to look after my precious son on his own. While I was still pregnant, I thought we might be able to share the childcare but I didn’t realise what an incredibly strong protective pull I would feel towards that baby boy, and how little things that might have seemed acceptable before, were no longer acceptable for my son.

One time, I had been out to the opticians and had planned to stop by and see D with Cub afterwards but Cub decided otherwise, as babies do, and I had to take him home. D flew off the handle at this and to cut a long story short, that was the second time I called the police (he grabbed and flung me, while I was breastfeeding). The officer that came round persuaded me not to press charges, saying that it was my word against D’s, an action that I now regret.

Several attempts at contact later, I decided that if he wanted to see his son, it would have to be supervised, because it was clear that he couldn’t be civil to me, it was upsetting me and Cub and I strongly felt that I didn’t want Cub growing up thinking that that was a good way to treat women, as D had clearly done. He told me that he had seen his own father hit women, and congratulated himself of not punching me, but violence comes in many forms, as the domestic support officers pointed out. What a fool I felt, being classed as a domestic abuse victim, but looking back on our relationship, it was clear how I had subtly fallen into an abusive relationship, bit by little bit.

Through solicitors I eventually arranged a contact centre visit, this was after lots of to-ing and fro-ing, and an injunction application by me that didn’t happen because my first solicitor messed up. In any case, when he eventually turned up to the contact centre, Cub was crying and he kept taking him away from me, not letting me settle him, even though he was reaching out for me. He stood in front of me when I was breastfeeding, chastising me like it was something filthy that I was doing and generally having a rant. The visit was agony for me and his behaviour was so appalling that the contact centre banned him. His mother then tried to mediate contact but after a visit to her house, she called and apologised and said she wouldn’t put us through that again.

The next thing I know is that D has made an application to the court for contact. This baffled me and my solicitor; I’d offered him contact, he’d messed up at the contact centre - what more could he hope for? At the first hearing he was awarded indirect contact which meant he could send letters or presents to a neutral address to be forwarded to Cub (in the meantime I had moved house again to avoid his harassment and my new address is kept secret from him). He didn’t attempt any contact, which didn’t surprise me – since Cub was born, 17 months ago, he has had two gifts from his dad, one last Christmas and one just before the first court hearing. So, after today, where he displayed his aggression for all to see, he has been given no contact at all. Apparently this is unlikely to change at the next hearing.

It is sad, and I have no idea what I am going to tell my son when he is old enough to ask, but he’s a clever little lad so I hope he understands. I know what I did was right, there is no way I could expose my son to anything negative, he is the happiest smiley-est kid and my soul has the fearlessness of a lion when it comes to protecting him. The stress I’ve been under though is intense, the self-doubt has made me wobble like a jelly and I’ve had aches and pains, panic attacks and tears. I shall be very glad when it’s all over.

This is the condensed version, I could write a book about the whole relationship, and this is only one part of my dramatic life!!

Thank you all for being there, I would have been a right old sorry state without you in that room with me today. Well, I was in a bad way anyway, but you all helped.

xxxxx