Trigger warning : mentions of abuse, substance abuse and self injury.
Ever since I was a child I’ve always felt like I was dealt a bad hand in life and I wasn’t wrong!
I was born into a dysfunctional family, both of my parents were alcoholics and due to their own demons were not fit to be parents.
From what I’ve been told, as a baby my care fell to my sister and two brothers who are 3,5 and 7 years older than me respectively.
For obvious reasons I’m not 100% sure on the details of my early years but I do know that they weren’t great.
I was on the at risk register from birth and taken into care on a court order at 5 years old.
From reading my social services records I know that my mother put me into respite care with my sister numerous times before we were finally taken away, sometimes because she wasn’t coping and others because she had admitted herself to a psychiatric ward or rehab facility.
My mother and fathers relationship ended when I was very young. I don’t ever recall them being together. I have always known my parents to be unable to be in the same room as one another without major arguments.
When I was 5 years old my mother put paracetamol in mine and my siblings food. Now I know that she was in the grips of mental illness and addiction.
This was the second time she had done it, I don’t know how the police and ambulance services came to find out but thankfully they did and the four of us were taken to hospital and my mother was arrested.
I have vague memories of that night, I remember being in the ambulance in red pyjamas and carrying my teddy bear.
I remember that at the hospital I was put in another room to my brothers and sister but I could hear them and see them through the window that divided us. I bumped my head trying to get to them.
At some point after we were taken my mum stopped drinking and got into a recovery program.
My sister and I were sent to a foster Carer while my brothers were sent to live with their dad.
I stayed with that foster family until I was 7. It was then that I was moved to another placement because the foster careers wanted to adopt me and my sister but my father refused to allow me to be adopted so I was moved and they adopted my sister.
At 7 years old I thought that I was being punished, I had just been taken away from the last person that has been a constant in my life and it felt like my point.
I know that it was in December that I moved because I can remember sitting on the stairs in the new foster home and eating the entire contents of my advent calendar – comfort eating at its best.
I only saw my sister a few times after that until I was 12 years old.
I have very fond memories of my time at this foster placement, I settled there fairly easily and loved my foster carers.
I saw my mum every week and saw my father sporadically as he did not like having to be supervised during our time together.
At 9 years old I returned to live with my mum. It was a staggered move that happened gradually starting with unsupervised contact, overnight stays to living there full time.
I was so happy, I thought that I would be just like all my school friends again but it didn’t last very long.
About a year later my mum was admitted to a psychiatric ward again, I had known something wasn’t right for a while as she had stopped going out, stopped cooking and was acting strange but the night that she was taken to hospital my neighbour came round because she heard my mum scream at me to turn the tv off because she thought that the fire that was on a episode of The Simpson’s was going to come out of the tv and burn the flat down.
I guess the neighbour phoned an ambulance because the next thing that I remember is packing a bag for my mum, I kept telling he that she couldn’t take her cigarettes to hospital.
I went in the ambulance with her, she was taken to a ward and I was put in the children’s waiting room while a foster Carer was found for me.
I stayed with this foster Carer for about a year before being returned to my mum. I was now 10 years old.
My mother once again allowed me to go and stay with my father regularly despite the courts and social services having decided that he was only allowed supervised contact with me. It was a few months later that I found out why. I loved going to stay with him, I was a proper daddy’s girl and worshipped the ground he walked on.
I had been shopping with mum that day for my new secondary school uniform and I was so excited, I was desperate to show my father how I looked in it.
He booked a taxi to come and pick me up from my mums house after I rang and asked if I could stay at his.
I got my clothes and school uniform ready and got in the taxi. My father went in the taxi, I asked the driver where we were going when he didn’t take the turning to my fathers house.
The Driver said that he had been told not to tell me and that we were going on a mystery tour.
I immediately knew that my father was in the pub, it was where he spent all of his time.
We stayed in the pub for hours before getting a taxi back to his house. I had to hold him up as we walked to the taxi rank.
When we got to his house I told him I had a surprise and went and changed into my school uniform to show him.
He sexually abused me that night, told me not to tell anyone and kicked me out. I didn’t understand what had happened but I knew it was wrong.
I know now that he had been grooming me and acting inappropriately toward me for years.
I didn’t tell anyone what had happened for another 4 years.
I kept seeing my dad after that but never strayed over again. I have questioned why I kept going to see him after that but he was my dad and I loved him.
One Sunday while I was at his house a few months later a friend of my mothers had called at hers and found out where I was, they must have told social services because the next day I got home from school to find my social worker waiting for me and I was told that I was going to stay with a foster Carer for a while.
When I asked my mum why she told me it was because they had found out that I had been staying at my dads.
So at 12 years old I was back in care, I loved these foster catered but just before my 13th birthday social services decided I had to move again because I was now too old to share a bedroom with the foster carers daughter.
The next placement lasted about 7 months because me and the female foster Carer didn’t get on.
I had started to become quite difficult and acting out as a result of teenage hormones and everything I had been through. I began self harming, the foster carers saw the cuts on my arms and told my social worker. I was forced into counselling but I didn’t engage with the counsellor.
I thought I had finally found a home that I could stay in with the next foster family, I settled in there easily and Made a strong bond with their daughter who was a year older than me. I truly felt part of the family but there was still something missing.
At 14 I decided that I no longer wanted to see my mum. I had been seeing her fortnightly since my return to foster care.
She had gotten ill again but I didn’t know that at the time, all I knew was that she was being very verbally abusive and nasty to me for a long time.
It was just after this that I really started to spiral. I started drinking and taking drugs. I began running away from my foster placement, I just wanted to be with my friends all the time and to get drunk or high. I hated myself, I began taking overdoses and my self harming escalated. I began falling out with my friends and felt very alone, depression hit me hard.
I remember that in the run up to Christmas all I would do was get up, go to school, come back and lay in my bed. My foster Carer did ask a couple of times if everything was okay, I didn’t have the words to tell her what was going on in my head so I just said it was and that I was just tired.
The foster Carer was no longer able to cope with my behaviour and I was affecting their own two children and the other foster child so a couple of months before I turned 16 I was moved to another foster placement.
I had grown used to being in the police station at this point as whenever I ran a way the police would have to come and find me, take me to the station and wait for me to be collected.
I kept doing the same things at the new foster placement. One day at school I was called out of lessons and found the police waiting for me in the head of years office, someone had come forward about my father abusing them and I was asked if anything had happened to me. I told them about what happened a few years before but a few weeks later I retracted my statement.
My sister, who had been adopted years before got back in touch. She now had a son and lived near me. We began building a relationship.
I had seen her once when I was about 13 too.
3 months after being in touch with her I was kicked out of my foster placement and taken to a respite Carer. My sister contacted social services and offered to have me so I moved in there
I was 16 and she was 19. In hindsight we barely knew each other. I stopped drinking and taking drugs but my behaviour was very difficult, I was argumentative and a very hurt little girl who didn’t know how to cope with my feelings.
We had argument after argument and around six month later I was back with the same respite carers I stayed with just before moving to my sisters.
Between the ages of 16 and 18 I went through another 3 foster placements. It was only my last set of foster carers that with incredible patience, putting up with me running away and showing me unconditional love that were able to get through to me and I stopped running at 17. I began to settle down a bit but I was still drinking and taking drugs.
At 17 I moved out of their house into a shared house for young people but I went to stay with them most weekends. My drinking and drug use escalated again. I wasn’t able to cope living on my own and asked if I could move back in, they agreed and I stayed there until a couple of months after I was 18.
I moved in with my boyfriend, he ran a pub so for a young, using addicted he seemed perfect. I stopped taking drugs for him but began drinking more, toward the end of our relationship I was drinking at least a bottle of vodka a day.
A few months later I ended up in a women’s refuge, at 18 I was the youngest there. I drank to change the way I feel. It wasn’t long before I started taking drugs again.
I stayed with various friends and boyfriends over the next two years until I had nowhere left to turn. I went to stay with my father and just after my 19th birthday I got my own flat near him.
Due to being in severe physical pain I was prescribed morphine and tramadol from the doctors, I was still drinking on top of this.
I was still self harming and taking overdoses regularly but I did stay living in the same flat for 2 year which was quite a feat for me considering my history.
When I split up with my boyfriend who was then living with me I got myself another flat in the same town. I was no longer speaking to my father.
When I was 22 my mum who I had been in contact with for a while was diagnosed with lung cancer and a brain tumour. I did my best to help care for her along with my brother and sister. She was diagnosed in the February of 2016 and died 9th of August 2016.
I sat in my flat and drank myself into oblivion and took whatever drugs I had at the time, I had now been given sleeping tablets and diazepam from the doctors and was also getting similar drugs from other people.
My mental health was in bits. I just wanted to die, I no longer had anything left in me to give to my addiction.
On the 7th of November 2016 I had hit my rock bottom. I was 22 years old. I decided that I either had to stop drinking and taking drugs or I had to die.
I made the decision to go to a local recovery meeting, try and get clean through that. I gave it a year and my plan was if I couldn’t get clean after a year that I would kill myself.
The first couple of months were incredibly difficult, I went to as many recovery meetings as I could and held on for dear life.
I slowly clawed my way out of the gutter, I began to very slowly get healthier, I began eating and my life improved all round.
That was three years ago and my life today it completely different. At 9 months clean I found out that I was pregnant, at 18 months clean I had a baby girl and now I am sat in my house with a one year old daughter who is happy, healthy and loved.
I am still learning to love myself and I do have some improvements to make but I am happy, clean and love my life most of the time.
I am able to be the parent to my daughter that I never had.
During my pregnancy and when my daughter was born I suffered with PND but due to my past mental health issues I was able to recognise it.
I am due to start counselling for the sexual abuse I endured as a child. My daughter will never know the sadness, pain and instability that I did.
Yes I am a single mum but a damn good one and yes I get things wrong but who doesn’t? I am not defined by my past and my daughter will not suffer because of my past.