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| Me and mum 1979 |
When I was younger I thought that I really didn’t want to have children.
I worried about the responsibility,
which stemmed from my sister’s chronic and often life threatening asthma. I
worried about losing my child, which stemmed from my brother dying in 1978 when he was
17 and I worried about being a bad parent, which stemmed from my father’s
violence.
I’ve never written
about the last on the list before because it’s taken me a long time to step
away from the shadow of secrecy and silence that domestic abuse engenders and
because of the lingering fear that remained, until his death in December, made it
impossible to detail.
All in all I was
afraid that I wouldn’t be as good a mother as my mother had been or that I
wasn’t capable to carry the sheer weight of responsibility.
However, when I
discovered that Phil and I were going to have Lizzy I knew the decision was
already made. I felt exactly the same, with Emily, three years later.
They were very happy
accidents and as both of them arrived via the same accident, there is no issue
in stating this as the fact that it is. It means that neither of our girls can
perceive themselves to be less than the other, in terms of “strategic
planning”.
I was the accident
that my parents had and it didn’t make me feel insecure, but we’re all
different.
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| Me about to get on a float and be a blackbird (aged 4) |
I like to believe
myself intelligent enough to have understood the process and chemical and
anatomical chain reactions and combination of sex and babies. Certain forms of contraception are
demonstrably not 100% foolproof, except sterilisation and Phil and I, are total
buffoons in many respects.
Anyway my point is
that for me becoming a mother had never been my life’s dream and irrespective
of quite a vocal group who believe it’s every “womb’s destiny” to house a
foetus, I think this is for want of a better word, horseshit.
Every woman has bodily
autonomy. No matter the male religious leaders, politicians and legislators
encroaching every onwards on the march over women’s rights, my belief system is
different. A choice is voluntary.
I’ll climb down from
my soapbox now but I wanted to make that clear because from a cathartic
standpoint, I need to detail why today is for me one of my most difficult.
Today is Emily’s
birthday and we can’t be with her. This is the first birthday that this has
ever happened and so since I’ve been awake since 5.30 this morning mulling over
this fact, I needed to mind vomit my feelings onto the virtual page.
The reasons we can’t
see her are very simple. Emily is going through a very difficult time at the
moment.
The changes at school have set her already high anxiety to maximum and as she comes home on a
Monday every week, an unexpected visit home today would cause her to want to
come home every Saturday. This isn’t unreasonable in the case of other people
but we are not in the position of being other people.
I had to accept that
in 2012, when Emily’s needs and challenging behaviour meant she had to leave
home to go to residential school. Caring for our girl requires much more than
two people can do. No matter how much we love her we had no choice.
It’s no easier to
accept now that it was then and it’s a truth that is imbued with other painful
facts.
Emily wants to have a
sleep over and she can’t. Emily wants to go on holiday with us and she can’t and
Emily wants to come back home and she can’t.
She can’t and we can’t
because Emily needs the support of fulltime carers 24 hours a day and will do
for the rest of her life.
To offer a temporary
overnight visit with no hope of a permanent return would be something that she
wouldn’t understand. To offer it once and never again would be devastating to
her.
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| Emily (aged 16) |
She falls into the
category of a small percentage of learning disabled people with her complex
range of difficulties. Her behaviours that challenge can manifest quickly,
sometimes with unforeseen origin and can be lengthy in duration often causing
her to injure herself and others.
So for her to come
home today would be impossible to do as a one off.
If it happens today it
would have to happen every week. If it happened twice every week, Emily would
understandably believe that it could transfer into everyday and from there into
every night.
If we were to visit
Emily she would think we were gong to take her home today and this would cause
her great distress when we said it couldn’t.
Emily doesn’t know
it’s her birthday. If she knew it was I would have found someway to see her. I
would have built a gradual change into the visits and dealt with it in advance,
but she doesn’t. She thinks it’s on Monday.
But I know.
This is the first time
it’s happened.
In the past Emily has
refused to celebrate her birthday, because the change was too overwhelming for
her. I’d lead up to it with charts and indicators and there would be parties
which Emily, like a female Jay Gatsby, would monitor from the safety of her
room and participate in briefly, if at all.
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| The amazing "ABBA Again" |
Last year for her 18th
Birthday we had a party on her birthday with "ABBA Again" tribute act at the
school.
This year Emily wants
to return to a happier time in her life and have a party like she did when she
was little; at home with the friends who she never sees anymore and she wants
them to attend as the children they no longer are.
This is
extraordinarily difficult to explain. There are some things that no one can mitigate
or facilitate for Emily and it’s not her fault she can’t understand it..
There are many aspects
of being Emily’s parents that are difficult, many facets of her life, which
will forever be painful for her to experience and heartbreaking for us to
witness. This is as nothing compared to the pain and torment she experiences.
My default setting of
fear for my lovely girl will always be at maximum.
Today is another day
when we can’t be with her. I can intellectualise it but it doesn’t cancel out
the pain.
Phil and I can’t take
the pain away from each other either, all we can do is distract ourselves and
be together.
I couldn’t vocalise
this to him because it was too big to talk about. My catharsis lies in being
able to articulate it through writing it here. So I did and he asked me to read it to him.
There is no one else
in the world who can understand what we’re feeling and experiencing, other than
the two of us because we’re her parents.
I offer this as with
every blog that details our lives, in the hope that it may help others who are
experiencing a pain like ours.
And to offer a window
through which those, who don’t know, may choose to see.
