I was 12 when I started drinking; I had suffered from mental illnesses undiagnosed for most of my life. My drinking started as a bit of fun, but gradually and without me noticing when I lived with my father I became an alcoholic. I was drinking several litres of alcohol first it was just weekends then the odd day or two in the week, before I knew it I was drinking 6 days a week.
At the age of 17 I heard from my mother for the first time in 3 years, she called to tell me she dumped my sister at school because her boyfriend had abused her, she was 5 years old. How could my mother blame her 5 year old daughter for that?
I had only just come back from the Psychologist; I couldn’t handle what I heard. I went out drinking on my own and met up with two lads that I knew and they were bad news. We drank, we did drugs and by 1 am on the 20th April 2005 I was arrested.
You may think yeah drunk and disorderly, how wrong you would be.
I was arrested for arson.
I still don’t really know why I did it; I just know i regret it.
I had set fire to a school in anger.
It took me four days before I phoned my dad to tell him where I was, he hadn’t even noticed I had been gone.
I spent 2 years after that on bail waiting to be sent down. I got lucky; I got 2 years’ probation. I went through a lot of rough patches and went to prison for 3 months for breach of probation but I continued to drink excessively until I was 17 weeks pregnant and please don’t judge, but no matter how much I drank I couldn’t get drunk.
I am nearly 24 now and have 4 wonderful kids and am so proud to say have been drink free for four years, not that the temptation has gone but I have control.
My partner has 2 daughters, they have been on the child protection register nearly their whole lives because of their mothers neglect. They came to live with us full time. When it came out that the girls had acted inappropriately towards each other and my son, sexually I might add for the safety of all children we stopped contact with the mother to protect them.
I suffer with bipolar and struggle to maintain my moods and control my temper. We have four children all together in the house. Because of the safety issues the sleeping arrangements left a lot to be desired. My partner was in my bed with my eldest, while my son was in his cot, the girls were each in their own room and me i was the lucky one who got to sleep on a mattress on the floor in the hallway.
I know I have to protect the children and this is the only way to prevent anything like that from happening again.
As you can imagine it has been very stressful.
Social Services decided to open a case conference to see if the boys should be registered, on top of that I have stress coming from all directions. I was falling apart yet again; I already had a break down at Christmas and if I’m honest hadn’t fully recovered.
Well the social worker came out to discuss the safety of the children and I cracked.
“Take my boys, I don’t want them anyway, I can’t do this just take them!” I shouted as the tears streamed down my face.
“I don’t want my kids”
I was hurting so much but I was useless, I couldn’t protect them all. I’m always a mess they would be better off somewhere else.
I do still have my kids and regret everyday what I said and social services are now using that against me and trying to call me unstable because I tried to protect and make acceptable decisions for my kids. The battle shall go on and I will fight all the way.
This inspirational post was written anonymously by a mom who is a member of my Facebook mums group. I have full permission to share her story. If you can relate to this post and would like to share your own anonymous post please contact me.
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