Before I explain my story, I need to also explain I am not a parent, I am 21, female and currently finishing my second year of university.
I was a child who was constantly comforted with the words 'Mummys just tired' and 'Shes just a little sad tonight thats all'. I was pulled out of a top floor building because my mother had locked us in, whilst she got arrested for drink driving. I had two car accidents with her whilst she drove drunk, i was 9. As she got worse, I started to cover her outbursts too, at 10 I remember picking her up out of the vomit on the bathroom floor, I didnt want dad to tell her off, i assumed she was poorly. Numerous memories of her still bug me at night, watching her hit my father, witnessing affairs, theft and having my school rung up by her drunk, telling them lies about my father that had me put into boarding school and very narrowly, myself and my siblings into care.
My dad worked full time and as i grew older i had to take care of my younger siblings. My mother left when I was 12, I couldnt tell you where she is to this day. My dad worked 16 hour shifts everyday, and my sister and I would work little waitressing jobs on the weekends to be able to pay the petrol to get to school. My grandmother who lived with us became terminally ill, so we took care of her too. She died the week before my sixteenth birthday and I lost the only woman who had cared for me like a mother in my life. My father, sister, and myself worked as a team to make things work, to pull money in and to fill the whole in my little siblings lives. I passed my driving test the week that i could to relieve my dad of the financial strain that public transport had for them. I worked 20 hours a weekend, sixthform during the week, bath bed time and homeworks week nights and never ever missed having a mum. My father was never in, he was working continuously. I will never ever fault him, he is a wonderful person, but realistically, myself and my sister ran the house hold between the ages of 12-18, when we both left for uni.
On my 18th birthday it was prom, and as my best friends mum altered the back of my dress i burst into tears and realised that should have been my mum. This was the only moment I ever wished for a mother of my own.
I found myself in the same position two weeks ago on my 21st birthday, as i blew out my candles i realised i was wishing for a mother, at 21 years old i should have grown out of this yearning stage, but it came flooding back through.
I couldn't tell you what Im trying to say, because i dont quite know myself. I know my 21st birthday wish will never be able to come true, how could it? I adore my father, but he has moved on with his life now with his new wife and I no longer have a room, or a place where I can come home to anymore. To be very truthful, I am scared, so scared. I feel now more than ever there is a whole in my life, that could be filled with a pen pal, or a mother in some way that would be free to email me now and then, answering the one million questions I had.
I in no way whatsoever feel sorry for myself, or think that in anyway I am hard done by. My father made sure we had the essentials and did everything in his power to keep us together and out of care. I appreciate so much that other children go through much much worse things, I guess I feel more guilty than anything that I feel this way.