I'm crying my eyes out and trying to look after my DD (she's asleep for now) and struggling to do that, I can't even read the Cat in the Hat because my voice is catching and I'm sobbing on every line.
I've done a stupid thing and I can't take it back, and the only person I've ended up hurting/punishing is my DD, and it's eating me up.
It's to do with her dad's maintenance, I think I mis-read a situation and/or gave him the excuse he was looking for, I asked the csa to step in to try to sort things out because his payments were becoming less reliable, it's backfired because they have made things 10 times worse. He's now going to be paying about £10 a week.
It means that financially, I'm going to be about £100 worse off per month (so £1200 per year) and I feel like all I've achieved, is to make life harder for DD. That money would have covered all her clothes, shoes, play, little treats. I've just wiped all that out.
At the same time, I'm upset by the tone of the messages he's sent. The back story is that DD was the result of a fling, he left me to decide what to do with the pregnancy, right at the start of it (cut contact completely and moved cities) and has never met her despite my best efforts to set that up, but until now we've been able to discuss the money quite amicably. The messages I've received today are horrid, he's accusing me of only contacting the csa to money grab from him (which wasn't my intention at all). He sounds angry and is telling me how he's been struggling to make ends meet and is glad that this means he won't now be paying as much for DD, and basically accusing me of being a nasty person, who has been making life hard for him.
I've tried calling to have a reasonable conversation but he won't answer, I've also tried replying to his messages to point out that the only person he is punishing by paying less is DD. Given that he's rejected her since day one, I guess it's silly of me to think that he would care at all about her. But I care about her, so I have to try.
What's really upsetting me is the tone of the messages, and the fact that he seems to think he's been doing me a favour by paying anything, and is now taking the higher moral ground because I was somehow trying to 'milk him' for more and failed. And the talk of him struggling, that's really galling. He doesn't have a clue what I've been through because he didn't stick around to discuss or deal with any of it. I was completely on my own and still am. Noone was there when I spent most of my pregnancy trying to hide it and trying not to cry uncontrollably on public transport, or when I went through 2 days of labour/birth on my own. I've spent most of the last 2+ years raising DD with zero support, in a new place, where there has never been anyone to talk to about my feelings ever and I've been holding them all in for so long. I haven't used a babysitter and gone out ever and have devoted myself to doing a good job with DD. So many things have been so incredibly hard. I think if I told him the truth he would just think I was exaggerating. He seems to think I'm lying when I say I'm not on benefits and struggling to find work, but I'm not.
I think he blames me for continuing with the pregnancy after he'd disappeared (and then asking him for financial help once DD was here). But I didn't know what to do, I didn't even get to talk to a counsellor back then and was so emotional, and before I knew it it was too late to 'get rid' of DD. And I'm glad in the end because she is wonderful. If he had stuck around back then we could have at least talked about it.
There are so many things I could say to him about how life has been but I don't think he's ever really been interested (which is why I haven't), and definitely isn't now. Maybe what's coming out today is just all the emotion from holding it in but I can't help it.
DD doesn't seem to know what's going on and isn't much affected by me crying and I'm glad about that. But I'm so mad at myself for the stupid conversation with the csa and thinking that they could somehow fix things.
Anyway, I have noone in RL to say these things to and am struggling to pick myself up today, I can usually do it.