My Testimony - Part 2

My Dad and my step-mum decided to move home to try and make a go of things.  So they moved with the remaining kids (there’s 8 of us in total) to Northants.  I stayed in Milton Keynes and moved in with my at-the-time partner, in his sister’s house.  After a mere two weeks of playing house together, we split up.  And, just a minor complication, but I was also pregnant (and hadn’t told anyone).  When I was 7 months gone, I moved to my Dad and my Step-mum’s house.

I soon delivered this tiny little bundle into the world, and was the proudest mum ever.  She was (and still is) perfect.  Living in a small house with my Dad, my step-mum, my baby, my little half-brother and half-sister, my step-sister and her partner and various dogs, cats, guinea pigs and tropical fish wasn’t always the easiest though.  I felt very claustrophobic at times.  I yearned for my own space, for time alone with my baby, and most of all, to have a ‘proper’ family.  When my now ex came along, he seemed to offer exactly these things.  Despite a rocky start, we moved in to a flat together the day following my 21^st birthday.  Shortly after, my Dad and the rest of my family moved to the South Coast, leaving me up in Northants with him and my baby.

During the spring of 2003, I found my Dad was getting ill again.  He was paranoid his wife was cheating on him, and would call me nightly to tell me so.  He spoke of getting away from it all, but promised me he wasn’t going to try and kill himself again.  I begged him to come up and stay with me, but he wouldn’t.  Then lunch time on June the 7^th, I got the phone call – My dad had passed away.  He had hung himself.  My whole world just stopped.  The other half was out at the time, and didn’t have a mobile on him, and me and my girl were alone in my flat.  I was absolutely devastated.  I’d always been close to Dad, and without him, I felt very alone and very scared.

Following on from Dad’s funeral, my partner and I carried on with life.  By this point, my partner had lost his job and was struggling to find another.  I had started college and my new friends left him feeling threatened.  Things took a definite turn for the worst between us then.  Slowly over the next few years, he became mentally and emotionally abusive, bordering on physical at times.  He would manipulate me for money to feed his drug habits, refused to find work, and would fly into jealous rages.  I soon lost any sense of who I was and became a shadow of my former self.

Eventually I got to breaking point, where realised it was him or me.  My fighting spirit determined it wouldn’t be me.  I was still scared stiff though.  I lay in bed just days before break-up day, and did something I hadn’t done for years, since I was a little child in infant’s school.  I prayed.