Strathy, an 18-Year-Old Boy, the Neighbour and Starting Again

So there I was.

Back living with Mum and Dad.

I had my daughter.

I was starting to go out again.

Starting to remember that underneath being somebody's mum and somebody's ex, there was still actually a person in there.

And that person loved cars.

I'd been going to Strathy since I was about fifteen.

Cars.

Friends.

Sunday-night cruises.

That was my thing.

So once I was back home, I started going again.

Sometimes my daughter even came with me.

I was still Mum.

Always.

But I was also starting to feel like me again.

And that's where I met the man who would become my sons' dad.

He Was Only Eighteen

He was younger than me.

Only eighteen.

Looking back now, eighteen seems ridiculously young.

At eighteen you're technically an adult, but let's be realistic — most of us haven't got a fucking clue what we're doing yet.

But we got on.

Really well.

We had fun together.

We were practically inseparable and everything seemed to happen naturally.

It wasn't complicated at the beginning.

Cars.

Friends.

Being together.

Enjoying ourselves.

And for a while, things were really good.

Then we split up.

And shortly afterwards, I found out I was pregnant.

His baby.

But I didn't tell him.

I kept it completely to myself.

Then I Started Bleeding

At that point, as far as I knew, I was pregnant with one baby.

I didn't know there were twins.

Then there was an upset within the family.

Afterwards, I started bleeding.

So I went to hospital.

And that's where I found out.

There had been two babies.

Twins.

I hadn't known.

I didn't get the lovely scan where somebody points at the screen and says:

"Oh, there's another one!"

I found out I'd been carrying twins because I'd lost one of them.

One baby was gone.

The other was still there.

I had discovered there were two at almost the same moment I discovered I would only be carrying one of them forward.

And their dad?

He still knew absolutely nothing.

He didn't know I was pregnant.

He didn't know there had been two babies.

He didn't know one had been lost.

I was grieving one baby while still carrying another baby whose dad didn't even know existed.

Looking back now, I don't know how I carried some of the things I carried alone.

But somehow?

I did.

Gran's Spare Room

I moved into my gran's spare room.

I stopped going to Strathy for a while.

Life had changed again.

I had my daughter.

I was pregnant.

I'd lost one of my babies.

My relationship was over.

And I was trying to process everything without the baby's dad knowing any of it.

Eventually, one of my friends spoke to him.

Basically told him:

You need to speak to her.

So eventually we got back in contact.

And I told him.

I told him I was pregnant.

And he was happy.

Really happy.

We started talking again.

Then we got back together.

And we decided to try to become a proper family.

Our First Home Together

We got a house not far from Mum and Dad.

My daughter came with me, obviously.

And she became close to him.

So close that she started calling him:

Dad.

That mattered.

Because her own dad had been inconsistent.

She'd been the little girl waiting at the window for somebody who didn't turn up.

Now she had somebody living with her every day who she saw as a dad.

Then our baby arrived.

My first son.

And for a while?

Life was good.

There are parts of my life where I'd love to hit pause.

Just freeze everybody before the next thing happened.

Because this was one of them.

We had our house.

My daughter.

Our son.

We were together.

We were trying to build a family.

And the next thing that changed everything didn't start with either of us.

It started with a neighbour.

The Neighbour

He became obsessed with me.

And I don't mean:

He fancied me.

I don't mean an annoying wee crush.

I mean obsessed.

One night, he got into my partner's car.

With a knife.

And told him to leave me.

Now, anybody who knows me will probably recognise exactly what I did next.

Did I think:

This man has a knife and is obsessed with me. I need to protect myself?

Of course fucking not.

I worried about my partner.

I thought:

He's not safe here.

So I sent my sons' dad back to his mum's.

I genuinely thought I was protecting him.

I thought if he wasn't around, maybe things would calm down.

Maybe the neighbour would leave him alone.

Maybe the situation would become safer.

Looking back?

What a fucking mistake that turned out to be.

The Night Upstairs

I was friendly with my upstairs neighbours.

One night, I was up in their house having a drink.

The neighbour who had become obsessed with me appeared.

He knew the guy upstairs, so him being there wasn't completely out of nowhere.

I was given another drink.

Then I started feeling strange.

Really sleepy.

Not normal I've had a drink and I'm tired sleepy.

Something felt wrong.

So I said I was going home.

I went downstairs.

Got into bed.

And fell asleep.

When I woke up the following morning?

He was in my bed.

I was naked.

I was sore.

And I knew what had happened.

He had raped me. 

There's nothing funny about that part.

Nothing I can add to soften it.

I screamed at him.

Told him to get out.

And then I did what I seem to have done after far too many traumatic things in my life.

I dealt with whatever needed dealt with next.

I got the morning-after pill.

Then I moved back to Mum and Dad's.

Again.

Except I Couldn't Just Never Go Back

My belongings were still in the house.

So I had to go back now and again to get things.

One day, a friend picked me up and we went for a drive.

When he brought me back?

The neighbour came running out.

With a machete.

My friend tried to get us away.

He put his foot down.

We hit a kerb badly and couldn't go anywhere.

I remember screaming.

Begging the neighbour to stop.

My friend ended up injuring his hand.

Charges were brought.

And then?

The neighbour was back out again.

Because apparently being terrified once wasn't enough.

We Needed Away

By this point, I didn't want another argument.

I didn't want another warning.

I wanted out.

Properly out.

My sons' dad and I planned to move to Wishaw.

A new area.

A fresh start.

Distance between us and everything that had happened.

But first, I still had to pack my things.

One day, my sister was helping me at the flat.

And somehow the neighbour climbed up onto the veranda and got into the house.

And this is where one of the darkest periods of my life somehow contains a detail so fucking ridiculous that it sounds invented.

My sister got slapped with a fish.

An actual fish.

Because apparently my life wasn't strange enough.

Meanwhile?

I had a knife held to my face.

He would also walk past Mum and Dad's shouting threats.

Even threatening my daughter.

My child.

That was it.

I needed away.

Wishaw

Eventually, we got out.

We moved.

My sons' dad and I were together again.

New house.

Fresh start.

After everything that had happened, I just wanted normal.

A family.

A home.

Children.

Ordinary problems.

No knives.

No machetes.

No wondering who was outside.

No threats.

Just life.

And it was after we'd moved that I became pregnant again.

With my youngest son.

That's important in the timeline.

At the old house, we had my daughter and my first son.

Then came the neighbour.

The obsession.

The knife to my partner.

Him leaving for his mum's.

The rape.

The machete.

The threats.

The move.

Then, once we were in the new house and trying to start again, I became pregnant with my second son.

Another Baby

And we were happy.

Genuinely happy.

After everything we'd survived, it felt like maybe this was finally our chance.

A proper fresh start.

Our family was growing.

We were away from the neighbour.

We had a new home.

Maybe now we could just settle down and be normal.

Then our youngest son arrived.

And suddenly I had three children.

My daughter.

My two boys.

And anyone who knows my youngest will probably agree he wasted absolutely no time announcing his personality to the world.

He was a handful.

The black shoe polish incident alone could probably have been its own fucking blog post.

But there was a lot of love in that house too.

My daughter adored her brothers.

They were close.

So close that even when she had her own bedroom, she'd end up sleeping in with them anyway.

Eventually it made more sense to put all three kids together and turn the spare bedroom into a toy room.

That was our family.

Messy.

Noisy.

Chaotic.

But ours.

Except the Relationship Was Changing

Their dad was still young.

Very young.

And although he'd become a father and we had all these responsibilities, becoming a dad doesn't magically age you ten years overnight.

Cars still mattered to him.

Friends mattered.

Going out mattered.

And gradually, I started feeling as though I was somewhere further down the list.

I needed a partner.

I needed somebody sharing the family responsibilities.

He still wanted parts of the life he'd had before children.

And one particular moment probably sums up where we'd reached better than anything else.

I went into labour.

At home.

Alone.

While the father of my baby was at a nightclub.

So Eventually I Started Going Out Too

After a while, I thought:

If he can have a life, why can't I?

I was Mum.

But I was still young too.

So I started going out with my friends.

Nightclubs.

Laughing.

Trying to find myself again.

And gradually our relationship moved further and further apart.

Eventually, we admitted what we'd probably both known for a while.

It was over. 

Another relationship.

Another family I'd desperately wanted to keep together.

Except this time I was walking out of it with three children and experiences I still hadn't properly processed.

I'd lost a baby.

I'd survived rape.

I'd been threatened with knives.

I'd watched somebody come at a car with a machete.

I'd moved to escape a man who had threatened my daughter.

And somehow?

I still trusted people.

I still believed in love.

And I still forgave people far too fucking easily.

Which brings me to the next relationship.

Because the next man wasn't a stranger.

He was already my friend.

And surely that had to make things safer.

Right?

Yeah.

About that.

Next: Surely a Friend Was the Safer Option?