The One Who Made Me a Mum

If I'm going to tell this story properly, then I have to start with the first serious relationship.

The one that gave me the best title I've ever had.

Mum.

I was eighteen.

Which obviously meant I knew absolutely everything about life.

Because don't we all at eighteen?

I met a guy.

We fell in love.

Or at least, we fell into what I understood love to be at that age.

I was young.

He was young.

And at that age you don't necessarily think about where a relationship is going in ten years.

You think about right now.

How somebody makes you feel.

Whether you want to see them again tomorrow.

Whether they're the person you want beside you.

And for a while, that was us.

Then we had a baby.

Becoming Mum

I was twenty when my oldest daughter was born.

And from the moment she arrived, I loved her.

Completely.

Whatever happened between me and her dad afterwards, she was the good thing that came from that relationship.

The best thing.

I was Mum now.

And once you become Mum, everything changes.

Suddenly this tiny person exists who depends entirely on you.

You're responsible for feeding them.

Keeping them safe.

Comforting them.

Loving them.

Somehow knowing what the fuck you're doing despite the fact nobody hands you an instruction manual when they give you the baby.

You just get on with it.

And that's what I did.

Unfortunately, the relationship with her dad wasn't working.

Eventually things became difficult enough that I packed up my daughter and went back to the one place that would become my safety net more times than I could ever have imagined.

Mum and Dad's.

Back home.

Starting again.

Leaving Him Didn't Mean He Stopped Being Her Dad

At least, that was what I thought.

The relationship between me and him might have ended, but we still had a daughter together.

I wasn't expecting him to stop being her dad just because I wasn't his girlfriend anymore.

Apparently, though, leaving me seemed to mean leaving responsibility behind too.

There was no real financial support.

Very little responsibility.

And worst of all?

Very little of his time.

That was the part I struggled with most.

Money matters, obviously.

Children cost money.

But a child also needs somebody to turn up.

And there is one memory from those years that has never left me.

The Window

I can still see my daughter sitting at her gran and granda's window on a Sunday.

Waiting.

Her dad was supposed to be coming.

So she sat there looking out for him.

Because when you're little and somebody tells you Daddy is coming, you believe them.

Why wouldn't you?

So she waited.

And waited.

And he didn't turn up.

Again.

You can disappoint me.

I'm an adult.

I'll get angry.

I'll swear.

I'll cry.

I'll eventually get over it.

But watching your child sitting at a window waiting for somebody who doesn't come?

That's different.

Because there's nothing you can do with that hurt.

You can't fix it.

You can't make the person appear.

And then you're the one left trying to explain something you don't understand yourself.

What are you supposed to say?

Daddy forgot?

Daddy was busy?

Daddy changed his mind?

How do you explain to a little girl why her dad hasn't turned up when you don't really understand why either?

You don't want to make excuses for him.

But you don't want to hurt her more.

So you stand there trying to find the least painful version of the truth.

And I hated it.

Sometimes He Did Turn Up

There were times he made an effort.

Of course there were.

Life is rarely completely one thing.

Family parties were useful.

Then he could arrive with his daughter and show her off.

Proud dad.

Look at my beautiful girl.

And she was beautiful.

She deserved to be shown off.

But what she deserved even more was somebody who showed up on the boring Sundays too.

Not just when there was an audience.

Not just when being Dad was convenient.

Then Circumstances Changed

Later, things changed in his own life.

There were times when he didn't have his other children around him.

And suddenly there seemed to be more interest in mine.

But by then, she wasn't the little girl waiting at the window anymore.

She was growing up.

She had memories.

Feelings.

Opinions.

Eventually she became a teenager.

Then a young mum herself.

And somehow, even as she grew older, there were still times when everything seemed to revolve around what he wanted or needed.

And for years, I wondered whether I'd done something wrong.

Maybe If I Tried Harder...

I think that question followed me into more relationships than I realised.

What did I do wrong?

Maybe if I tried harder.

Maybe if I understood somebody more.

Maybe if I forgave one more time.

Maybe if I worried about everybody else's feelings before my own.

Maybe if I was more patient.

More understanding.

Less angry.

Less demanding.

Maybe eventually everything would work out.

That thought became incredibly familiar to me.

It would follow me through friendships.

Relationships.

Marriage.

Family fallouts.

More second chances than any one woman should probably hand out.

Spoiler alert:

It fucking didn't.

But I didn't know that yet.

At this point, I was just a young mum living back with her parents, trying to raise her daughter and work out what the hell came next.

And eventually?

Something quite good happened.

I started remembering who I was.

There Was Still a Person Underneath Mum

Before babies and relationships and responsibilities took over everything, I'd always loved cars.

That came from Dad.

Cars.

Motorbikes.

Anything with an engine, basically.

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

And once I was back at Mum and Dad's, I gradually started going again.

Sunday nights.

Cars.

Cruises.

Friends.

New people.

Sometimes my daughter even came along with me.

I was still Mum.

Always.

But I was starting to remember that being Mum didn't mean the rest of me had disappeared.

I was still somebody's daughter.

A friend.

A woman who liked going out.

A woman who loved cars.

A woman who could laugh.

A woman who could meet new people.

I was still me.

And after everything with my daughter's dad, that felt important.

I wasn't sitting at that window anymore.

I wasn't waiting for somebody else to decide whether they were going to show up.

I was starting to get out again.

To live.

To find bits of myself I'd forgotten were there.

And naturally, because apparently my life has never been particularly interested in giving me long periods of peace and quiet...

that's where I met the next one.

My sons' dad.

He was younger than me.

Only eighteen.

We'd meet through the car scene.

We'd become practically inseparable.

We'd split up.

I'd discover I was pregnant.

Then I'd discover it was twins.

And before he even knew I was carrying his babies...

I'd lose one of them.

But that's the next part of the story.

Next: Strathy, an 18-Year-Old Boy and the Pregnancy Nobody Knew About.