Escaping Daddy. Maria Landon
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walker. Even though I loved my baby, Brendan, more than anything or anyone I often found the pain of living too much to bear.
Apart from Brendan I had no family to turn to for comfort as the empty hours ticked by in that lonely little flat. Mum was living locally and I could telephone her whenever I wanted but she might as well have been at the other end of the country for all the help she was able to give me. I used to go to see her once a week for a few months after Brendan was born but her new partner had made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with her children from the past so I could only visit when he was out at work. When she saw me struggling to cope it must have brought back memories of how she had been at my age, when she was weighed down with kids that she hardly knew how to look after, and constantly bullied by the man who was supposed to be the love of her life. It’s easy to see why she might want to shut out anything that reminded her of those times, and that perhaps made her feel guilty for the way in which she had abandoned her children. Whatever the reasons, I knew I was on my own with my problems.
The people at social services did their best to help me in every way they could, which meant we wouldn’t starve and we had a roof over our heads, but I was desperate to do better than that for my precious child. I couldn’t bear the thought that I could do no more than keep him alive. But what could I ever do to earn money? Dad had completely convinced me that I was no use to anyone and had ensured that I had no education or skills apart from street walking. The only thing I knew about was working on the Block, but returning to that option seemed too terrible to contemplate. I knew that I was lucky to have survived for as long as I had selling casual sex to strangers in cars. I dreaded the thought of being forced to go back to taking such enormous risks, but Dad had told me a million times that that was all I was good for, and in the increasingly frequent number of moments of self doubt I believed he was right.
Most children are lucky enough to have wise and kind guides to help them find their paths through life, mentors who have their best interests at heart and want to see them be happy and want to help them to thrive and succeed at whatever they choose to do. But what happens if the people you are forced to rely on for guidance at the very beginning of your life are not wise or kind? What if they are quite the opposite and do everything they can to tempt and force you down the wrong paths in life, being more interested in themselves and the gratification of their own desires?
No one can spend their whole lives blaming their parents for everything that goes wrong in their lives; after a while it comes down to the choices you make for yourself as an adult and you have to take responsibility for them, but how good or bad those choices are will very largely be determined by the foundations that have been laid in the early years of your life. I might have been eighteen years old when I had Brendan, but I still felt as completely lost as I had been at eight when I was forced to lie down beside Dad with those magazines and at thirteen when I sat in the cars of strangers and they did whatever they wanted to me.
One night when I was drowning in unpaid bills and utterly desperate for money, I left Brendan with a babysitter and went out onto the streets in search of motorists looking for business. The despair I felt as I climbed into those strangers’ cars was the deepest and darkest I had ever experienced. I didn’t ever want to go back to being that desperate. I only did it a couple of times but afterwards I sank into the blackest of depressions and decided I would rather end it all and let someone more responsible than me take over bringing up Brendan.
Since I was twelve or thirteen I had been cutting my arms with knives and any other sharp implement I could get my hands on. I just wanted to hurt myself because I thought I was so worthless I didn’t deserve to be treated any better, to punish myself for being such a terrible person. I suppose it also gave me some kind of control over my body in ways that I didn’t have otherwise. When the blood flowed, I always felt a sense of release, however momentary.
I started seriously trying to kill myself when I was about fourteen. The first time, I saved up paracetamol tablets by telling different people in the care home I was in that I had a headache or period pains and then swallowed them all one night but I was found and rushed to A & E to have my stomach pumped. I tried again not long afterwards but the same thing happened.
Whenever I was actually putting the tablets in my mouth I always intended to kill myself, but sometimes I would change my mind a few moments later. A kind of survival instinct cut in, making me panic and tell someone what I had done. They then raised the alarm and I was left with all the shame and embarrassment of having had my stomach pumped out and being given a load of lectures. With each failed attempt my self-esteem would shrink further.
Now, at the age of eighteen, I decided I had to make sure I died this time. I loved Brendan so much it hurt and I was terrified he was going to end up being damaged by whatever choices I made in life. Just looking at his perfect, innocent little face as I changed or fed him made me cry. But I had become increasingly certain I was the worst mother possible for him. He was helpless and trusted me completely but I believed that I had to let him go in order to give him a better chance in life than I had been given by my parents. I just wanted all the pain and shame to end and there only seemed to be one way to make that happen.
If I killed myself, Brendan would have a better life than I could ever give him and I would be released from my misery. I didn’t think I deserved to live. I believed I was worthless, because that was what I had always been told by Dad and virtually everyone else I came across, and I now felt that I was so useless as a mother that even Brendan would be better off without me. On the evidence of what had happened so far, I didn’t believe I was going to be capable of looking after him properly.
I didn’t want to kill myself with him in the flat since I had no idea how long it would be before anyone found my body. My first priority was to ensure that he was somewhere safe before I did the terrible deed and ended the horrible charade of my short life forever.
I always tried to hide from everyone the fact that I wasn’t coping but Doris, my social worker, had been able to see how much stress I was under beneath my seemingly cheerful, argumentative exterior. Doris had introduced me to a nice woman who worked as a foster mother and she had been doing a bit of babysitting for me, giving me a chance to get out and have a break now and then. As the darkness of my despair threatened to engulf me once and for all I took Brendan round to her house and asked if I could leave him with her for a while. She agreed immediately without asking any questions. She was a kind woman and I knew he would be in safe hands for as long as he was with her. I think perhaps I hoped that she would adopt him once I was gone, because she had already formed a bond with him.
It was agonising to say goodbye to the baby I loved more than anything in the world, to walk away from him feeling as if my insides were being physically torn from my body, but at the same time I was in a hurry now that I had made up my mind to get the whole thing over, eager to move on to a better place, or at least to be at peace, and to finally put an end to the pain. If Brendan was going to be better off being brought up by someone else I didn’t want to have to be around to watch it happening; I wouldn’t have been able to bear that. It was better that I acted quickly and decisively to end my life for everyone’s sake. He would be free to get on with his life and I would be free of the pain.
I took him from his pram on the pretext of checking he was dry and comfortable, and held him for as long as I could bear, drinking in the scent of his skin as I kissed him for the last time and passed him across to the kind foster mother who had no idea of the turmoil churning around inside my mind. I was always good at hiding what I was feeling, giving people the impression that I was on top of everything, that I didn’t have a care in the world.
After handing him into her care I left the house without looking back because I couldn’t bear to see his trusting little face watching me go, and I walked straight back to my flat. I didn’t want to think about anything else now that the final decision had been taken. It was a relief to be able to work on autopilot. The pain in my heart was so agonising I was frantic to numb it as quickly as possible.
I had been saving up paracetamol for weeks, knowing that this moment would come, that I would eventually have to admit defeat and give up Brendan and my life. Stockpiling tablets whenever the opportunity presented itself had been a habit of mine for many years. Knowing that I had them there was like knowing that there