Part 1: The dad question

The day we met

“I want a farber” said Noo with a clear strong voice as I lay holding him, trying to coax him into sleep.

“What did you say?” was my surprised response, even though I knew exactly what he meant.

“I want a farber” he repeated. “A farber!” This time it came with a shout.

“You mean a father? Why would you want one of those? Aren't I enough?” I couldn’t believe it. He’d finally spoken the words I’d been dreading for so long. Those words, and actually asking me who his father was, were the words I had long been in denial would ever come.

I couldn't believe my response either. Aren't I enough? My three and half year old son was quiet after that. He didn’t know how to respond. I lay there holding him, heart beating fast, wishing that what I heard was just a figment of my imagination or that I’d misunderstood him. That he really meant to say something else. And then he fell to sleep in my arms. My beautiful boy.

I wish I made him all by myself

This is the hardest part of my life. How to deal with this situation. I think about his father every day. Wonder where is. If he’s still alive. I hope with all my heart that he is not. I feel really anxious about writing about this person, who provided the other half of Noo's DNA. What if Noo was to come by my blog when he is older? Or his teachers or school friends or their parents find what I write? What if his dad finds what I write? But that is not such a problem. He couldn't read it anyway.

This person was not a good catch. Not the greatest of citizens. But although I could write reams on him, of what I learnt about him in the four months we knew each other, I don't want Noo to know all the bad stuff. I don't want him to ever think he may have inherited this person's bad stuff. He will have to know one day but I want to save him from it for as long as possible. A lot of what I know could be lies anyway. He was a compulsive liar. I know that much is true. And I don't want to just tell Noo the good stuff because he could then take what few pieces of information he knows and build on it to create some fantasy dad that doesn't exist. Some fantasy that he might go looking for.

The people closest to me know of his father. Only two friends met him very briefly and my sister nodded at him once. It was like that. I was an outcast at the time, if you remember from my early post. I met him at a pub in Newtown. I was whacked out on benzos after having just been kicked out of the psychiatric hospital I had spent two months in for treatment for a whole host of issues. I was very unwell. Broken. Out of it. Skating along the thin ice of rock bottom that was threatening to crack and send me further into the abyss. Completely lost.

It was the same day that I got my initials tattooed on my hand as a reminder of who I was. Well, at least what my name was. The one thing I knew was true. After the ink had been permanently etched into my skin, I went next door for a schooner of beer. It was about 11 o'clock in the morning. Grabbing a table out the front of the pub so I could smoke, I turned to my right as the person sitting at the next table said to me, "lovely morning for a beer".

He was right. It was a beautiful morning. Still summer and very hot. "It is", I replied holding my glass up in a mock cheers.

We weren't talking long before I asked him if he knew anywhere I could score. My benzo supply was running low and I knew if I didn't get something soon, I would start to feel the pain again. The flashbacks would come back with a vengeance...




Ok, I'm going to leave it there for now. This is a really hard part of my story to tell. I'm buggered and still kind of anxious because of these new meds I'm taking which I'm actually thinking about stopping. I will write more over the next couple of days.

Good night.

V.

UPDATE: For part 2 in "The dad question" click here.