Part 8: The dad question

I've been holding on to this part of the dad question series for ages. Now you know almost everything about The Assault, this part will make more sense. I know I've still to resolve what happened after I found that letter, but you'll just have to wait for part 7 because I'm jumping ahead!

If you are new to my blog the saga of my journey From Rock Bottom to Parenthood can be found here:

From Rock Bottom to Parenthood

And then came Noo 

“He’s got red hair!” Mum shouted.

After 39 hours of labour at 9.39am Noo was finally suctioned out of me.

I was exhausted. Traumatised. I didn't feel like I'd just had a baby. I felt so removed from what was happening.

The small red ball of flesh still attached to me via the umbilical cord was placed on my chest for the briefest of moments. My sister cut the cord and he was gone.

I vaguely remember pushing out the placenta and the midwife holding it up for me to see.

“I can't hear him”, I whisper.

“Why isn't he making any noise?” I'm seriously starting to get distressed.

My newborn son had been whisked away from me and onto a neonatal unit where there seemed to be a lot of hospital staff surrounding him, prodding him.

My mum was hovering near the crowd but for some reason wasn't answering my questions.

“What’s going on?” I begged.

And then I heard a squeak. He sounded like a baby monkey.

“3.47 kilos!” Mum announced with pride but I wondered if she understood what that meant not being in pounds. My wonderful mother, who'd just spent the last 39 hours with me, was taking photos of her first born grandchild being weighed.

My sister Yolanda was by my side. My legs were spread and shaking. A doctor was stitching me up.

“Can I hold him?” and finally my Noo was wrapped in a hospital blanket and passed to me. It was the weirdest sensation in the world. Ever.

The epidural was wearing off. My legs felt like balloons, massive and out of my control. Noo’s face was fat and squished looking. He did have the brightest red hair and the most perfect rosebud lips.

I fell in love in an instant.

It wasn't long before my dad, brother and sister in law arrived. I saw my dad’s eyes well up at the sight of his grandson. The moment was pure joy. After nearly two years of horror and worry and despair, I’d finally brought some happiness to my family.

Lots of photos were taken as Noo was passed around the room. Finally everyone left, except for my parents, who held Noo as I showered and cleaned myself up.

Still with a catheter attached I tried to clean my body which didn’t feel like it was mine. I felt brutalised. Quietly in that shower room I felt a sense of disgust at what I'd just experienced. Still affected by the painkillers the doctors had given me I couldn't fully cognate my emotions.

I was given the option to either walk or be pushed in a wheelchair up to the maternity ward. Walk? Yeah, right! I gladly took the chair.

I sat down and winced. The pain was excruciating. It rocketed me back to the last time I couldn't sit down without pain. I shook the flashback off and looked down at my beautiful little boy.

My parents left after settling me into my private room and Noo and I were alone. I didn't know what to do. Hospital staff came and went. I was overwhelmed by the number of people who needed to look at Noo, to check one thing or another.

Midwives came to show me how to breastfeed. It was horrible. Noo wouldn't latch on. A midwife hand expressed some colostrum from me into a cup and we syringed it into Noo’s mouth. There was nothing nice about it. I felt like a failed farm animal.

At one stage a midwife told me about water filled frozen condoms in the freezer of the shared kitchen. I was told to put one in the maternity pad I was wearing so it could help numb the area. It felt pretty gross but did the job nonetheless.

In between going to the toilet to change pads and attempting to feed my new baby, I just looked at him with wonder. At the perfection of his face. I thought he could possibly be the best looking baby ever to have been born (doesn't every mother?).

Friends and family visited but essentially I was alone with my son. Day three was Christmas Eve and the baby blues kicked in. I couldn't stop crying. Midwives asked me if I was ok. It was the most bizarre emotion. I felt terrible but it kind of felt like a relief to cry. I felt like I was crying for everything bad that had ever happened to me but at the same time the tears were euphoric with the love I felt for my baby.

I wanted to be left alone for more than five minutes to cry and cry and cry but still people came. Midwives, doctors, social workers, psych consults.

My sister arrived. I burst into tears again. "It's just the baby blues", I assured her. She suggested staying the night seeing it was Christmas Eve and there was no father to share this moment with me.

A chant in the distant regions of my mind started to become louder and louder:

A square peg in a round hole.

A square peg in a round hole.

A square peg in a round hole.

I'd been saying it over and over during the birth but was only just able to hear it.

I cried some more as I made the realisation that my body and subconscious had connected what was supposed to be one of the most glorious experiences of my life with the worst experience of my life: the night I was raped.

It is why I felt brutalised, why I hated giving birth. I should have had a caesarean section rather than pushing through 30 hours of pre- and nine hours of active labour of a posterior positioned baby.

The juxtaposition of emotions made me feel so out of kilter. Having my son is the best thing that has ever happened to me but I seriously do not wish to go through labour like that ever again. The next baby, if there is one, will be planned. From the beginning through to the end.

Despite everything the fiercely intense love I felt (and still do feel) for this newborn being was not lessened by the trauma of his birth.

I love you my beautiful boy Noo.


V.

Linking up with the #IBOT crew at Essentially Jess.

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The dad question: Part 6

The first five parts of The dad question can be found here:

Part 1: The day we met
Part 2: A new addiction
Part 3: Walking into the abyss
Part 4: The opposite of rehab
Part 5: Together alone

_________________

More questions than answers

"Don't ever come to Newtown. It is my territory. If you come to Newtown, I will hunt you down and hurt you."

It was a threat, pure and simple.

The look he gave me was filled with hate. He was hissing at me from the front door of the two bedroom apartment I'd rented a little further south-west from where we'd been living with junkies and dropouts.

I'd finally had enough of him. For the two or three weeks since I'd moved into my new place, he'd been hanging around. I let him stay because I was trying to recoup some of the thousands of dollars I'd lent him. But now I was over it and I just wanted him to piss off. I needed to start my new life with Noo alone.

The love was gone. Whatever attraction or feelings I felt for this man had been vomited up over 14 long weeks of morning sickness. By the fifteenth week of my pregnancy I snapped out of the delusional fantasy that I could have some sort of a relationship with the father of my child. I was sober and clear headed and wanted to get busy preparing for the arrival of my baby on my own.

When I stopped giving him money he stopped spending time with me or showing any interest in my unborn child. I had a feeling that he was sleeping with his ex again, that he was making her promises that didn’t involve me. I was actually OK with that because it let me off the hook and gave me a reason to break up with him. I didn't want him in my new home using me for a place to sleep. I felt used enough already and I couldn't stand the lies and the bullshit any more.

I kept asking him to leave but he just wouldn't go. I never gave him a key but he'd turn up on my doorstep night after night. And then he got really sick with abscesses under two teeth. I was so disgusted but felt sorry for him at the same time.

Taking him to the hospital emergency room at 3 am to get painkillers I was so embarrassed when the doctor took one look in his mouth and showed shock at his dental hygiene, or lack of it. “How did I, a middle class, private school educated woman, end up with a dope with half his teeth in head either missing or rotten?”, the snob in me silently screamed.

While he slept on in my bed, I spent the next morning calling around dentists and the public dental hospital trying to find out what he could do about his mouth. When he finally woke up, he chugged back a couple of cones in what was to be the nursery, and left to go to the appointment I had made for him at the dental hospital.

What the fuck was I doing helping him like that? I felt like a sucker, a fool.

Later that night we fought. I was frightened. By the time he'd finally returned from the dental hospital he'd been drinking all afternoon, god knows where. I saw the violence and anger in his swollen and distorted face and I was scared for myself and my little Noo kicking away inside of me. I kept asking him to leave but still he argued on. He had nowhere else to go, I knew that, but I didn't care. I just wanted him, his grog and his bong out of my life.

With one arm cradling my belly, the other holding my mobile with Triple Zero already dialled I told him one last time:

"Get the fuck out of my place and never come back! I'm calling the police".

The fear that rippled across his face was palpable. He picked up his long neck of beer and ran for the door. And that's when he looked me square in the eye and threatened me.

It was the last time I would ever see him.

Two police officers showed up at around 11 that night. I told them what had happened and that I feared for my safety. As requested I gave them his full name and date of birth. Not long after they'd left my apartment the officer called me and said the details I’d given him had showed up a criminal record "as long as your arm". The man I'd been sharing my life with for going on five months had several warrants out for his arrest in two states.

I was shocked and I was frightened. Who was this person and what had he done? A judge was called in the middle of the night and an interim AVO (apprehended violence order) was put in place until I could get a court date.

Sleep was difficult that night. The adrenaline pumping through my veins and the unanswered questions rolling around in my mind kept me up into the small hours. I must have fallen asleep at some stage, waking when the sun came up with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I attempted breakfast only to vomit it all up again. I paced my apartment, trying to come to terms with what had happened the night before, with what I had learnt from the police. I knew he’d been to prison but I thought that was in his past. If he’d lied to me about that what else had he lied to me about? Doubt flooded me.

The anxiety was building up like a pressure cooker inside me until finally I burst into tears sobbing huge great big sobs. I cried because it was really over. That intense passion and love I thought I felt for him when we were first together was gone and I was mourning that loss. Little Noo growing inside me was going to grow up without a father in his life. I somehow knew, even then, that we wouldn't see him again. Calling the police had made sure of that. I probably should have felt more upset for Noo but I knew that I’d be able to give him a better life without his dad than if he was around.

Curiosity was killing me. Who was this man who fathered my child? What had he done? The night before I’d told him to arrange for a friend to come and collect his stuff. I didn't want him returning anywhere near the building. I got a call from him later that day saying a mate would come back tomorrow afternoon. I was to pack up his stuff and leave it all out by my front door.

He had barely any possessions. Some clothes, a doona, a glass bong (which he’d stolen from the previous house), old towels, some photos of his kids, a pillow. There were also some papers and drawings. I carefully went through everything and packed it up in his bag. That’s when I found the letter. It was the only tangible evidence that I had of his identity. He didn't have a driver’s license because he couldn't read to learn the road rules and take the test. He didn't have a Medicare card or credit cards or any of the other identifying bits of plastic most people carry around with them. I realised then he was a ghost, only using cash to make himself untraceable.

The letter I found explained why. 


_________________


That is it for now but of course there is more to come.

As usual, thanks for reading.


V.

Linking up with the #IBOT crew at Essentially Jess.

Part 5: The dad question

The first four parts of The dad question can be found here:

Part 1: The day we met
Part 2: A new addiction
Part 3: Walking into the abyss
Part 4: The opposite of rehab

_________________

Together alone

The couple in the back ran the joint. They collected everyone's rent and paid the landlady who would call by once a week. They dealt small amounts of pot which guaranteed a steady stream of weirdos making their way up the hall and past our room, through the lounge room and to their bedroom via the yard at all hours of the day and night. They didn't like him because he was unreliable with the rent and I guess they knew stuff about him that I didn't. He was rude to them and constantly started arguments. They liked me though because when I moved in I always paid the rent on time.

Living off disability pensions, both of them made weekly trips to the nearest methadone clinic which was a bus ride away. In their forties and in bad health it amazed me how they survived. He had no teeth and an incredibly strange pallor to his skin. She was always doubled over with cramps. They did heroin when they could afford it which freaked me out completely. They obsessed over the tiniest issues with the house. There was always some reason to have a go at us or any of the people that lived there: The rent, the garbage, recycling, the kitchen, the lights being left on.

Sharing a tiny sun room off the lounge room were two teenage boys. They were skaters and deviants but sweet and harmless. I liked these kids the best. I felt hope for them. One had completed his HSC and said he was just having a year off to bum around on the dole before going to uni. I could tell he was smart and he was still in contact with his family. The boys would deal a little LSD on the side to make some extra cash. They would do anything to get high: inhale nitrous bulbs, sniff paint. Anything. This also freaked me out. It felt so desperate and dangerous.

Opposite our room lived a single man in his forties or possibly fifties. He worked a regular job at a local supermarket stacking shelves. I had respect for him because he worked and paid tax. He was an ex crim and a functioning alcoholic but he was trying to make his own way in life.

On the other side of our room was another couple. They had the nicest and largest room in the house. Ex junkies as well, the woman also had no teeth when I first arrived to the house. She was waiting for her new Medicare provided dentures. She was thin, with long hair down to her waist, also in her forties. Apparently she was a stunner before heroin stole her looks. She also made regular trips to the methadone clinic and smoked bongs all day but was strict with herself and her partner when it came to booze. No grog til after 5pm. She was a massive INXS fan and when her partner was at work as a painter she played Michael Hutchence and co at full bore. She was fastidiously clean and tidy and was the only one who cleaned the two bathrooms and the kitchen.

Her boyfriend worked when he could. When he wasn't working he was at the house smoking weed and sneaking drinks with my partner who was still enjoying a steady supply of beer and cans of Jim Beam and Coke provided by me. This bloke was a huge Star Wars fan and had a replica light sabre that he would prance around the hallway with as if he was Skywalker himself battling an imaginary Vader. Around the same age as his partner, but short, with a beautiful Japanese koi tattooed on his right arm, he often came to blows with us over silly things. Or should I say, come to blows with him.

The final tenant lived in the other front room. He was a man in his twenties. He lived like a pig. He had a funny little Jack Russell which, when I arrived at the house, was pregnant. The dog lumbered around looking half stoned thanks to the thick cloud laden with THC that permeated the air in the house. Finally giving birth to about four pups we discovered she'd been having it off with a red Pomeranian. The puppies were gorgeous and, in my secret pregnant state, I fell in love with them.

This bloke, when I said he lived like a pig, I was not exaggerating. He worked in a record shop during the day and while away the women of the house would care for the puppies. At night he let the Jack Russell and her pups sleep, eat, pee and shit in his room. Anywhere in his room. It was fucking disgusting. That room was like one big dog pen that was rarely cleaned out. That guy didn't even shower regularly and his feet stunk like they had some sort of fungal disease. I would retch every time the smell would drift up the hall.

Arguments amongst the house's residents could be easily sparked when everyone had been drinking. Especially on dole day because the inmates were flush. He was often at the centre of the blues that could rage for hours. Voices were raised and violent threats were made but it never came to blows. The others knew he could kill them if he wanted to so no one was ever brave enough to throw the first punch. For some reason he never actually hit anyone but it always felt close.

The house was like a little micro society in itself. Every little thing that happened seemed important because there was not much else going on in our lives. Us three women who lived there didn't leave often. The men came and went. We all kept to our rooms, especially at night. He and I sometimes sat in the lounge room for a change of scenery when we were off our trolley before I fell pregnant but other than that the skaters were the only ones who used that space. Oh, and the Poppy Seed Man, but I'll come to him in a minute.

There was a couch and a lounge chair and an ancient TV that I remember watching reruns of Godzilla on while tripping off my brain. The walls were covered in old band posters, bits and pieces past tenants had pinned up, and graffiti. There was a mannequin dressed in black lace in one corner and an old wall unit filled with pantry goods that had been obtained from the local Salvos. I hated walking through there in the dark on my endless trips to the toilet during that first trimester.

By mid year there was a homeless guy sleeping on the couch - it was too cold for him to sleep in one the caravans in the yard. Cockies scuttled across the split lino floor as I tiptoed out the back to the loo, desperately trying not to wake the transient artist who had passed out after consuming yet another pot of tea he'd brewed from poppy seeds. Yes, poppy seeds.

(I've actually seen Poppy Seed Man recently at our local shopping centre. Total freak out. He's the only person from that time that I've seen in over four years. Guess what he was doing when I saw him? Buying a single bag of poppy seeds from Bi-Lo.)

When it came time for my 12 week scan I was in cautious contact with my family and some friends. A girlfriend came with me to the private clinic and all looked good on the screen. We left and went for a coffee. I got a call from clinic not long after asking me to come back. I'd left before getting my results. I told my friend I'd be ok, everything would be fine so she should go get on with her day. When I returned to the clinic I was called into the doctor's room and told that the baby's nuchal fold was a little longer than normal and they wanted to do a CVS test immediately.

I didn't give myself any time to think about it and agreed to the test. On my own, holding a nurse's hand, the doctor then inserted a massive needle into my uterus to extract some fluid to test. It was scary and painful and I held my breath as I realised my escape from rock bottom could be whisked away from me.

I remember walking away from the medical centre and vomiting in a garden on the way to the bus stop. The chances of a Downs Syndrome child were still slim but not remote enough to not risk a miscarriage by putting a needle in my guts. I was supposed to be in a relationship with the father of this child growing inside me but I was alone and had no one to feel this pain with me. No real partner to hold my hand and tell me it will be ok, if there's anything wrong, we'll just try again.

The next ten days as I waited for the results were the longest ten days of my life. I was starting to see sense in my situation. I was seeing the man I was sharing my bed with for what he was: An addict who was never going to get sober, never going to get a job to help provide for me and my child, a man who didn't really love me but was living off me while he waited for his ex and mother of his other children to take him back.

When it was time to make the call to the pathology centre for my results, I sat alone in the room that had been my home, my prison, my sick bed. I gave my details to the woman who answered the phone. Without having to wait a moment longer she told me everything was fine. There were no chromosomal abnormalities with my baby. The anonymous woman on the end of the phone asked me if I wanted to know what sex the baby was, I immediately said no because he had told me he didn't want to know. I hung up the phone and sat quietly with the knowledge that my baby was OK.

My baby.

My mind flashed through with what I'd learnt of its father over the previous four months and made projections of what kind of person he would be into the future. I picked up the phone, pressed redial, gave my details again and said I'd like to know what the baby's gender was.

"You're having a boy".

I started crying then. With pure joy and happiness. It was all real for the first time. After three months of vomiting, pissing dozens of times a day, doctor's appointments alone, hours spent in the ER with a drip inserted in my arm to rehydrate me, and lying around going over and over in my head questioning if I could possibly stand another minute of this pregnancy, another day, another month...

Sitting alone in that room I named him Noo.

And I wasn't alone any more.

Mid October 2008, six weeks before Noo was born

I took stock of where I was and I made the decision I had to get out of that house. We had to get out of that house. I needed to feel clean and smoke free and back in control of my life and my surroundings. I had to get back to my world. I had to do it for us.

While that seedy little house provided shelter when I needed it, it was now time to leave.



_________________

Sometimes when I think about that period of my life I've described above, it doesn't seem real, or like it happened to me at all. I don't feel bad about it. Not at all. What I do feel is lucky. Lucky to have made Noo, lucky to have my family, lucky to have the support of my employer to give me time to work shit out even though it has taken years. Lucky to have a team of medical professionals over the years that have helped me get to this place I am now.

Noo and me today

Most of all I feel lucky that I gave myself a chance to wipe the slate clean. To start again and begin a new life. It has been a hard road but worth every battle won, every backwards step, every struggle with self doubt, just to look in my beautiful son's eyes and know I love him and he loves me and together we are going to be just fine.


Thanks again for reading.

V.

Part 4: The dad question

I've been avoiding writing the final part to this story for months now. I have to get inside my head and find those memories and feel, smell, breathe them so I can convey the tale to you accurately. I'm coming to the end of the story that forms the bridge between my old life and my new. I don't want to fuck up a detail and it is turning out to be a longer story than I first remembered. I'll have to break it up over a couple of posts.

Make sure you read the first three parts before you get stuck in here so it all makes sense:

Part 1: The day we met
Part 2: A new addiction
Part 3: Walking into the abyss


_________________

The opposite of rehab

The cab I ordered from the hospital took us straight back to his share house in the Inner West of Sydney. The house was on the corner of a busy road and a tree-lined avenue that lead up to the main street. All six bedrooms were occupied and there were two dilapidated caravans in the yard that sometimes housed random transients.

It was one of those old single story inner city homes that had had any trace of garden ripped out and replaced with concrete. The front door was never locked because there was always someone home and people were constantly coming and going. It was always dark inside to keep the power bills down because of the nine regular residents, only three had legit jobs.

The smell emanating from the joint was of weed, nicotine and damp. You could smell it from the footpath out the front of the house despite the constant stream of heavy vehicles which passed throughout the day. Every single one of the people who resided there smoked both marijuana and tobacco which bellowed out of the house like rotten dragon's breath. They each had a host of other drug and alcohol issues to their names as well. This was the only thing I had in common with them.

This house was the opposite of rehab, the place I had just escaped from: it was where people who didn't want to recover or couldn't afford to recover went to eke out the best life they could while maintaining their addictions. I could have gone back to the room I was paying extortionate rent for in the next suburb, but I felt comfortable and oddly safe here amongst society's dropouts.

His room was the second on the right. It was smallish, about three metres by four or five. He had an old wardrobe in the corner where the few clothes he owned were piled. Also, sitting on an upturned milk crate, was an outdated rear projection TV, alongside a kid's motorcycle, a chair and finally a single mattress made of foam laying directly on the linoleum floor.

I dumped the belongings I had taken with me to rehab on the floor: some clothes, toiletries and my doona, pillow and ugg boots which came with me every time I entered a psychiatric facility. No one should do rehab with hospital issued bed linen!

Before I even sat down we were on the phone hunting out drugs. I had to get wasted; as fucked up as I possibly could without dying, although that probably wouldn't have bothered me either as long as I got to enjoy myself and go out with a bang. I just needed something to shut out the voice of reason. The voice of anger. The voice of despair and worthlessness. The echo of the argument I'd had with my father only hours before.

And so began a three week orgy of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Back in London, in my cocaine snorting days, I'd always had the delusional fantasy that I was bit of a rock chick, cool with my constant supply of Charlie and ability to consume vast amounts of alcohol. Now though, spending nearly all of my time with this person on a foam mattress on the floor, off our heads for all our waking moments I felt like Sid and Nancy or Kurt and Courtney: So rock. So cool. So fucked up. But with a couple of glass pipes (one for smoking weed, one for meth) instead of a needle.

The only reason I didn't completely lose my head was a handy supply of Seroquel, an antipsychotic medication that when taken after consuming amphetamines will help bring you down and let you sleep. It also prevented any of the usual come downs I was used to in the past. It made having a three week binge possible.

The other factor allowing us to go on the ultimate bender of avoidance was my UK credit card which I'd paid off with an Aussie personal loan when I first arrived back home. In my "I don't give a fuck about anything" mind frame I just kept withdrawing cash off it. This, in retrospect, was why I think this man who would provide the seed that created my son, hung around for so long: I was buying him drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, paying his rent and feeding him. I even bought him some clothes and a pair of shoes in the short time we knew each other.

We hardly ever left the house. Actually, I hardly ever left the house. In my position as money provider I had all the power in the relationship and I used it to send him on trips for drugs, food and other supplies. I even gave him my pin numbers to get money out of my accounts from the ATM because I just couldn't be bothered to go anywhere.

I occasionally went up the road to the shops. Eventually I got all my stuff from my room in the boarding house and ended my rental agreement with the agent. While I was there I discovered that he had taken money from one of the students that lived in a neighbouring room with the promise to score pot for him. He'd never got the pot or returned the $50. I repaid the debt. Something I had to do on numerous occasions.

About two to three weeks from the day I left the hospital and arrived at the house I knew something was up with me. My last period had been strange: late and it stopped and started. I figured this was because of all the drugs I'd been taking. When it was late again, I thought I might be pregnant but I doubted it. Was my body even capable of such a task? I really thought it was probably the same situation as the month before.

I went to the chemist to get a test seriously thinking I was wasting another $20 bucks or whatever they cost at the time. I did the test as soon as we got back to the house and there were the two purple lines. I was pregnant and everything changed. Strangely enough it was almost one year to the day since I was raped in London, the almost catastrophic event that sent me skidding into the abyss in the first place.

When I showed Noo's father the testing stick he was shocked. The look on his face told me exactly what he thought and it wasn't positive. He actually looked scared.

Even though I'd only known him a short time, he'd already told me he loved me. He told me all the time that I was beautiful, that he was in love with me, that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. We spent all our time together in our room in that house, except when he was on missions for supplies or when on the weekend he would see his kids.

He spent one day every single weekend with two of his children and he loved them very much. Although he talked to me about them in great detail, I won't write about them or their mother because I don't feel that is my right. All I'll say is he was estranged from their mother. I found out she had an AVO (Apprehended Violence Order) taken out against him and he wasn't supposed to go anywhere near her or the kids but they had an agreement he could see them one day a week because she had to work.

He and I had spent so much time talking and getting to know one another that a sort of bond had formed - for me anyway - but I hadn't returned the 'I love you' until that moment I showed him the pregnancy test. All that desperation, helplessness, uselessness I had felt for so long started to lift almost immediately. This wasn't going to be just another day to get high and avoid the reality of my life.

Morning sickness kicked in around three days after I found out I was pregnant. At first I was just a little nauseous but that could have been because I'd completely stopped all forms of illicit drugs, alcohol and cigarettes and my body was in shock. By the second week I was vomiting from 3am through to 5pm every single day and continued to do so until week 14.

Still not speaking to my family or friends I had to think about how I was going to manage my recovery and the pregnancy on my own. There was no way he was going to get sober with me, although I talked about it with him constantly. I was pretty naive and somehow thought that we would work this out together. I'd convinced myself that I did love him, despite the fact that we had nothing in common but a love for being wasted.

His mother was 16 when she had him and he'd been mostly raised by this grandparents who were Ten Pound Poms that came out to Australia in the late 60s. He somehow made it through the school system without learning to read or write. He told me he had excelled at all sports and that was how he scraped through.

His grandfather, a tradesman, took him on as an employee at age 15 and I'm guessing because he was illiterate he wouldn't have had any official trade certificate. In retrospect I guess he got through life with charm, wit, violence and a pathological ability to lie on his feet.

I heard him on the phone to his ex partner all the time lying through his teeth with ease. He was enormously paranoid of her coming around to the house and finding me there, which she never did. He was also overly concerned about any police attention the house might attract. I never understood either because, as far as I knew, they were broken up and, except for breaking the conditions of her AVO against him, the police should have no reason to want him.

As time wore on and I sobered up I became more and more incapacitated by the pregnancy. Vomiting all day had made me extremely dehydrated and couldn't even keep my antidepressants down. I saw our family doctor who was unimpressed with my state and told me he was very sad that I was pregnant. My doctor's connection with my parents was too strong so I opted to change GPs to keep them out it.

As the news I was pregnant made it around my family and old friends the reaction was negative to say the least. How could I possibly care for another human being if I couldn't care for myself? Good question. I had to somehow prove that I could do it. I had to clean up my life.

When I first laid eyes on the screen of the ultrasound equipment reality kicked in as the tiny little blob kicked around for us to see. It was just a little white foetus on a black background but it was moving its tiny little legs furiously and looked full of life. He came with me to that first exam. He showed some interest but he'd done this all before. Several times before.

Weeks turned into months and we were still living in that one room in a house full of misfits. I'd gotten one of those 24 month interest free loans from a furniture store and bought us a queen sized bed, chest of draws, HD TV and TV stand.

I spent day after day in bed vomiting into my red garbage bin. I was given that bin for my 14th birthday (yeah, go figure!).  It had somehow survived all my moves to and from Melbourne, been stored by my dad while I was living in London and made its way back to me when I moved to the boarding house. I love that bin.

My 24 year old red bin today. We've been through a lot together.

I would start every morning retching, head bowed over the rim of that fair dinkum Aussie made red plastic garbage bin, early before anyone else in the house was awake. He was always worried the other tenants would figure out what was going on and constantly told me to keep it down. He didn't want anyone to figure out I was pregnant, but they didn't clue on as far as I know. He told me he didn't want his ex to find out on the grapevine, or in retrospect, he didn't want her to find out at all.

During the day I would get him to clean out the bin of its watery contents. I was obsessed that it would make it back to our room. Anything left outside was fair game for anyone to take. I trusted no one in that house. Not even with my old red bin.


_________________


That is enough for now. Part 5 is written. I'll post it later in the week.


Thanks for reading.

V.

Part 3: The dad question

This is the follow on story about when I met my son's father and how my beautiful boy came to be. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

Walking into the abyss

"He's been in prison."

I said it as casually as anything as I looked around the large dining room that was slowly filling with patients carrying trays of food, trying to find somewhere to sit. I had been back in rehab for about a week. Mum was visiting.

Averting my eyes from my mother, I took in the faces of the other patients and tried to size each one of them up, work out their story. It was easy to tell which wards people came from after you'd been an inpatient for so long and on so many occasions. The younger, louder group sitting by the window and closest to the exit were the drug and alcohol patients. They, or should I say we, ate quickly so we could escape to the garden to smoke. Smoking was the only real vice we had left. Oh and chocolate. I consumed both in abundance during my rehab stays.

This ashtray full of filthy cigs is basically what my life was like.
Photo borrowed from here.

The women quietly chatting on the other side of the room were obviously from the post natal depression unit. They pushed crying babies back and forth in their prams while trying to eat the tasteless cafeteria style food with their free hand. There was so much sadness in their tired eyes when they first came to the hospital. Sadness and desperation. I would later come to stay in that ward too, with Noo. The difference with the PND ward is a sense of hope, knowing that what we were suffering with our young bubs was temporary - it had to be. Not like the druggies and alcos. They - we - have to battle our addiction demons for life.

The other patients, chatting with each other or eating alone, were the chronically depressed or anxious or both; the self-harming borderline personality disorder girls, older patients with seemingly incurable melancholia, bipolar suffers admitted for ECT. They came from all walks of life. All ages, backgrounds, gender. Mental health issues are indiscriminate.

I looked back at mum. She didn't know what to say. I knew, she knew, I said what I said to hurt. To make them worry about me. To make them see what they'd pushed me away to.

"Oh, yeah and he's got five kids from three different women."

Ner, ner, so there! I'm really fucking up now, aren't I mum? Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

"What are you doing, Vanessa?" asked mum without emotion. She was trying not to show that my campaign of hurt was working.

"Nothing, mum. I really like him. He's coming to the family day and I want you and dad to come as well and meet him".

"Oh. Right. Ok, well I'll have to speak to your father", was mum's non committal reply. And she left.

I knew I'd been a bitch. I felt bad. But mostly I was angry. So fucking angry. Angry at them, my parents. I wanted to hurt them.

When I got kicked out of the previous psychiatric hospital and mum said I couldn't come home, I was so pissed off. I felt so abandoned, so lonely and vulnerable. My own parents couldn't deal with who I was: the damaged, drug addicted rape victim who'd fucked up her life. If the people who made me and nurtured me couldn't love me, how the fuck was I going to love myself? To give a shit? I wanted to wash my hands of myself just like I felt they were trying to wash their hands of me.

I couldn't get away from myself. Being in rehab they make you stop running. They make you take a good hard look at yourself so you can see who it is really there looking back at you in the mirror. I didn't like what I saw. Not one little bit.

The next morning, a Friday, actually Friday the 4th of April 2008, my dad called me in my room back in the D&A ward. He said in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing to do with this person who I'd been spending my time with and that he and my mother wanted me to stop seeing him immediately. I was to not tell this person anything about our family - where we lived, what their names were, where my dad worked.

I lost it. Screaming and carrying on over the phone. I won't even write what I said. I no doubt sounded like a crazed teenager having a tantrum. It was horrible. I was so incredibly angry and hurt but wasn't what my dad said the reaction I was looking for?

After I hung up the phone I walked out of the ward and out of the hospital grounds and to the nearest place that sold alcohol and ordered a Toohey's Extra Dry and drank it. It tasted disgusting. I ordered another and drank it too. I had to have enough grog in my system so when I went back to the hospital and the nurses breathalysed me they would tell me to leave and not return for seven days.

I then called the man who my parents had expressly told me not to see and told him to come get me.

More to follow.

V.


Part 1: The dad question
Part 2: The dad question

Part 2: The dad question

This is the follow on story about when I met my son's father and how my beautiful boy came to be. For part 1 read here. 


[From the end of part 1] 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...

A new addiction

So I moved from the table where I was sitting alone, across to where he was finishing his beer, and offered to shout him another one while he thought about my proposition.

How do you size up a fellow drug taker? A person that you know would be ok to ask such a question. I mean the kind of drugs I was looking for are illegal and although Australians are apparently the biggest illicit drug takers in the world, not everyone is getting on it. This guy could have been a cop for all I knew! I've asked dozens of people over my time if they know how I can hook up. It is a risky business but I've never got in trouble. Maybe I've just been lucky, or not, depending on which way you look at it I suppose. Maybe there is a look to a person that screams drug user, fellow lover of the high life. I don't know. Either way, I picked it because he said he did know a few people and he'd see what he could do to help me out.

As I sat opposite this stranger at a cheap stainless steel table out the front of the pub, I peered over my beer and took him in: He was rough looking, in that tradie hard worker sort of way. About 6 feet tall with an athletic build. Arms covered in old tatts and scars were wiry and muscular. His long beak-like nose had obviously been broken a few times and I noticed his hands were rough as old sandstone. His knuckles were bulbous and had clearly come to blows over the years - through work or violence - I couldn't tell. His thick hair was short and a sort of browny blonde. I bet it would curl if he allowed it to grow.

It was his eyes that took me in. Piercing blue eyes that looked directly into mine, past the broken soul, and saw me for what I was. Just a woman. No story. No baggage. No hurt. Just me. We drank and we talked. I don't remember exactly what about. I don't remember having any reservations about him, or any concern for myself for sitting there talking to a complete stranger. But I'd lost all concern for myself a long time ago.

Writing this now, I remember he said I had a nice smile. He was charming like that. Always so charming. So confident and cocky. He knew how to make me feel good, when I felt so bad, so alone. My weight had ballooned out to 95kg while I was in hospital and my hair was still short. I thought I was ugly but he made me feel beautiful.

I found this drawing in one of my notebooks I used in rehab early that February.
I think that is suppose to be me. My eyes look so anxious and frightened and my mouth so flat.
But at least there's so much colour. I don't remember feeling that much brightness.

It wasn't long before we were hunting down dealers at other pubs in the area. And this is when things get a little confusing in my memory. I think we may have scored some ecstasy and some acid. I remember drinking all night. And smoking. Ugh! I was smoking well on nearly two packs of menthols a day at the time.

By then I was living in a newly developed boarding house in the inner west. It was full of students mainly but some older singles and even some families in one room. It was massive, over two floors, I think, with maybe 20 rooms to a floor but only had one kitchen, one laundry and separate shower rooms for men and women. There were a couple of extra unisex toilet rooms on each floor which were always dirty. You had to bring your own dunny paper. It was disgusting.

In my room I had a double bed, a mini bar fridge full of Goon (aka cheap cask wine), some space for clothes and a TV. It was late February when I moved in, I think. And it was hot. Air couldn't move through the rooms through the tiny windows so they were stiflingly overheated. The rent was ridiculous for what it was but when I took it it was because I didn't want to go interviewing for share house accommodation. I didn't think I wanted anyone in my life let alone have anyone see too closely how I was living.

Nothing happened the first night were together. Nothing sexual anyway. We were too wasted. It was maybe on the second or third night that we became intimate. He just kept hanging around. I remember thinking I wanted him to go. Go back to his life, but he latched on. Except for the occasional trip home for clean clothes or to go use a public telephone. That is when I found out he had kids, a family.

Just like with alcohol when you're on lots of stimulants like Es or speed or trips they make you talk. We must have talked and talked. It would have been the first three weeks of March 2008 that we hung out - mostly at my place but sometimes at his share house in the next suburb. We just talked and shagged and got high. It was so fun, so intimate, so completely and utterly separate from my life and my problems. From my family and friends. From reality.

But even then, as out of it as I was, I knew I would have to get sober and go back to my job that was waiting for me.

After ringing around for weeks I finally got into another psychiatric facility. One which was a proper rehab (unlike the one I went to and scored a benzo addiction at) that made you go to AA meetings and lectured you hard on what your choices as a drug or alcohol abuser were: End up on the street, in jail or in a coffin.

I said goodbye to the man who was to become my son's father and told him I'd see him when I got out.

I knew from the few weeks we'd spent together that he was an alcoholic and a chronic pot smoker. Had been all his life and was unlikely to change any time soon, despite promises of joining me on the wagon. I knew he had a family that had left him because he had done something bad but I didn't know what. I knew he was bad news for me. Deep down I knew that if I was to take my getting sober seriously I should walk away from this person and never see him again. I had the perfect opportunity to do that: I had the safe haven of rehab. If you've got good health insurance and you're fucked up enough they let you stay for ages as long as you abide by the rules.

Plus I had a job, a so called life, I was supposed to be going back to. A corporate job. In an office in the city. With banker wankers and girls in tight skirts. Friday drinks and long lunches. Expectations and key performance indicators and responsibilities and 8.30am starts. My old life. The life I was so afraid of returning to. Still am afraid of returning to.

But he made feel good. When I felt so bad. He made me feel desirable, loveable, needed, wanted, powerful. In my fucked up, topsy turvy world he became the one.

On that sunny morning at the pub when I first met this man and enquired about drugs I had no idea that he would become the drug that I would acquire an addiction for to keep the painful memories and flashbacks at bay.



That is enough for now. I'm exhausted.

More to follow.

V.


Part 1: The dad question
Part 3: The dad question

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.