Childish of me I know - but this is how I feel right now .
I feel that she has turned out so well is actualy down to me and my care - not Barrys
He did not even look after her much of the time when she was young at all and even in latter years when he ddi more child care, he was at sea even more than he was when she was under 10 - so he has had very little 'hands on ' care of her
And he was a complete drunk for most of her early years and smoked dope and worked away at sea and now he acquired HIV and given HIV to me!!!!!!!!
Yet in her eyes he is great and does nothing wrong....
And I do everything wrong!!!!
Yet he would not give up his work at sea despite how much we both - Caja and I - hated it. He has always been a drinker ( but I have to say he cut down in recent years and has stopped now he has HIV) yes I have started using alcohol to cope in recent years I was not a drinker at all until about 1999/2000.
But Barry always was a drinker from the first - and caused me so much grief when Caja was young. i.e. when Caja was a baby he was really 'hitting the bottle' and he smoked dope as well and with alchohol !!!! - I never have smoked dope.
So I would come home to find him unconscious.
Usually when I worked I had Caja cared for elsewhere but the worst days were when I had had to trust him to look after her as he would throw a wobbly because he resented us paying child care unless it was absolutely necessary and insisted he look after her - so when he was home I would try to continue getting her cared for as usual by the nursery or childminder or the person in my caravan etc but often he would to let me pay for proper child care yet he was so irresponsible I was scared often to leave our baby with him -
For example - one day whn caja was abotu 2 1/2 I had gone to work and I came home to find Barry had spent the whole afternoon in the pub with a mate who also had a baby in a buggy with him, and I found Caja crawling around the floor unsupervised and he crashed out dead drunk on the sofa having vomited!!!!!
I have never in my whole life done ANYTHING like this when looking after a child!!!!!Yet Caja does not remember any of this because she was quite young and I have to admit for Barry this was quite a long time ago. In the last 10 years or so he has really 'cleaned up his act'.
So he has not drunk too much for a long time and he has not used dope for at least 10 years and since he has had HIV he has even given up ordinary cigs !!!!!!!!!!!! But he did put me though hell for many years with his drinking and dope !!!!!!!!!!!!!
And he went away to sea despite my pleading with him to come home!!!!
It is now all in the past - he does not drink except vey little socially, does not smoke, will never go to sea again, he will never get the opportunity to have sex with anyone else even if he wanted too and is a responsible person most of the time despite HIV.......................
.....................and so I should forgive him and most of the time I do - but when Caja has a go at me as she has been for the last 4 weeks, I get angry with him and have a go at him - bad situation !!!!!!
The difference between me and Barry I guess when we drink, is that I do it out of desperation and for self medication and he has never done it for those reasons ..........
He really can take it or leave it- and when he got totally 'off his face' when Caja was young he did it because he choose too because it was fun and he could not see why not!!! He had no idea of how much it upset me - nor did he care - as I did tell him many times how much I hated it - and he choose to drink even when he was supposed to be in charge of a young child !!!!
Me - I have stayed at home, tried my best to be a good mum to Caja and sacrificed the career I could have had to look after Caja. And in later years used alcohol sometimes to cope and feel very ashamed that I did and have always tried not to and to do everything 'right'.
And yet she does not respect me and her love of me is completely conditional!!!!
I had to sacrifice any career and put Caja first because while many women with children do have careers I defy them to have a career in an area that has antisocial hours and quite often you are required to do residential weekends or trips away, is stressful, needs lots of commitment and long hours and is worthwhile but does not pay enough to have a live in nanny etc , and be a single parent or like me, have a partner/husband who works away for months at a time!!
And further have no close relatives i.e. grandparents, sisters etc or close friends that can look after your child/ren either free or for very little.
In theses circumstances you really have no option but to plan your life around the care of your child, at least till they get to secondary school - as there is no one at all to fall back on and when the 'shit hits the fan' re commitments to your job or commitments to your child, you have no option but to put your child first and tell your job to go hang!!! and by then your career has gone down the pan!!!
Especially if you are an older mum like I was as I was nearly 40 when Caja was born – and the stress of trying to continue to have a job and a career under theses circumstances was just incredible!!!!
Well that was my situation and I did my best!
I could have left her - Caja with Barry - for my career as he left her with me for his career at sea!!!!
When she was about 3 I was offered a job back in London for about £20 K as a senior worker which was a fortune then. I was so tempted, as here in Cornwall my career had never gone the same as in London, Here my skills and knowledge for some reason were never appreciated ( I do not think it was understood by most how much I had to offer and how considerabel my skills were!!)
I just never really 'fitted in ' to Cornwall youth service, to blunt perhaps, too 'London' working class, too emotionally engaged in what I did.......anyway I turned it down and stayed to look after my daughter - but this choice meant I had no career .................just a job and a boss ( line manager ) called 'Mike' who loved to see me squirm and bullied me for nearly 7 years until I said enough is enough and walked out. Even then I had to down grade my job yet again just to get away from his bullying.
So from being an assistant coordinator I became yet again an ordinary youth worker - and eventually I left altogether - It was just so boring to take such a step back and work in an ordinary youth club i.e. in a 'coffee bar' situation with a 'disco' on all the time - basically what is the POINT!! of that sort of youth work ......??????
None that I can see and certainly I do not want to do that sort of youth work and it does not use my skills at all - Bloody pointless work!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So I left - I did it on my terms i.e pulling a 'sicko' so I could get sick pay and I even managed to get statutory redundancy
And yes I agree that recently - since Caja was older than 14 I have started to use alcohol to cope too - ironically Barry cleans up re alcohol and I start!!!!!!! its an ironic world god knows why it happened this way!!!!!!
But she does not remember that Barry ever drunk at all but sees me as a drunk and him as not - she is totally wrong, but what can I say!!!
As in Caja's eyes it seems Barry is the golden boy who can really do no real wrong
So when she has a go with me, I get bloody angry with him - not his fault and I do want her to love him, but not at the expense of her seeing me in contrast to him as lacking and not loving me too!!
I want her to understand that we BOTH love her very much and whatever situation we are in now, BOTH me her and Barry are responsible for - not just me
I just want her to treat me with a bit of compassion - understand that I have feelings and get hurt too - and that right now things are very hard for me
And this HIV has hit me VERY hard!!
What the HELL am I going to do with my life now!!!!!
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