How to become a single mum....

I guess I should call this post "how to be a single mum - whether you like it or not"!!

Well, in a nutshell, I didnt like it....my lovely son was conceived by "accident" (make of that what you will!) At the time, I was working in folkestone for Le Shuttle Holidays (the holidays department for the newly opened Eurotunnel) Not to boast - but it was a fantastic time for me - I worked with the most amazing people, I would go into the office on a Monday and the boss "M" would say - "the opening of the tunnel has been delayed, we need to do something with you guys, so we are sending you to St Tropez for a week - go and visit some hotels and write about it for the Euro magazine"

So off we would go - you cant imagine the chaos - 14 girls and a gay admin supervisor ("P") in a minibus off to the south of france....only it wasnt always the south of france, sometimes it was Belgium (claim to fame - I shook the hand of the tour guide who gave Arnold Schwarzenneger a tour of Brugge when he was Mr Universe - there may be bigger claims to fame out there - but I doubt it.....!) or Holland - urgh! spent 3 weeks in Holland with my work partner in crime "Mo" and I was puking the whole time - which was when the penny dropped that I had a serious medical problem (didnt occur to me I was pregnant!) I thought I had stomach cancer (i can be a little dramatic and plain thick sometimes........)

So, it was a good life - living in Folkestone right next to the beach (my rent was £30 a week!! How times have changed!!), freebie trips abroad, it was just me and my one eared hamster, Arnie (yes i love that austrian film star!) against the world.

Id been seeing this guy - for 3 years - it wasnt serious but we were committed to each other when I fell pregnant....so he did the right thing, became Mr Committment, we bought a house back in Ashford and I left work so I could play mommy - which was something I loved (playing mommy, not leaving work - i missed my friends)

So there we were, 21 years old, mortgage, baby, 2 hamsters (i got arnie a gf called Daphne) and we were broke and sliding into thousands of pounds worth of debt to keep the wolf from the door and inevitably things broke down.............we were arguing a lot, had had a few "mini" breaks from each other - ie he left and went back to his mothers. Only I was so happy and in love with my bf and my baby that I hadnt realised how bad things had got.......till one day (and I SWEAR it happened just like this) my ex (or "The Biological one" as my sis calls him!) Ate his dinner in front of the TV, put his plate down on the floor, told me he was going out "for a while"........and that was the last I saw of him for 3 weeks.

He wouldnt take my calls at work, he wouldnt come home and he wouldnt tell his mother where he was staying......and im gullible......but genuinly believe it when he tells me a year later that for those 3 weeks he stayed in a tent in the woods .... i dont think he had anyone else, i think he had a breakdown - up to that point he had been a good bf and a good father - I just think he lost the plot somewhere along the way, had a breakdown

I guess on the plus side - it woke me up.........i did all the normal bridgette jones breakup things - drank wine, lost soooo much weight, dyed my hair blonde (it DID NOT suit me!!) Moved back in with my mother (awkward, that one....!). Got a part time job in a care home..........

Anyway all this time the Biological one didnt give us a bean in financial or emotional help......he said he needed a break and didnt want access to his son.....then a few weeks later he said we could live back in the house, which would have been great for us, as frankly moving back in with ones parents is difficult to say the least....and im quite sure they were sick of me too!

So we moved back into the house. The bio one and I had been seperated for just over a year at this point......and things settled down for a while...........until I found out that he had stopped paying the mortgage..........and got his gf up the duff...........long story short - horrible time in my life - he basically stalked me for ages - turning up at the house in the middle of the night, demanding to see his baby son at 1 in the morning (then smashing my head against the wall when I refused to let him go up the stairs) , kicking the front door in, sleeping on the end of my bed whilst I was in it (how creepy is THAT?!)

Eventually I got driven to a breakdown and begged the council to re-house me and son on the basis that our lives were endangered.....and I mean I lost the plot - I still loved him - I was about to be made homeless, bailiffs were knocking on the door, he had got someone else pregnant, and the only time he came to see me he either hit me or threatened me........i stopped eating......wouldnt leave the house. I even got the bloody Chicken Pox.....bless remember my mother dropping off food parcels at the front door and then running across the road before I opened the front door so she didnt catch it from me.....! I dont know why i stayed - i could have gone back to my parents.....stuborness? breakdown? I think I was just incapable of making a decision like that......little did I know that this was just the start of my problems......!!

BUT - here ends chapter one.......coz in the next thrilling installment i'll tell you all about the trials and laughter of being a single mother on the notorious stanhope council estate in ashford - imaging "Shameless" but with more stabbings, more drugs and some of the nicest people you can imagine - and i mean that from the heart.....