I had a secure childhood, we had a roof over our heads, we had enough food and were a family of four, we lived in what might have been seen as a fairly affluent area.
Life was pretty much uneventful, I suppose.
I hated school and would be physically sick on my way, for some reason I always believed that Mum would be having a much better time than I was, the truth was of course that she actually spent every day cleaning the house, clearing up the garden. Washing, by hand, cooking from scratch wearing her apron and was busy making a good home for us.
Dad had his own business and seemed to be home rarely, he would tun up to be fed in the evening, sit and do the books and accounts, and he was rarely home on a Sunday, these were the days long before shops opened everyday.
So for the first 16 years of my life, as I say life was uneventful, until that morning.
The morning I was lying in bed contemplating getting up, when my Mum opened my bedroom door and said, “Dad, is leaving us.’
At that second, life became eventful.
I can remember it so, so clearly.
My head exploded with questions, what was going to happen to us, where would we live, but the most pressing question was.
Why?
When I said life was uneventful it really was, every day came and went, no drama’s, no arguments nothing.
That ‘announcement’ day was surreal.
Mum was downstairs hoovering, as though nothing had happened, I realise now she was in utter shock.
There had been absolutely no clue that this was going to happen. People didn’t believe me when I used to say that, but it was true, there was no reason to ever think that our family was about to fall apart.
My Dad had told Mum that he was leaving because he was going to look after his ageing mother. who lived just around the corner from our house. He moved out that same day.
It was bizarre.
After a couple of weeks Dad met with my brother to tell him that in fact he was moving in with someone he had been seeing for years, and working with, she was not much older than myself. I realised that the girl he picked up every morning when he was dropping me off, was the person he had been seeing.
That was a difficult thing to get my head around, then there was another bombshell.
Dad told my brother that he now had a new life and we weren’t part of it, that he didn’t want to see us again.
I can’t explain how that made me feel, my brother who was 6 years older wouldn’t talk about, and still wont.
In a very short time my family had gone from being just an ordinary family, to a ‘broken’ family. At the time it was still frowned upon.
To try to take onboard that my Dad didn’t want me was so hard, what had I done for him to not love me anymore, had he in fact ever loved me?
Watching Mum working so hard to keep it all together, and making sure that we we cared for was also very hard. Not once did I see her cry, after over 30 years of married life, she too had been let down in the harshest of ways.
Family was everything to my Mum, it was her reason for being, she never put herself before her children.
I know what it is like to be an estranged child, to this day, I don’t understand why my Dad disliked me.
As an adult with my own family, after Mum had died, we did meet up with my Dad a few times, but it was always false and uncomfortable.
I always felt I wasn’t good enough.
At his funeral, I was asked who I was.
This is my story and I have written about it before, never underestimate the damage family breakdown does. I am an estranged daughter.
Jane Jackson.
