SINGLE PARENT STRUGGLES

Trying to Find Peace in the Night in a British Council Estate Flat

Tears rolled down her face, as she begged for a different view

“Someone please help me” I pleaded.

Tears rolled down my freezing cold face as I begged for someone or something to come and take me away from this place. I hated where I was living, I hated my life, and I was drowning in my own self pity again.

Night after night I’d sit at this window, staring and smoking out into the darkness, wishing I was somewhere else. I felt there was a whole world of joy and happiness out there, and I wasn’t part of it.

I was stuck . . . here.

My body clock was completely out of whack these days as I spent more time awake at night than asleep. It had become my time of comfort and contemplation. I had space to think at night.

Somehow the depressing view of inner city life, looked slightly less depressing after dark. A gentle illumination from the street lamps bathed everything in a warm orange glow which amazingly managed to soften the harsh effect of the graffiti.

If I squint and block out the awful architecture of the thoughtlessly built council flats all around, it actually could be somewhere nice and warm. Seriously, did they design these buildings to be purposely depressing, or is it the energy of the occupants cooped up inside making them appear this way?

These flats are refuge to the characters whom society wants to forget. It feels like the council only helps them because it’d be politically incorrect not to. Given enough money each week to cover their alcohol, scratch cards and carbs, they are expected to stay quiet and out of the way.

So, here we are. The misfits. A bunch of smelly, odd shaped, outcasts, nurturing a collective history of trauma, abuse and neglect. And then there’s me. I came here via a different channel. I’m a single parent of a beautiful boy trying to make it in this country, which apparently puts me in the same category as everyone else here.

It sounds like I’m a snob, looking down on these people. I’m not at all. What I am, is adaptable. I tend to fully embrace and absorb any environment I’m in — and I don’t want to absorb this!

Disarray should look like, well disarray. It should not look like a normal part of the landscape. Across from my window, a tatty discarded sofa is calmly waiting to comfort a wandering lost soul. It looks perfectly homely there, leaning drunkenly under the window, with one of it’s legs broken. The wheelie bin lying on its side looks like it’s relaxing after the harshness of the day. Instead of the reality being, it was kicked over earlier by an angry and highly inebriated teenager, screaming his pain out to the world.

After the cold, miserable and relentless rain today, only mist remains. It hangs over the butchered trees and bushes, bathing and soothing their wounds. They are the brutalized victims of the inappropriately titled ‘gardeners’. These are people who work for the local council, their role being to prune and manage communal green areas on these estates.

But they don’t prune, they hack. And instead of managing, they cutback anything that is in the way of someone who could file a complaint. It’s a service of convenience and economy which only assists in making this environment appear even more down trodden than it already is.

Suddenly a shriek in the distance cuts the silence. I pray it’s just a girl being silly, and she’s not in any actual trouble. If she was hurt or in danger, what would I do anyway? I feel helplessly trapped here by my apathy and single-parentness. My son is sleeping enviably peaceful in his bed, and I couldn’t, and wouldn’t leave him alone to go check it out. Now I can hear the rage from an argument, and guess it’s connected. Although I can’t hear the actual words, I can sense them. Anger, jealousy, unrest, enhanced by the effect of some substance or other.

It’s this bloody area, everyone is pissed off and raging about something. Last week a young guy got shot, just across the road from me on the other side. Just like that, gone. He wasn’t even involved with the incident causing the idiot to fire the gun in the first place.

‘He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time’ they said.

You mean like an accident? What’s that all about? Who the hell, wanders around carrying a gun in this town anyway. This is not the Bronx. I’m stating the obvious here, but I’m gonna guess, the person carrying the gun on that afternoon (yep, it was daytime), was someone intending to shoot somebody at some point. I doubt he got up that morning and casually thought, ‘I think I’ll wear my gun today’, like it was a piece of jewellery. No, he picked the weapon up with the full knowledge that he could, (and probably would) kill someone.

If this kid wasn’t his intended target, did he ever ‘get’ who was? I guess we’ll never know, unless the news lets us know when, and if, he ever gets caught.

You see why I have to get out of here? I can feel the bad energy of this place seeping into me like a disease.

I’m hanging out at my window far too late — and far too often — for it to be good for me. (I hear, lack of sleep makes you fat too). Sometimes I’m up until sunrise, which leaves me feeling drained and exhausted the next day. But the longer I stay up, the longer I can put off having to deal with daily life — and MORNINGS. If I sleep, then it comes too quickly, and I don’t get to have this time alone to think.

Mornings are the time when everyone else in the world (apart from me), springs into life with purpose.

Where’s my purpose?

At least at night the angst stills, just a little.

At night, I get relief from the pressure of normal people busying about their day, reminding me I’m not busying about mine. Well I am, but by doing things I don’t want to do. I don’t even enjoy the school run. It just signifies boredom and monotony. I know this sounds awful, and of course I love my kids, but it’s just the routine of it that I hate.

I have no goal to work towards. Just the constant nagging awareness of what I currently don’t have, and where I’m currently not.

The night times are my time. This is when I can at least find some peace. At night there are no opportunities to succeed that I don’t take. There is nothing happening to highlight my insecurity, fear or lack of confidence. There are no appointments to adhere to, no kids moaning and no people demanding any time I’m unwilling to give. I know I could, because I have the answers they need. I’m just completely unenthused to provide the answers. I’m tired of all the questions. I’m tired of all the ‘Can you help me with this?’ kind of questions.

Jesus Christ, I can’t even help myself, let alone you.

But it’s the ‘Why aren’t you doing this anymore?’ questions, and the ‘So what are you doing now then?’ ones that really get to me.

Why?

Because I’m doing fuck all that’s why.

I wish they would all go away and just leave me alone to be depressed in my own little bubble. I want freedom to think without interruption. I want freedom to drink wine when I like and not be judged. I want freedom to smoke and to cry and to scream my lungs out while rocking like a crazy person. I’m so fucking bored it’s unreal.

Then the ‘voices’ come in, saying. “What the hell do you have to be bored about, you ungrateful bitch. Don’t you know there are people with real problems in the world? Look around at who you live amongst”

“Yes of course I do”, I’m screaming back at them. “It just hurts so much”.

The thing is, I don’t even know what hurts. I just know, it does. It’s comforting in the hurt. This is what I know. This is like a drug. I can sink into this, wallow in it. I know it, it knows me and I feel safe here. Because, as much as I want to get out, I want to stay. I know how to handle it here, and in a weird and contradictory way, I quite like it here.

On a guilt trip I tip-toe into my son’s bedroom and watch his innocent sleeping face, content and at rest. It breaks my heart to see his peace. I don’t ever want him to feel my pain. I want him to learn and grow and yes, I know there will be some tough lessons in his life. But I don’t want him to feel them too hard.

I need him to believe in me, and to believe me when I say ‘everything will be alright’.

I don’t want him to see me cry and yet, I almost want him to realise the seriousness of the situation. I am in danger of letting him be my shoulder to cry on and I know this wouldn’t be good for either of us.

I feel like I’m going crazy, but I know if I go there, then they’ll take him away from me. As much as a sense of almost relief at the thought of having absolutely zero responsibility anymore, washes over me, I know this is not right.

I CANNOT…I WILL NOT, let him be raised by someone else.

The thought of him being raised by questionable strangers, or worse, in a kid’s home, horrifies me. I’ve heard the stories of abuse and bullying, and I never want this to happen to him. My heart aches at the thought.

I need to get my drive back again. I need my mojo. I know it’s deep down inside somewhere. I even know what to do. I’ve learnt this stuff. I’ve been to all of the happy clappy seminars and workshops, and cried my tears of shame — or have I???

Did I even go deep enough?

I’m beginning to think, maybe I didn’t.

Maybe I should have pulled all of my pain out of the bag and laid it on the psychological table to be analysed and interpreted by Freudian wannabes.

You know what, “Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe” as the man himself said.

I don’t think I’m ready for the shame. I even wonder if it’s totally necessary.

I don’t see how digging all my crap up will get me out of the hole I’m in.

Surely it’ll just make me feel worse — won’t it?

I need to sleep.

With a tiny spark of motivation, I creep into my bedroom and gulp the last remnants of the wine coating the glass with its crusty cheap film. As I do, I see one of those scavenging little annoying fruit flies taking a bath in the bottom of the glass, and getting drunk on my pain.

“Just fuck off” I murmur.

It reminds me of the vultures you see in old cowboy movies, circling and swooping waiting for you to die.

Just fuck off and leave me alone.

I fish it out and wipe it on the corner of my bedside table, not even bothering to reach for a tissue and dispose of it properly.

Let it lay there and suffer like me.

As I put down the glass, now feeling warm and semi-numb inside from the wine’s drug like effect, I feel sorry for it. At the depths of my core I don’t like to see anyone or anything in pain. I squish it with one of my discarded tissues from hours of crying and nose blowing, and give it a quick death. Poor thing never knew what hit it.

Sleep begins to wash over me now like a warm blanket, so I snuggle down into my bed. It’s my one really comforting place in the world right now, and at last I let myself sink into the calmness I’ve been craving.

Tomorrow is another day.

With love

Phoenix G

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