It immediately became clear that the workload was much heavier than in the previous two years. I was six months pregnant and studying far away from Mark. It was hard. I was lonely in Scotland without him, and I struggled. He was right. I would have to give up my nursing dream to have the baby but the reality was that I was devastated, and disappointed in myself. Determined to prove that I hadn’t made a huge mistake, I ignored those thoughts and feelings that I was fucking up my entire future by jacking in uni to have a baby that wasn’t planned.
I loved Mark, he made me happy, he was good to me and he wanted this baby, so I packed up my belongings into the back of his car, said goodbye to my housemates, made the eight-hour drive to our beautiful new family home that he had bought for us in Canterbury, and I began planning to become a mum at the age of nineteen …
CHAPTER TWO
The ‘Happy’ Family/The Turning Point/Dad was Right
Our baby girl, Belle, arrived on a cold January day, weighing 6lb 13oz, and with a mop of jet-black hair. She was perfect in every way, but after she arrived, my immediate thoughts on that day turned towards my own birth mother. I’d rarely thought about the woman who had given birth to me, who had brought me into this world, but once I held my own child in my arms, it made me question so much about my own adoption. I wondered again what my birth mum’s situation was to have had three babies in such quick succession and then have given us all away to a stranger. I was in love with Belle immediately, and it felt like she had come along to fix all the parts of me I didn’t know were broken. I knew I could never part with her.
But motherhood was hard. It was harder than hard. Some days it was impossible. And it was so lonely. No one ever warns you about the loneliness and yet it was almost overwhelming at times. And it especially made me miss my own lovely mum even more. When things got really tough with Belle, all I wanted to do was pick up the phone and ask my mum for help. Or when Belle cried and I had no idea how to placate her, I longed to ask my mum for her advice. Becoming a mum made the pain of losing her even worse and in a whole new way.
But I carried on plodding with Belle; I met some other mum friends and I got used to being a stay-at-home mum, having Mark’s dinner ready every night for when he got in from work, and keeping our new house immaculate.
I always felt grateful for the life Mark provided us with; we had a beautiful home, new cars every year, and I had a credit card to use as and when I wanted. I knew I led a privileged life because of him and I never took that for granted. To the outside world, our life seemed pretty perfect.
Four years after Belle came along, I gave birth to our second baby, a boy called Arthur. Again, the love I felt for this little baby was instant, and I knew I would do everything in my power to protect him, always. I’d never abandon him to strangers, like my own birth mother had done, and I would cherish him and love him every single day.
When almost six years after that I fell pregnant with our final son, Rex, I felt as though our family was now complete. Mark and I had been together for a decade, and he had desperately wanted the three children we made together – or so I had always thought. Because then, when I was seven months pregnant with Rex, the perfect family we had made together, the perfect life we had built, all fell apart in moments.
I found out in the cruellest way possible that my husband was shagging someone else. It had been a very normal Tuesday afternoon when I had left to do the school run. I’d needed to whizz to the supermarket on the way to grab some bits for dinner, but when I pulled up outside I realised I’d forgotten my purse. I shot home to grab it to find Mark’s car already on the drive. I was surprised he was home; he was rarely ever home before 6pm and had told me he would be at the office in Central London all day. As I let myself into our home, I saw his laptop case and mobile phone on the bottom stair. I heard the shower running from our bedroom and as I bent down to grab my purse, I saw a message flash up on his phone from Sofia. It just read ‘one new message from Sofia’. I was instantly curious, I had never heard him make mention of a Sofia.
I clicked on her message. She was missing him, she said – even though he had only left her apartment ten minutes earlier after fucking her so well for the whole afternoon. She was still missing him; she couldn’t wait to see him on Friday afternoon, and had used the card he’d given her to buy some more of the dresses and heels that he liked for their next trip away.
That one message snapped my heart in two and tore our family apart.
I wanted to die. I just couldn’t face the thought of living after reading that message. I knew our whole world had just changed, forever, no matter what came now I knew in that instant nothing would be the same again. I opened the front door and violently vomited on our driveway.
Mark, after he’d finished washing his dirty afternoon away in the shower, rushed down the stairs to play the doting husband – a role he had gotten quite good at. I remember the look of shock on his face as I handed him his phone with ‘that’ text message still open.
But, as always, he wasn’t upset or panicked; looking back, I wonder whether in that moment he actually felt relieved. He just shook his head and said, ‘Fuck, Jo. I’m sorry, Jo. Fuck.’ He couldn’t deny it; it was there in black and white.
It’s funny, when your entire world falls apart, how quickly you notice things you were totally blind to before. Even within five minutes of reading that message I remember looking at Mark, stood there in front of me, watching him watch me, and realising how tanned his body was. It was March and we hadn’t been on a sunny holiday for over five months. His chest was also different, his pecs looked more muscly, the tops of his arms more defined. I realised then that my husband had been using sunbeds and going to the gym and I hadn’t even noticed. We’d stopped having sex for a while, because I had been so busy trying to keep him and our kids happy, grow another baby inside me while trying to keep our house immaculately clean and our meals tasting like the restaurant dinners he liked. And as soon as I noticed ‘the obvious’, the self-blame began to kick in – was he having an affair because I’d let myself go? Because I never make an effort with myself? Because I don’t try it on with him any more? Had I allowed things to become boring?
My head was fucked and I spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, watching my belly move up and down where my unborn baby kicked away, and listening to Mark play the perfect father to Belle and Art, who were none the wiser that their entire childhoods had totally changed.
Being pregnant, hormonal and desperate to not destroy my kids’ worlds, I put them to bed that evening, then sat on the opposite end of the sofa to Mark. I asked him to end his affair with Sofia and work on our marriage. I said we could get some marriage counselling, and after the baby was born, we would make time for ‘us’, and I would pay more attention to myself and him.
Desperate.
But he told me he’d fallen in love with Sofia, the twenty-year-old barista from the local coffee shop with the pert tits and perfect lips, and then he left us – his family – to go and be with her. He left me on our lounge floor, on my knees, begging. Begging so hard there were just tears but no noise, not a sound because I was in such a state. He went upstairs, packed two bags and walked straight past me to the lounge door, he didn’t even look at me before he walked out of the front door of our family home and left us forever.
I can honestly say I have never felt pain or panic like it. Not when my mum died, not when my dad changed into someone I no longer recognised, and not when I lost touch with my two siblings who had once been my best friends. I had been abandoned and rejected just before I was due to give birth, with two small children to care for, and I wanted to die even more than I had six hours earlier when I’d found the message. A chest-crushing anxiety landed on me and I was about to learn it wasn’t going to vacate for a really long time.
Mark and Sofia set up home together immediately, and her Facebook page documented the life I’d had ten years earlier, where she was jetted all over the world on fabulo
us holidays and had a wardrobe like Beyoncé. She was ridiculously beautiful and I obsessed over everything I could about her. Looking back now, if I had to give advice to anyone in my situation, then I would tell them not to look, not to read things or search out pictures that continue to break an already broken heart, yet here I was, constantly refreshing her page each day. Hundreds of times morning, noon and in the middle of the night when I was feeding, studying her, what her features were like, what friends and family commented on her pictures, her hobbies, likes and interests. She set all her social media accounts to public, I imagine for my benefit, and within six months (and before we were divorced), her relationship status on Facebook had changed from ‘It’s complicated’ to ‘Engaged’, followed by a series of photos showing Mark proposing to her in Paris. The ring was the size of a rock, and to the outside world looking in, they seemed to be the perfect couple – just as we once had.
Mark didn’t even make it to Rex’s birth. He didn’t answer his mobile when I began getting contractions. When I called his secretary to deliver the news, she told me he was uncontactable. I could hear from her tone she felt desperately sorry for me, even without her repeating the words ‘I’m so, so sorry, Jo’ as she tried to stop her voice from breaking. And so was I. So sorry. Sorry that my husband was out of the office with his new fiancée after destroying his entire family. Sorry for what my life had now become.
I gave birth to our third child at home in my marital bed. I had a midwife at my side as my other babies slept in the room next to me. This 7lb 7oz crying bundle was placed on my chest and I cried too. In fact, I sobbed just like I had with my other two births, only these tears were different. I wasn’t overjoyed, happy, or in a love bubble. I was devastated, broken-hearted and in a pain I never knew existed until then. The divorce papers arrived the very next day.
I stayed on my own for the following three years; three desperately unhappy years where I tried my hardest to survive with my small brood of children. I had no job and only the odd maintenance payment when things were needed like uniforms, shoes or they grew out of most of their clothes. I had to point out what they were wearing was too small for them – because, as Mark repeatedly reminded me, he ‘provided us with a roof over our heads for free and all our bills included’. As if he was a generous landlord, not a father who had made a promise and commitment to his children and wife. And I didn’t have the energy to fight for anything any more, I was just trying to make it through each day. I look back now and I see I wasn’t living, I was surviving – and barely. I budgeted what little money we had so that we could afford to eat, buy our necessities and put petrol in the car. If we were lucky we would be able to afford a trip to soft play once a month where Belle would play Mum to Rex, whizzing him down slides and hurling themselves over foam blocks, Art would go off and make new friends and I would bury my head in a book and avoid contact with any other humans for a few hours.
I reached out to my GP, who put me on a large dose of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety tablets and sleeping tablets, and referred me for therapy. The wait for me to be seen seemed to take forever and during that time the medication numbed me even more. I didn’t find things funny like I had done before, I didn’t beam with pride in school assemblies, and I didn’t feel happy or sad, ever. I just felt nothing.
I realised I couldn’t carry on any more. I wasn’t me. I wasn’t OK and the medication wasn’t making me better. It wasn’t helping me to live; it was just enabling me to keep surviving. I knew I needed help.
CHAPTER THREE
The Turning Point/The Light in the Darkness
Myrah, my therapist, was an older lady. Her home smelled of incense, and she had a warm, welcoming manner. I could feel her empathy towards me from the moment we met and I liked her. I felt safe when I was around her and I liked that she didn’t stay silent and ‘take it all in’ when I spoke to her about my problems. Instead she listened, and asked me what I thought about the things I had confided to her, and then she explained what she thought, including the things I was feeling, and she helped me make sense of it all. I remember how, after my second session, when I told her about parts of my life, she said, ‘It seems like you haven’t ever really come out of the trenches since your mum died when you were seventeen, and before that time you never really knew who you were or where you came from.’
The realisation of the reality of what I had deemed a ‘happy’ marriage was frightening. As I spent more time with Myrah each week, charting my life over the previous thirteen years, it hit me that I was never happily married. I was controlled. I was a servant to Mark, with no life other than raising his children and cleaning his house. In the time Mark and I were together, I had never done anything for myself, and I hadn’t even noticed that. I had never had a night out. When the mums at toddler group were planning the Christmas party or meals out to celebrate birthdays, I’d always claim to be busy – Mark having the children so I could go out with friends was just something that never happened; he wouldn’t have ever agreed and I came to accept that it was just the norm for me not to go anywhere. I had no clue about anything financial within our marriage, and had to check and ask permission before making any decisions. Although he gave me use of a credit card I never had ‘free rein’. I never would have bought myself anything like clothes, shoes or perfume after Belle was born. There was an unwritten rule: it was there for a weekly food shop and petrol, and after the food shops he would frequently question my spending, especially in the last few years. I remember him often querying the price of a pack of bacon or a block of cheese, and I would try to justify this. I would always try to get the best offers and deals to make him happy. I would spend more money on the foods he ate, like steak and chicken, and cut back on cheap sausage rolls or ham for the children’s packed lunches. And I look back and think I genuinely didn’t even see an issue with it. I was made to feel nothing but grateful for the life he gave me as if I gave nothing back in return.
As the epiphany hit, I felt so many things. Shame, that I hadn’t seen things for what they were. Devastation, that I had thrown away a career that would have given me a totally different life to the one I had today. And relief. Relief that my life was no longer controlled by one man who I now saw so clearly was a narcissistic fuck.
But I also felt proud of how I’d coped. In my head I felt that I had failed my kids by wallowing in misery, but the reality was they rarely saw this. They rarely saw my tears and heartache. I always waited until they were out of sight or asleep. I had still managed to be a mum. I had still functioned. I didn’t fail my kids or let them down like I believed I had for so long, and it was a nice feeling to eventually see that I was their stability, their routine and their constant love. I was the only person ensuring that they were OK and making sure that my heartbreak didn’t break their hearts. And the last thing I felt was excitement. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was excited again, about finding myself and finally being happy.
Before I started therapy, in those dark days when everything had seemed so raw and impossible, I’d messaged Mark each evening with a photo of the kids and details about their days. I’d even included his new son, Rex, who he chose to have no relationship with at all. Most days he would reply with just an ‘X’. Nothing else. Some nights he wouldn’t reply at all. He would hardly ever answer their FaceTime calls and he stuck to seeing them once a week for dinner but nothing else.
I remember wondering how he could sleep at night, only seeing two of his children for four hours, once a week, after living with them for so many years, and not even knowing his third, but when Myrah broke it down in therapy it all became so apparent. Although he had once ‘lived’ with them, with us, that’s all he’d done. He might have occasionally taken Art to his rugby game on a Sunday morning, and he smothered Belle with gifts from his work trips abroad, but it was me who parented them. I cooked their dinners, I made the volcanos and drew Tudor houses for their homework projects, I bathed them and took them to school, I was
the one who answered their questions and listened to their opinions, and I was the one who put them to bed and kissed them goodnight.
Once the therapy began to work, it hit me like a bus, and I stopped calling and texting him. When the kids asked to FaceTime him, on the very rare occasions when he bothered to answer, I made excuses and left the room. Instead of fighting to make him want to be a good dad and love his babies, I gave up. They soon got fed up of the ‘unavailable’ message popping up and gave up trying too. Part of me was pleased to not have to deal with the calls any more, but a bigger part was crushed to know that he’d destroyed something in them – their pure, loving, hopeful natures – and I was worried about the long-term damage he’d done by not letting them feel loved enough. Before long, they barely spoke about him at all. I realised that, actually, Myrah was right: they would be far better off with one stable, loving parent who would focus on their needs without the other one causing them even more damage.
Feeling better every day, I started to make more of an effort with myself. I no longer lived in faded leggings, nursing bras, worn vest tops and an oversized cardie, trying to make myself as invisible as possible. I climbed up into the loft and pulled out my old designer clothes that I had stored in bags years earlier, which I could now fit into again. Most were barely worn and still fitted me and those that didn’t, along with all the kids’ designer clothes from when they were babies went on eBay – I made to me what was a fortune selling our bad memories online. I began tousling my hair with curlers instead of scraping it back, and I put on some lipstick and applied a bit of mascara once again. All the little things that I hadn’t done for such a long time. Mums on the school run would comment that I looked amazing and when I started uploading photos to Facebook again after years of being silent, people I hadn’t seen since uni or school would write under pictures of me and the kids how happy and well I looked, how beautiful my babies were. And it felt good. I felt good for the first time in such a long time.
A Different Kind of Happy Page 3
