Di the Book (Part 2)

Dad

Ok so I haven't said a great deal about my dad in this so far, that’s probably because when I was six and G was four mum cast him out. Dad went to live at my uncle Tubby's (C's) house where my grandmother also lived. I remember other children at school talking about their weekends with their daddies and how weird it was at home especially when their mummy's got new boyfriends. I had an overwhelming sense of dread when mum said "Your father is going to nannies for a while" - I knew he was never returning. I remember the day like it was yesterday, dad with a bag plodding up the driveway towards his work lorry. The tears starting to sting my eyes as I stared through the net curtains, not really believing what I was seeing. Why didn’t he fight for us? When do we get to see him? Why cant I go too? Why didn’t mum love him anymore? Was it dad not loving us anymore?

I later found out that dad had fought quite hard for mum's affections in his own way but being a quiet reserved straight forward kind of man, a meat and two veg man, he was unable to express how he really felt. This was until he had ten or so ciders inside him; at which point he would do the daftest thing possible with all those bottled up emotions.

An example: One night before my father was sent away I woke up to a commotion outside my room, to my surprise I found my Auntie M (one of my friends mums not an actual relation) stood outside my door. I peered around the corner into my parents room where I saw a man in a green jumpsuit (paramedic) helping my dad out of bed. My "Auntie" who was a nurse explained to me that my dad was fine but he had a bad tummy and needed to go to hospital. I found out years later that he had come home drunk and had taken every pill in the medicine cabinet in a lame suicide attempt in order to get my mothers sympathy/attention. My dad was being taken to Accident and Emergency to have his stomach pumped at 3 AM, apparently even if they had left him to it he would have only slept for a few days while his liver dealt with the situation. I think his liver has probably dealt with most of dads emotions for all of his life, poor thing; its probably the size of a planet by now. I guess I should be angry (and I was for a while) that my dad tried to leave us in such a painful way but when men are conditioned to be like this; is it any wonder that when their inhibitions are broken down (drink) it all suddenly comes pouring out. Plus alcohol is a depressant, no wonder booze and I have such a weird relationship; we don’t fraternise anymore...especially thanks to the Venlafaxine I am currently taking.

The main thing I remember about the period dad did live with us was how he smelt when he came in from work - a mixture of oil, metal shavings and dust, his voice booming through the house like an earthquake. Also I remember when I would go to bed dad would sit or lay next to my bed and rub my stomach in a clockwise circle until I fell asleep and I loved it, I still rub my own stomach in the same way when I feel ill or down. I think it was how warm and content it made me feel and the fact I was getting my dads attention if only for a little while. Plus he had giant rough shovel hands that engulfed anything and everything but he was being so gentle, delicate and caring to me.

During my twenties I ended up staying with my dad, sleeping on the living room floor of his one bedroom flat. And in a predictably cider-fueled haze one Saturday night my dad shuffled into the living room (my bedroom) in only his stained white(ish) Y fronts which was a bit of a shock. I thought he was a bit more trendy than that. I asked him what was wrong and he wrapped his dark fury arms around me and began to sob and apologising in mumblings about mum, life, leaving us etc. I stood there stroking his teen wolf back and solid pregnant belly until he felt he could let me go. As I couldn’t make sense of his words, this was the only thing I could think to do and probably the only thing I was capable of doing in his vice like grip. Honestly he was like a silver-back gorilla. I then slowly without words directed him to his bedroom and made sure he made it into bed and hoped he would stay on his side. I couldn’t cope with the guilt of him choking on his own vomit, not on my watch! I went to check on him a few times that night but he was there snoring away like a hippopotamus with a punctured lung. The next morning he was bright as a button (as much as is possible in a fat hungover middle aged man) and he didn’t remember a thing about this incident and I honestly didn’t want to probe him too hard as he obviously needed to let it all out, how often do men of his age/era cry? So we sat on the sofa getting quite fat on crisps cuddling up and watched repeats of Scrapheap Challenge as we normally did. If you didn’t know us you'd probably think we were a couple or he was grooming me but I have always been overly affectionate with my parents. Even now I often link arms or hold hands with my mother, most of the general public assuming again that we are lesbians or sex freaks of some description. I cannot really explain why I do this only that it feels good. Plus I always think that most of the general public don’t know me so fuck them and their judgmental faces.

One day I imagine dads size and/or booze will get the better of him, he most definitely shouldn’t have a rock solid pregnancy type stomach, binge drink and sleep apnea to boot - combined with him being a full time driver and now only getting three or four hours sleep a night I'm surprised he hasn’t popped his clogs already! I suppose this bit is an open letter to my father to say, you have to have your vices in life but I love him, as much as I would love for him to be around forever; I just hope when he does pass away, he does so in peace and not the slow painful one I imagine his liver/heart will give him.

My father is so predictable it's crazy.

Schedule

Breakfast: At work - tea and a bap

Lunch: homemade meat based sandwich, pack of crisps and a golden delicious apple

Dinner: something with chips, in a pie shape or with gravy on it. This used to be followed by a few chocolate digestives, a pack of crisps and/or a choc ice but now he's "on a diet" so it's another golden delicious apple.

Drinks: Lots of tea (like me)

Saturday afternoon/night: many pints of Strongbow and back home in time for the soaps - Coronation Street, Casualty and Emmerdale or anything about trucking.

Holidays: Zante, Greece and Benidorm, Spain - 3 times a year for 1 or 2 weeks without fail. Dad and his long term girlfriend Pat will always go off peak season to save money, meeting their friends out there to basically do the same kind of drinking and eating they do at home just somewhere hotter. Although they did surprise everyone this year - dad took a lump sum out of his pension and went to Vegas and they plan to do a Safari holiday next year for Pat's 60th birthday. I would never begrudge them that, as I said they save up all year to the same holiday over and over so I think a bit of splurging and variety is a good thing. Dad works very hard for what he earns and is the most sensible person I have ever met so when he said he was off to Vegas I had a mini heart attach.

Dad had a GP MOT a few years ago linked to a hernia and they told him to lose some weight. He just cut out the after dinner choc ice and biscuits and added in more apples instead, he dropped a load of weight and his cholesterol came down too. It still doesn’t explain the belly - maybe his guts are swollen? Maybe his liver really is the size of a beach ball? Hilarious that he lost so much weight and the staff of the local Asda staff always give him a crazy person look when he plods up to the till with his own weight in golden delicious.

P.S. the hernia operation was really weird; he was taxied up to Birmingham on the NHS's dime to even out the waiting list targets or some other bull shit! Disgraceful!

How I ended up on dad's living room floor again is another story. I don’t tell you this for pity or shock value, this is just how my life went and I'm pretty sure I'm not special it's just therapeutic writing it all out.

Mum

My mother is hard to explain really; she had a horrible childhood where she never felt like she was wanted - she was never taught to swim or even ride a bike. She has many endearing qualities, for example she literally will worry herself sick over the silliest things because she just cares that much and seems to think worrying is a good hobby. In that way I am very much like my mother, I worry a lot. So much that I gave myself trichotillomania at 11 years old worrying about my up coming SATs; to this day I still pull my hair out on a daily basis. I also gave myself a stomach ulcer when I was stressed at work a few years back. Mum is also quite pessimistic and a "catastrophiser" as my shrinks would call it; another lovely trait I picked up. Mum is also constantly under the impression that she will die in the same way her mother did, my gran had angina and mum is convinced she's going to have a heart attach at any moment. My mum gives her partner B hell if he puts any salt in her food and she eats and exercises like a rabbit so god knows how her heart is going to get her! She is a hypochondriac, I spent a lot of time at the GP as a child and still do thanks to several conditions which again I can go into later – one way of proving I am also a hypochondriac.

As a child mum wasn’t taught how to ride a bike or how to swim so was determined that my brother and I would be the total opposite, we had a fun packed childhood. We were put into loads of activity clubs: fit kidz, gymnastics, swimming class, brownies, Air Cadets. She also has this voice, a really posh voice she uses and it indicates when she's getting on her high horse about something or is about to say something incredibly racist/offensive/hurtful. Mum also stayed up until she knew I was home, even if I was out partying as a teen she would listen for me getting in and would then go to sleep. This little habit started to make me feeling incredibly guilty as I got older, luckily I was always a light-weight and in love with my bed so never stayed out terribly late other than the odd occasions.

Once I took my parents (mum and B) to a science museum in Cardiff, I was so excited to relive some of my school trips there and to get my daughters A and W to enjoy the place in the same way I did. Obviously the trip was mostly about the girls and their enjoyment, not that they would understand the exhibits to any great scientific depth but there were music instruments, water toys, pretty lights and loads of stuff for them to do. My mum was really strange that day, thinking about it afterwards it really gave away a lot of the more negative aspects of my mums personality. If she didn’t immediately understand what the stand or display was showing or explaining she would say "don’t get it" and move on which meant she could whizz through the whole place in an hour despite there being plaques everywhere explaining the science behind the pieces. I trailed after her trying to explain them or show her how they worked (if they were interactive) but still she wasn’t interested. Mum knew that it wasn’t about her, that it was for enjoyment, that it was about the kids, that everything was explained right in front of her and still had this massive "I'm a dunce" chip on her shoulder or was determined to spoil the trip or just a pessimistic head on that day. I couldn’t tell you what it was but it felt really peculiar and we were back in the car by lunch time.

After my father left they went through a bitter divorce and mum seemed to be quite concerned about having another man in our lives. Soon she met Kevin Nigel Dacey, one night they came home and mum sat us down and asked us if we minded if he moved in. G and I could see this guy made her happy so we said yes despite the fact we both had this unexplained uneasy feeling about him. What we didn’t find out until a lot later is that we were right to be distrustful; there was a lot going on behind those nice manners and kind smiles.

My mother was often quite hurtful and I have only just started putting her in line over this. During my angsty teen years she asked me if I was a hooker, a junky and an alcoholic amongst other things. I think she thought I was a junky and an alcoholic because I couldn’t handle my drink - I was a tiny skinny girl downing 3 litres of cider or a bottle of mad dog several times of a weekend from the age of 14. One example of this: I had a mock exam at college and woke up puking my guts up thanks to massive amount of Sambuca at the Weatherspoon's Christmas party the night before. I was still drunk when I took the exam but I still scored a C! Admittedly I wasn’t writing on the lines terribly well but obviously I wrote something good, but psychology probably should have been my field of expertise anyway...

Also I changed my boyfriend twice in a six week period (hence the hooker question) but honestly I think all teenagers are pretty fiery and flippant about their friends and relationships, we are a powder keg of hormones 24/7 just waiting to go off. You also forge some of your "friend family" in that time, the friends I made at college I am still close to today and I don’t think that will ever change. Once you have sobbed to, held hair back for and counselled someone through those times I don’t think you can be anything but best friends. Like some sort of weird suicide pact or blackmail agreement you'll keep quiet about until your dying day; unless you have a few drinks in you! I think these friends understand me better than a lot of my blood relations. I think a lot of my mothers mad questions came from her paranoia or KND dripping poison into her mind. I don’t think mum will ever be the same thanks to him and my brother and I have a lot of anxiety issues I am not sure we would have if it wasn’t for him.

There is another example of mums apparent cruelty towards me. I was incredibly nervous getting my GCSE results, everyone was expecting me to do well and I was in the top classes in most of my subjects. Beforehand I was so stressed I lost half a stone which was quite a large percentage for an eight stone girl. I was studying so hard I was hardly sleeping and was at it for 12+ hours a day every day for six weeks and then studied in-between the exams as well so there's another 5 weeks there.

The day I got my results I had a shift to do at the Ramada Jarvis Hotel where I worked as a housekeeper at weekends and in the holidays, so I had to get my results and then practically run the 2.5 miles to get there for 9:30 AM to work for 8 hours. So I opened the envelope outside away from anyone as I didn’t want to get caught by a friend and have to stay and chat, I would have been even more late for work. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears, I knew I would get grounded forever if I didn’t get satisfactory results. My teacher saw me as I looked through the certificates, she helped me understand all my scores (there were 3 different exam boards and tonnes of bits of paper in there) and she immediately congratulated me. I had gotten 3 x A's, 2 x B's, a C and a D - excellent...so I thought. I called my dad on my Philips Savvy mobile phone; he said what you would expect, congratulations and well done etc. Then I called my mum expecting more of the same and to be walking on air on my way to work. Sadly I was mistaken.

Me: Hey mum, I just got my results, I got 3 x A*'s, 3 x A's, 2 x B's, a C and a D! (Little squeal)

Mum: What were the C and D in?

Me: French and Welsh, but a C is the highest I could have scored in the Welsh one anyway. I didn’t want to do a language either I'm not very good at them.

Mum: Where are the rest of the stars?

LONG SILENCE

Me: ….Uuuuum I don’t know, I have to get to work now, bye (I HANG UP)

I was stunned, I basically went into a catatonic state until my break time at work. I spoke to KG a girl who was in my year, had the same birthday as me and worked in the same place as me. She backed me up that my mum was way out of line and that they were great results. I did wondered if KG was being a little sycophant as she was prone to it. When I got home not a word was said about my results.

A month or two ago (age 34) I brought it up, no longer being scared of my mums wrath as I don’t live under her roof anymore and not wanting to go to my grave without understanding why she said what she said. She just laughed and said she was only joking "I didn’t know you had taken me so seriously".

I guess that explains our relationship, sometimes we are too opposite to get along and sometimes we are besties. I suppose that is a trait of mine too, not always realising when people are joking and taking what they say very seriously. That's a bit of a man trait, when you tell a man "I'm fine!" they don’t get the subtext of "I'm really mad but I want you to work it out or squeeze it out of me" they just take it at face value. This scenario probably plays out 100 times an hour across the world but that’s mostly the woman's fault... I think.

Women often incorrectly:

Assuming men are as perceptive and emotionally in tune as us

Assuming men can "read between the lines"

Assuming men are mind readers, they should know why we are passively aggressively angry and how to solve it

Not spelling things out clearly for men (being in a healthy mutually communicative relationship is a better way of getting over this)

Women also get even more cross when men do take it at face value

Which is why things then spiral out of control and the woman tends to end up a blubbering mess on the floor and the man is totally puzzled and alarmed because he didn’t see it coming. Or is this just me?

This combined with women trying to fundamentally "change" their man tends to end in a relationship breakdown. You cannot change a person, you can make a few compromises for each other (on a voluntary basis because you are mad in love with them) but essentially they are always going to be the person you fell for in the first place. If you search for top 10 reasons for relationship breakdown/divorce/separation etc. I bet you that a good 70-80% of the reasons given could have been dealt with by communicating more or in a better way.

My emotional insights are not based on my parent's relationships, but my own - we will get to that in another chapter.