For my father

All names are randomised to protect certain identities.

To my biological father,

It’s time to learn about your firstborn son who you abandoned into the care system for your new life. It’s time to learn what’s happened to him. It’s time to learn where he’s been and what’s what.

I’m Jay, your first son - by Patricia. You know who I am. You let me add you as a friend on Facebook, then promptly blocked me once you realised who I was. Remember? Anyway, I’m 42 now. You wouldn’t know that obviously, but yes, I was born in 1977 in Hensingham hospital in Whitehaven and you were a labourer at the time or so it says on my birth certificate. We lived somewhere in Maryport for a year or so. After that, life turned into an utter nightmare for me. Maybe it all turned that way for you as well, but you had the ability as a young adult to take your life in a new direction, which you promptly did – without me. I was a baby and was totally at the mercy of the adults around me, and my word, what a mess they made.

Anyway, the next time I think about you, you may be gone from the world, so I think it’s time I said my piece. It’s time you face up to what I have to say – you won’t do it face to face, clearly. It’s time you understand the damage you did. For years and years, you’ve hidden away from me and Michelle like we were something you wanted to forget about, some stain that you can’t wash out. Believe me, you can’t wash it out – it’ll never leave you. But you don’t care, do you? You’re fine to wear stained clothes, aren’t you? You proved that the second time you abandoned me when you “set the wild animal free.”

My brother Andy told me you said I was like a “wild animal that needed to be set free.” What kind of awful thing to say is that - about your own son who you actually messed up in the first place? Shame on you. At the time, I was stupid enough to lap that up without much resistance because I seriously was a messed up kid (more messed up than most) with no sense of his place in the world whatsoever (I mean let’s face it, I had no role models and no-one ever cared about me at all, and that’s no exaggeration.) I was an idiot kid who hadn’t been raised by anyone decent, thanks to you and the decisions you made.

I was unable to form relationships with people, unable to pick good friends, unable to treat people properly (I really never meant to upset Kai by the way or make him think I wanted to hurt him, I was just trying to be a big brother, something I had zero experience of. I had it all wrong and I got carried away and I’m truly sorry for that.) Here’s what happened: I was stupid enough to babysit for you that night you wanted to go out with that thing you married, and inevitably it went wrong. It was my first time ever babysitting and given that Kai already hated me, perhaps this was a mistake from the beginning. You had left sweets for us all, but we had been told we weren’t allowed them until we’d eaten. Kai naturally wanted his straight away. When I said no, he lost his temper and actually threw a stepladder at my head. In retaliation I held him against a wall. He maintains to this day I had him pinned by the throat (I was 17, he was 9 – therein lies the scandal.) The whole night was a bit blurry to be honest but as I remember, I had my forearm across his shoulders, which, when I look back at it and consider it carefully, may have felt like a throat pin – a bad decision from me and I can accept that. ANd yes, I do regret my action. But he had lost his temper so badly, he had gone absolutely nuts and was threatening all kinds of violence and a stepladder had just whizzed through the air past my head. I felt I had to hold him in place just to calm him down. Anyway, maybe I’ll square that with him one day if he’s even bothered anymore and that’s another subject – he’ll likely punch me in the face and all will be well for him – fair enough, if that’s what I deserve, then that’s how it goes. Although he did recently say he’d like to bury a claw hammer in my head – what a winner you’ve raised there!

But now, as a man – I can see that really you just didn’t want to deal with this mess of a kid because it would get in the way of your relationship with that thing you married, who, let’s face it, is more important to you than I ever was. When I stayed with you those few weeks as a teenager, I was hard to live with for a reason. I lied because I felt entitled. I lied because I was angry and hurting. I lied because I felt like you OWED me. But that’s how an immature child reacts to trauma caused by his heroes. Yes, you were my hero. I really don’t know why. But you made out like I was a compulsive liar, a bad person at the core. I told a few little lies, yes. But then, the way I’d been raised, I’d had to lie to survive, to stop the bullies and exploiters from overwhelming me. It was a right-brain reaction to a desire not to be “in trouble” with my hero.

I was the way I was (a wild animal) because my parents got it all wrong – because I wasn’t a man yet and because I had no way of making the right decisions in the world – and I didn’t have anyone to turn to for advice. I’d been passed from pillar to post all through my young life, never being able to form trusting relationships with adults, never able to distinguish friendship from exploitation, a loving embrace from a sexually perverted one. I wasn’t even able to turn to you. Even while I stayed at your house, you were distant, and apologetic about my presence there to that thing you married who was equally distant and showed no interest in me (not that I would be interested in a relationship with someone who let my sister stay in the same nappy for so long there were maggots crawling around in there.) A woman who let us go so hungry we were found by your neighbours eating worms in the churchyard. That vile excuse of a woman who now proclaims her love for animals through sickeningly supercilious posts on Facebook. “Save the puppies” etc. Perhaps she should learn to love humans first.

I got married when I was 19. I got married to that 29-year-old psycho man-beater because I thought it was what I should do because that’s what people did - it was never out of love. Anyhow, I was in no fit state to be a husband or a dad – but fast forward to now and I realise there’s a difference between you and me. I know I’ve let David and Bradley (my sons by the man-beater) down, but I can honestly say that I have tried time and again to fix things with David (he’s addicted to marijuana by the way) but I will try again to get it right in the future with both boys. And it goes to show the calibre of woman we choose because my current partner would never stand in the way of me having a relationship with my kids. In fact, she has made sure I know she’s on my side and fully behind me - whatever decision I make regarding my sons. That’s the difference. You couldn’t respect yourself or me enough to demand that this woman allow you to see your children. You couldn’t tell her that you came with baggage, that we were part of the deal. You still can’t.

But I’ll tell you this much and this is God’s honest truth: for the longest time you can imagine, I pined for you. I wanted my dad more than anything in the world – I wanted you so much that for years and years I would sob myself to sleep at night, and nothing could cheer me up or repair the gaping hole in me - the missing piece just couldn’t be filled in. Just a little boy in the system being tormented and abused and crying for his family to come and rescue him. All through my young life and my teens I wanted my dad and it was only that which stopped me from going totally haywire in the system. I could have done drugs - believe me I had plenty of chances to say, “screw it” and stick something in my arm. I found myself in plenty of situations where other drug users were running from their own lives down needle street. I could have been a burglar, a car thief, a liar and all kinds of bully - a drug dealer even. I could have been a nasty, violent thug without compassion or empathy. But I slogged my way through years of hopelessness, pain and loneliness, grief and abuse, bullying and neglect in the hope that at the end of it all there would be you, waiting. I even had this belief that somewhere along the line, someone would say “hang on, we need to get this boy back to where he should be, with his dad.” I believed that somehow there was a big welcome waiting for me, a big reward for the absolute nightmare that you and the social services had put me through.

You want to know some of the experiences I had? I could tell you about the time a gang of thugs held me down and threatened to slit my throat because I refused to carry drugs for them. Or how about the time I started to form a pseudo mother-son relationship with a girl of 19 (when I was 12) who had lost her baby who then died of a heroin overdose. Or I could tell you about the boys on the kids' home roof who used to hoof gas up their noses and find it hilarious to throw the empty containers at me. Perhaps you'd like to hear about the foster parents who didn't care when their dogs would drag me across the room by the leg or the foster carer (a fully grown man) who smacked me round the face as hard as he could because I had lost my temper? Or perhaps I should recite the tale of how I was ritually abused by a gang of older kids and told I was possessed by a spirit and that I would be sacrificed if I told anyone about what was happening. Maybe you'd like to hear about the way a foster carer used to touch me just there, while he told me how to "wash it." Or how he climbed into bed with me regularly (at which point I would dissociate.) Or the mother of the foster parent who regularly used carbolic soap inside my mouth instead of toothpaste while bathing me in icy cold water in the dog's bath in the utility room. The one who terrorised me by standing still for minutes on end outside the door to the room where I was kept away from their family because she knew I could see her silhouette and was terrified. These are just a few of the things that you put me through because you wanted to go off into your new life without me.

I have been deeply mentally scarred and traumatised from repeated abuse and neglect, confusion and paranoia I suffered growing up in the care system, as a result of the choices you and my mother made - both when I was a child, and when you turned your back on me as a teenager; as well as extremely poor choices made by the social services who had me in all kinds of absolute hell holes ranging from people who didn’t want to look at me and wouldn’t even let me go the toilet so I would sit there and pee in my pants which then would earn me a battering, to times when I would be locked in a room for days - only allowed out to eat and bathe and go to the toilet. There were adults who touched me, played with me, did things they shouldn’t have and through it all I put up my shield and I stayed strong, and I fought on, because I truly thought that one day you would be there waiting for me. My biggest hero, my light at the end of the tunnel. You used to go and visit that-thing-you-married’s father, right around the corner from the kids’ home where I was staying. You were literally ten seconds away and you used to just usher my half-brothers into his house, while giving me shifty and sometimes almost shameful glances. I used to come and say “Hi” to Andy – at least he had the decency to ask how I was and he was only my half brother.

Think of all the Christmases and birthdays you celebrated with your four precious boys and imagine how it was for me. No parents, no real Christmas, no proper birthday. I never had so much as a card from you or my mother. No contact at all. No contact from her because the social services deemed her hazardous to my mental well-being (which is hilariously ironic when you think about the damage they were already doing to me.) You were really, really awful parents. Both of you. You would both put me in care whenever you felt like a break, wanted to go out drinking, (or in your case brawling around the town with my two uncles – wow what a bunch of heroes, picking on the town drunks.) But I’ll tell you something - if you had gone through my nightmare you would have killed yourself. But no matter. I’m here despite what you put me through. What made the whole thing even more laughable was that as soon as a pretty pair of eyes in a tiny skirt started making demands of you, you upped and vanished like a puff of wind in a tornado. It just shows what a weak character you really have and how wrong I was to want you for a father. You may have been a brawler in your younger days, but you abandoned your children for good, which makes you more of a coward than anyone I have ever heard of.

As a result of all this general crappiness as a young boy growing up into a man through sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect and mental abuse, even going through an abusive marriage, I now have a condition called Cyclothymia – it’s like a form of manic depression where experiences you suffer as a child and young adult set you off on a life-long monthly sinewave of suicidal thoughts, mood swings ranging from crippling grief, through to absolute maniacal joy that leaves you dizzy and out of breath and feeling generally awful. The maniacal joy part has a come-down which is a bit like a hangover but instead of a headache you just feel like you want to curl up and die because there’s just so much overwhelming chaos in your mind. A bubbling fountain of entropy, random nonsense and noise. This can all happen inside a month – and it is very real - it’s not a made-up thing that I’m inventing to make you feel bad. Believe me, I no longer care about you enough to want to hurt you by lying. I can’t even be bothered to lie to you – you aren’t worth the effort, believe me. Anyhow, the condition starts extremely slowly in early adulthood, and no-one detects it in early years – they see it as someone just being occasionally irritable, a bit moody and argumentative here and there. It just creeps so slowly into your life - like a tapeworm, inevitably sucking the joy out of life.

You see, what happens as a child going through suffering is that the right side of the brain takes over to shield you from all the trauma and just takes you away in your head in order to survive whatever it is happening to you. It affects different suffers differently. Some become violent and aggressive. Others become distant and unfocused (this happens to me all the time.) It’s called dissociation. With enough trauma, eventually, that side of you takes over almost completely, and it becomes utterly normal to be moody and distant - even downright nasty and utterly selfish at times. Other times, a sufferer will be an absolute pleasure to be around. This is the sinewave I mentioned earlier – a rollercoaster of emotion as the right-brain (which is on autopilot survival mode) repeats the survival behaviour of the past, intruding on your daily life, interrupting sleep, questioning your choices, questioning everything you think. This way of living stays with you because to the right-brain it feels like normality to suffer, to see threats everywhere, to see everyone as untrustworthy. I’m mastering it now, not that it’s anything to do with you – I just want you to know the damage you and my mother did. She's passed away now, by the way. She was hit round the head by her fourth husband with a toilet roll holder, which then brought on Alzheimer's. She died at the age of 58. Not that I knew about it until two weeks after the fact because no-one in my excuse of a family could be bothered to tell me. Apart from your sister, who went to absolute extremes to find my phone number and give me the news. but I'd had no relationship with my mother. So I didn't really know what to say or feel. I wasn't sad. I wasn't upset or angry. Just kind of - flat. Like "oh, she died. Oh, well." I don't think I'll be sad when you go either. I'll likely just think "Well ,there goes a useless excuse of a man."

Anyway, I'd like to touch on you leaving my mother which led her to have a nervous breakdown. I understand you had your reasons. Maybe she was unfaithful, maybe she was too needy. Maybe she drank too much. Maybe she was a lot of things that made your relationship unbearable, or unviable. Maybe there were other things going on in your life that just got in the way. Maybe you were unfaithful, maybe you were at fault. Fair enough - these things happen, and I understand that not everyone’s relationship works out. But it wasn’t my fault - I didn’t cause those issues. Yet I took the brunt of the fallout. I got hurt the most. And damn, you really did hurt me, in ways that you can’t even begin to fathom. I couldn’t even live with my mother because her scumbag, paedophile partner said I looked too much like you, which meant I had to stay in the system. Not that going home to her was a possibility given how many times she had thrown me in care while she went out drinking and looking for her next husband. But even looking like you denied me any form of relationship with my mother! My sister (your firstborn child) was returned to my mother eventually, only to be interfered with sexually by that predator who everyone only knew as "Acker." As were my two half sisters from her second marriage who both had spent a few months here and there in care while my mother went drinking her life away. Did you even know that I was the only one who never went home? The only one who spent his whole life in care. My mother eventually got rid of the paedophile and was then able to raise my sister and two half-sisters normally. Can you imagine how that feels? I doubt it.

What I will say is this: I’m stronger than you – way, way stronger than you’ve ever been. I’m also smarter and braver than you. I am a better person than you. I was once a little boy who could think of nothing but getting back to his dad, obsessed with completing the journey back home. Now, I’m a grown man who would rather die than come looking for your approval.

I waited and fought and battled all my life to get back to you. I was ejected from that care system in an absolute state, without any support, without anyone to help me navigate through the vagaries and responsibilities of an adult existence. And I don’t honestly think the Social Services could have predicted how much they would eventually mess me up with their utter ineptitude and inability to find me a safe and stable environment to live in. When I eventually got out, battered and bruised and in an absolute mess from my life (the life you and my mother gave me,) the only thing I could think about was to find you. To be reunited with you because you must have missed me, must have thought about me through the years. God, I hoped you would throw your arms round me and apologise and tell me you were going to make it up to me, that it had all just been a massive mistake and that you would make it up to me. But, in typical Joseph Foster style, you let me down massively again and I was just delusional to believe there was an ounce of remorse in you. Here’s a confession for you: The day you told me in the street in Carlisle city centre: “I have my own family now, leave us alone” absolutely broke me - into a million pieces.

You destroyed me that day, in front of my friends and in front of Kai, who stood behind you looking smug.

But I’m a different person now. Learning to live with my trauma and my disorder while raising my children (you have three more amazing grandchildren, but believe me, they will hear everything about you and what you stand for should they ask.) I’m holding down a good job and doing general life stuff. I’m getting married when this coronavirus thing is done.

You should speak to your sister by the way, she’s done nothing to you – in fact when you didn’t want me, she tried to get me. She tried to do the right thing by her family. A shame her house was too small or her and Uncle Tez would have made great parents. Also, from what I’ve heard, most of your family think you’re an absolute embarrassment. I agree. I wish I wasn’t related to you, had never even heard of you. But I’m done hurting, done suffering because of you.

To Andy, Kai, James and David - and that thing you married - you are probably all kinds of hero, all kinds of amazing and likely can do no wrong.

To your first son, the one who you held so proudly on his shoulders on carnival day (I had that picture with me growing up all through the nightmare of my early years,) you’re a total failure. You no longer matter to me.

I realised recently that YOU are the wild animal, not me.

I have my own family now.

Goodbye