A good environment for children...or not?

Did I create

A good environment

to bring children into…or not?

Well, before I attempt to answer this question, I’m going to have to divert a bit to bring you up to speed – just in case you haven’t read my story. In the last section – where I’d pretty much got my act/my life together in terms of reaching adulthood, all set for a constructive future. I mentioned that I’d started to travel with friends. And, yes, it did escalate a bit…which meant that I decided to join up with a friend from boarding school and travel overland to Iran. Yes, far-fetched, I can hear you say, except the idea was based on travelling to meet my friend’s brother who was teaching in Teheran. A final couple-of-months travel-fling, before settling into steady employment. Well, that was the plan. So, we did travel overland to Teheran – which included being caught up in the out-of-body experience of an earthquake in Istanbul, before eventually arriving at our destination.

As my friend’s brother was teaching on that particular day, he delegated his housemate to come and pick us up. And, what a housemate that was…a flashy, dark-eyed, handsome Iranian – who, as we got out of our coach, was leaning casually against an even flashier red sports car.

For me, the first glance of this guy, was all my pop-idol dreams coliding together at the same moment on that one person. May be that was the moment when any sense I’d recently found deserted me. In that instant, I was in love, infatuated and emptied of any practical thought except THIS (whatever this is…!) was it…

If, I hadn’t been under age (21 in those days), I daresay, my parents would have been unable to get me home again…and goodness knows what might have happened to me, what might have been the outcome.

So, perhaps, read – or re-read my story again, at least the final part entitled ‘Consequences’.

Now, half a century or so on, you might be interested to know, the consequences of all this still weigh me down. What was I thinking about…?!

So I return to the question I raised at the beginning of this ‘Did I create a good environment to bring children into – or not? The simple answer is “No, I did not”. So just where shall we start on our examination – our journey through all the issues?

PS Did I hear someone raise the subject of Personal Responsibility? Hmmmmm!

If you haven’t read my story… I wonder what you’re anticipating will come next on this journey…? Just a holiday fling from which I returned to the UK with a few life-experience dents, ready to continue along the recently-achieved sensible life-path where I’d left off before heading off to Iran?

Well, not a bit of it. I did return home to the UK from Iran – but only under pressure (under the firm arm of the British Embassy, actually), as I was still under age. And, oh yes, I’d managed to get engaged to my ‘Iranian prince’ – with a flashy diamond and turquoise ring to prove my status.

And, just a few months after I’d got back to the UK -courtesy of the air ticket my Father had made the mistake of sending to him (in response to the monster tantrum I’d thrown on my arrival back home), my fiance arrived in the UK too – conveniently just before my 21st birthday. So, as my parents refused to give their permission to my under age marriage, as soon as I reached 21years, we got married anyway and my parents had no choice but to go along with the registry office wedding. It was probably a small glum event, but I don’t suppose the mood reached whatever cloud I was on.

Of course, we had no money, nowhere to live and, only once we were married was my new husband allowed to stay in the UK and look for a job. So, I suppose you could say that as the necessities of life hadn’t properly surfaced to the top of our to-do list, my Father took up the reins of responsibility that we seemed to lack, found us a flat and furnished it.

Nine months later – surprise, surprise (well, it was to me!), my beautiful calm daughter arrived – and a further year after that the equally beautiful but full-on demanding little person that was my son.

And with the arrival of my children a third factor arrived on the scene in the shape of my rapidly escalating personal responsibility – which continuously screamed at me “what have you done?”

How could I have brought not one, but two dependents – with all the associated full-on demands of day and night life into an environment possibly created in Lalaland – but, actually, with more of a horror-movie status.

As we had no previous experience of day to day living together as a couple when the first child arrived – but especially when both children were part of the scene, the cracks very quickly started to appear.

I hadn’t even noticed before his arrival my husband’s unhappy relationship with alcohol. It wasn’t all day everyday – but just when he did drink he couldn’t stop. And when he did drink his relaxed attitude morphed into an inhuman violence machine mainly aimed at me. Not a good backcloth for the children to develop in – no matter how hard I tried to keep going and compensate.

And as the mornings after his increasing sporadic drinking bouts meant he increasingly couldn’t get up to go to work (yes, he’d got a really good job) – so, eventually, his employers ran out of warnings and gave him the sack. And money – never easy, especially when I had to stop working altogether to look after the children, was a major stressor.

So, I had no choice, but to go back to work and become the breadwinner and it didn’t take long to realise that I didn’t dare leave the children in the care of their father. But one of the luckiest steps I ever took, was in my choice of childminder – an amazing Mum of four of her own, she quickly read the writing on my wall and stepped up to support – and long-term too, all of our needs. I could not have managed without her

As time/the years moved on, nothing got any better and my husband’s drinking episodes were further aggravated by increasing mental health issues – loss of reality, sectioning and an eventual diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. An even worse backcloth to bring up children against.

In all of this chaos – the only positives I have ever found, are that somehow I managed to keep going, tried to make sense for the children – of what had to be made sense of, and, most important of all, suspend my own judgement/my own pain so that the chlldren could form their own views – which, hopefully, would include a long term understanding for and relationship with their Dad.

So, as you can see, the situation couldn’t go on. And when, in one of his better periods, my husband decided to go back to Iran to see if he could somehow make a go-between business between our two countries (he couldn’t), I found the courage to start divorce proceedings. It took nearly two further hellish years to complete the proceedings, sell the house and go our separate ways – just about in tact.

Not long after we were able to go our separate ways, my Father’s long-held dream to send my son to boarding school, became a reality. So, before his eighth birthday my small, but already conflicted son – together with his trunk, were delivered to the boarding school that my Father had once attended. I should have put my foot down, said “no” to my Father, kept my son at home and may be the outcome might have been different…..but I didn’t.

So, I return to the question I originally raised “Did I create a good environment to bring children into – or not?” The simple answer is “No, I did not”. And now, half a century or so on, you might be interested to know, the consequences of all this still weigh me down. What was I thinking about…..?!

Did I create