Children don't come with a manual. What works for one child, will probably not work with another. Motherhood is, and was, haaaaaard!

Remember, I was a single mum.

I was an emotionally scarred single mum.

My own mother, had become a full-on junkie, courtesy of the very kind Jeanette. That's right, that last sentence is loaded with a ton of bitter sarcasm. Yup, speed supplies had locally ran dry, so my mother turned to the insightful waste of space, Jeanette, for drug use help. She suggested heroin, so that is exactly what my mum took. That was it, mum soon became a slurring and unscrupulous addict. When my son was a baby, she was actually a pretty good grandmother, but as soon as heroin came into her life, those days were gone.

After getting Jamie out of my life, one monster quickly replaced another. But those monsters weren't going to hold me back. I had my son, a new home, and part of my moving on from Jamie and my mum, involved me settling into living at my new house. It was a split-level two bed house, and I loved it. It was another new start for me. I craved that new start. My son was just over two years old, and I was grappling with so much—grappling with a junkie for a mother, grappling with permanently keeping Jamie away, and grappling with trying to carve out a new life for myself.

Having a child at the age of twenty one, had me lose a lot of friends, but it also gained me a few as well. While I was pregnant, I became friends with a girl who was also pregnant. Her name was Kirsty. I'd seen Kirsty around a lot over the years—in town, at pubs, clubs or parties—she was the local hard nut. I'll be honest with you, she used to scare the shit out of me. Kirsty had her own tragic backstory, which left her ending up in care homes and under the wings of a lot of social workers. Up until we were both pregnant, I avoided her. To this day, we laugh about that. We laugh about how Kirsty's face will often drop, if someone approaches her and says. "I remember you." Until that person can confirm to Kirsty that she hadn't ever beaten them up, she will squirm while that person talks to her. Yup, I tease her a lot about that. I can do that, because she's now one of my closest friends. When we both had our boys, and were both recovering from being in hellish relationships; we bonded.

We are now twenty six years into that bond now. Twenty six years of the most honest and faithful friendship that a girl can ever have. Kirsty came into my life, during a lonely and terrifying time. She became part of my journey to discovering myself again. For that, I'll forever be grateful. With our young sons, we both lost meaningless friendships, but they quickly were replaced with far more fulfilling friendships. Jamie never liked me having too many friends. Friends were a possible threat to his control over me. So when I was healing, I wrapped myself up in the arms of my true friends. Cora wasn't a mother, but she had always stuck by me. Kirsty, would also become someone who would faithfully stick by me. And it was while I was trying to find myself, that my dear Lucy returned back into my life. She had been busily making a successful career for herself at a local hairdressers in their admin department, but she somehow found her way back to me when I needed her most.

And I did need her.

I needed Cora, Kirsty, Jason, my beloved nan and gramp...I needed them all.

Motherhood was scary, and for me, it didn't ever come easy. My son, wasn't an easy baby or toddler. He cried a lot, was always hungry, and he always seemed so unsettled. Which I blamed myself for. He had a restless soul, because I wasn't a good mum and his father was a complete dick. I blamed myself for the unhappy child that he was, because in my stomach, I was only ever full of painful unhappiness. I think that unhappiness was fed to him through the placenta, it had cocooned him in the womb. So when he was born, that unhappiness was born with him.

That was what I thought. It is what I still believe. I got so much wrong with my firstborn son. For two weeks, I struggled to breastfeed him. I struggled to bond with him. In the end, I gave up. I wanted to be a good mum, I just think I was too tired and too traumatised to know how. I was young and inexperienced, so I often listened to others and not myself. That is always something I bitterly regret. When my son was a newborn, I was told by the midwife that I was to leave my baby to cry, otherwise I would have a demanding baby. I sadly listened. I went against every motherly instinct inside of me, and I would leave him to cry in his cot. That still breaks my heart. It still rips me apart inside. For as young and as inexperienced as I was, I wanted to pick my baby up. I wanted to comfort him. But I was told that if he had been fed, winded, had his nappy changed; that all of his infant needs had been fully met. So following what I was told, I would leave him to cry. Sometimes, I would cry because he was crying. All I wanted was for my life to be simpler, more easy, but the midwife had told me that if I kept picking up my baby, he would become needy and a difficult child. So, I stupidly believed that. I stupidly went against my own instincts because I thought that my motherly instincts were nothing against the advice of a professional midwife.

That midwife was wrong.

I truly believe that my son grew up being more needy and more demanding, because I was told to leave him to cry. He became an anxious and problematic toddler, because I didn't just pick him up and hold him.

It was a sad lesson to have been taught.

A time that I hate to look back on.

As a mother, I did my best.

Yet I often screwed up.

During the entire time when I was trying to settle in my house, learn all about being a mum and trying to find myself again; Jamie would randomly just show up and try to use our son as a way to slide himself back into my life, while my mum was using my bathroom to inject heroin in her arm.

I desperately wanted a normal life, but Jamie and my mother didn't want me to have that. When I loved Jamie, he had a tight hold on me, but my love for him had become nothing but dust in my heart. He knew that, and hated it. So he would try to use the only thing that still tied himself to me—our son.

Sometimes, he would show up late at night, demanding to see his boy. I would never open the door to him at such an inappropriate hour, so I would tell him from an upstairs window that if he wanted to see his son, that he would have to come at a far more reasonable hour, and at a time that was convenient to me. Jamie had lost his control over me, and until he found another girl to control and abuse, he wouldn't leave me alone. There were many times when he would scare me with his unpredictable and aggressive behaviour. I ended up getting a dog, because I knew that he was sometimes prowling around in my back garden, as I often found cigarette butts down by my back window.

Jamie didn't want me, but he didn't want anyone else to have me.

It was a frightening time, but I was stronger back then. I was determined to not let my fear for Jamie, take him back. Eventually, he did find himself another girlfriend. It didn't keep him completely away, but his random and frightening visits did become less and less.

My mother though, she just kept coming back. Our relationship was dissolving fast. I became sick and tired of her lies, her stealing from me, her blood being all over my bathroom walls from where she'd been injecting crap into her arm and flushing out her syringes.

I don't think I ever understood my mum, but when she was on heroin, I understood her even less. She just didn't care about anyone or anything, other than her next fix. The depth of her not caring, was realised when Jason had stood on a needle that had been discarded by one of her drugged up pals in her disgusting bathroom. Mum didn't think it was a big deal. She thought Jason was overacting when he took himself off to the doctors to have a batch of blood tests done to check whether he had caught anything from that dirty needle. No, she just didn't care.

My nan and gramp were deeply concerned at this point. They were worried that my mum was just using my home as a safe place to get wasted. Which was true, she was. In the end, I had to push her from out of my life too. She began putting me and my son at risk. Her drug taking was so bad, she ended up being in debt. Her boyfriend at the time, tried taking her to Bristol, to make a new life for themselves away from the heroin...but mum was an addict.

She returned to heroin.

She returned to the danger.

When I started getting scary, intimidating guys knocking on my door, wanting to know where my mum was, I knew that I had to protect myself and my son. The time had come to finally eject my mum from my life as well. All she ever brought into it, was her pathetic drama. She caused so many problems, so many sleepless nights...that I eventually had enough.

I had done the right thing.

Those guys eventually did catch up with my mum. They found her walking along a road, bundled her into the boot of their car, knocked out most of her teeth with a baseball bat, before dumping her on the side of another road. To get these guys off her back, she married some foolish old guy, who had agreed to pay off the drug debt owed to them. It was yet another demonstration of how unscrupulous my mother really was.

Myself and my mum would end up estranged for many years. And just like Jamie, I wouldn't miss her.