I remember it as though it were only yesterday. It was a normal day during the middle of the summer holidays over fifteen years ago now. We were having a nice day out with our Aunt when all of a sudden my mother turned up from out of nowhere and bungled us all into the car, which had been packed with clothes, blankets and other supplies. Wasting no time on explanations she tucked us away underneath the blankets and before we knew it we were halfway across the country.
What followed was a three-hour car journey, the first of many that we were to make as a family once a month every month for the next five years, a journey we contemplated in silence. One of my mother’s friends was in the car with us and she did her best to try and lighten our mood, but after a while she soon realised that she wasn’t getting anywhere and decided to stop. My mother spoke not a word.
The next day all I could remember was being sat in the living room of this strange and empty house, in Nottingham, ripped away from nearly all the family and friends that I had ever known with only my mother and siblings for stability. Years later I would come to hate my parents for what they’d done. My father for his complacency, my mother for her desperation and both of them for putting us through their train wreck of a relationship when they couldn’t be civil to one another every time we went back to Ely.
I know that our separation wasn’t as nearly as traumatic as I have known others to have been but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t as difficult for us to get over it.
If you would like to talk to anyone about separation or other things, please contact Meic, the national information, advice and advocacy helpline for 0-25s in Wales. You can contact Meic by phone (080880 23456), text (84001), instant message (www.meic.cymru) or email (help@meic.cymru) between 8am and midnight.
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