My dad went to prison when I was 13, and it was a long time until I saw him again. It’s been a long time since I last saw him and, to be honest, I’m not sure how I want our relationship to be. His incarceration wounded me in profound ways, but I’ve built a life that is full of joy and full of love, despite the childhood difficulties I faced. I got engaged a few weeks ago, though I’m yet to tell my dad about it because I know there’s no safe way for him to be at my wedding. My mum raised me, and she’ll be the one to walk me down the aisle. My dad’s absence will not, unfortunately, be an anomaly.
He was arrested and imprisoned for drug offences. I was told about the police raid and his arrest, which happened on Christmas Eve, a few days later. My mum had been sitting on the news for 48 hours, because she didn’t want to ruin Christmas. We were driving somewhere – to some impromptu festive gathering, probably – and she pulled over. It was a little tin thing, the car, and the windows were forever steaming up. My mum would stop every so often and wipe them down with the cuff of her sleeve, so I figured that was why she’d stopped. But instead, she began to cry and said, ‘he’s gone and got himself arrested. You can’t see him this year.’ I don’t remember what happened next; perhaps there was no party, or perhaps we decided not to go.
In truth, I’d been waiting for him to get caught. I knew that he sold drugs, because he’d sometimes have them in the car and we’d drop them off to stranger’s houses on the way out somewhere. He’d invite his friends round to party and get high, and I’d be ushered to bed while it was still light out or sent to stay with my aunt. I don’t remember feeling relief when it finally came crashing down on him, on us, but maybe on some level I did. It meant I no longer had to carry the burden in secret, or make excuses not to go and feel as though I were letting people down.
We lived in a small, run-of-the-mill town and my dad’s arrest made the papers. The news spread across the counties and everyone at school knew what had happened, though no one asked me about it outright. The other kids talked about ‘chavs’ and ‘locking criminals up then throwing away the key’ in my earshot, and the teachers weren’t much better. Most of them ignored the issue, but the odd few spoke about my family being ‘scummy’ and ‘a bit rough’. I was from a ‘broken home,’ they said, but they didn’t offer me any support. I developed a deep sense of shame about what had happened, and my mental health took a nosedive.
My dad was released when I was 17, and I hadn’t wanted to see him. I did in the end, though, because everyone thought that was the right thing for the both of us, meaning I didn’t really have a choice. He hadn’t allowed me to visit him in prison, and he didn’t write to me or call, so it had been 4 years without contact. His sentence brought with it feelings that were too big and too complicated for me to understand and, in the time that he’d been away, I had developed an eating disorder. In the years to come, I would be hospitalised many times because of it.
I was angry and grief-stricken, but I had nowhere to take this. And I had so many questions, because most of what had happened, bar the basic facts, had been kept from me. I think people thought they were protecting me, but it still felt like something I had to bury deep – a truth no one was allowed to mention.
When he was married to my mum, I think my dad tried to do the ‘family thing’. We had very little money – he worked in a factory, as did most of the men in my family – but the surrounding fields and moorlands were ours to roam for free. I was seven when my parents got divorced, and I think that’s when I lost him. He began (or resumed, I’m not sure) partying hard, becoming unreliable. It felt like he didn’t really want to be a dad anymore, and he kept getting further and further away. I’m still not sure why he did it, though – why he risked losing everything, his only child included. Poverty and precarity, which is all we knew, drives people to do things they might not do otherwise, but I believe there was more to it than that. I just never dared to ask. I know he had his own difficult childhood, and I think trauma has shaped his life and his decision making. Those threads have a way of weaving themselves through the generations, unless someone is prepared to cut them loose.
Writing this, I realise it was a lot for a little girl to go through. It’s true that my dad’s imprisonment left an indelible mark, but it doesn’t define me. I never wanted to carry that thread through, pass it onto my children and have them pass it onto theirs. I’m proud to say that, though it lasted into adulthood, I fully recovered from my eating disorder. I’m also grateful for the life I have, and for the family and community I’ve created. I’m in love and I’m loved, and that’s the best feeling of all. It’s been no easy feat getting here, but it was never an impossibility.
Before I set pen to paper, I read the other stories on this blog. It struck me that, though everyone’s stories are unique, that feeling of shame runs through each of them. But that shame isn’t ours to bear. I’ve never shared my story so openly. I hope that, in doing so, I’ve helped to reduce the stigma, even just a little bit. And I’m proud to support Children Heard and Seen. I know that, had this amazing charity been available to me as a young person, it would have changed my life, both at the time and later on down the line. Children with experience of parental imprisonment have wonderfully rich gifts to share with the world, because every story is one of strength, hope and resilience. I think few children get through it unscathed, but they can get through it – and thrive! – with the kind of support Children Heard and Seen provides.