Advanced warning – Not a humorous post (sorry)
So the time has come, as we both knew that it would. Our oldest child is about to attain the heady age of 18 and we need to address the elephant in the room. The elephant, in this case, is the 3 bedroom house that you still live in and I still pay for.
Of course it is not just you, our son and daughter live there and your current partner oh and your daughter who shares a room with ours. We both knew that this day would come, it should be etched in your mind after all the state sponsored lawyers fought hard to achieve this among many other wounds while you continued to sleep with the third party in our marriage.
As in everything else I have forgone revenge, ignored hatred and looked after my children. I have provided the home that any spare prick could enter if he called you good looking (hey I ain’t specsavers am I ). I won’t lie, the mortgage has often been a relatively easy payment, in cash terms, but sometimes not so. If there is a credit for going above and beyond then I should maybe earn it for paying the mortgage from a hospital bed (no sick pay here) or when I had no work. There may even be points for paying a mortgage whilst living in cesspits over pubs or on mates floors, if so I claim them now.
It is ok I know my role, I guess I always did. I am here to provide and I will ALWAYS look after my gorgeous children. So you have had some 16 years to make provisions, you have had a number of bequests and a number of partners living rent free how did that work out?
Let me tell you how it worked out for me, I couldn’t remortgage because I was bound to a house I couldn’t enter. I missed my children so terribly that I cried as I shuffled in the car to get to sleep or waited for the party to end so I could grab a sofa, I didn’t miss my bed because I knew by then that three of us shared it. So what did I do? I worked, I worked hard and then I worked some more but you knew that I would because that’s why you chose me, you knew it was who I was, an easy mark.
So I moved into a rental, the best that I could do as I was shackled to our home. I cleaned cigarette butts from under the bed in the only furnished let that I could find. I made the best second home for our children that I could it was all that I could do. Our children asked questions of my accommodation that left me crying at night, I wanted to provide an example of life, of what you could achieve if you worked hard, but instead I demonstrated how to apply pest powder.
Am I proud of my life? No, quite simply I am ashamed, ashamed of how little I have achieved and how poor a parent I have been but more than anything I am devastated that you are the mother to two of the most perfect people in the world.
So the day came, we knew it was coming. How did you handle it? How about telling the kids that the old man hasn’t done too bad? after all you slept around and he kept at it, kept his cool and kept on paying. How about mentioning that he didn’t always use that deodorant but on that ice cream trip he had slept in the car and had no chance to change his clothes but still would have cut his arm off to see your smiles. You could mention how he paid the mortgage when he had nothing coming in, never faltered, never failed to keep a roof over you and whoever s head? How about telling them that 16 years on they can still make that grizzly old man cry and have tonight?
Nope because, and I learned this a long time ago, it is and will always be about you. So take your opportunity, enjoy the sympathy as the ‘evil’ man stops paying the mortgage on the house that he first mortgaged at 20 years of age. Yes, my mortgage was long before you because, unlike you, I know the meaning of work. Enjoy the fruits of my labour and hide any realism behind your sense of entitlement. Enjoy scaring our children because you feel it will help you extract some additional sympathy from the situation, above all never admit what you are.
Don’t give me a second thought, don’t look at the pictures of the doting father and wonder how this has affected him. Don’t for one minute think of how you have systematically poisoned the relationship he has with his children for no tangible gain. Make me into your demon and I will just plod through after all its what I am here for isn’t it? I will cling desperately to the hope that one day our children will realise that I was the good guy and that I love them and I will hope I am still here when that day comes.