breathless

My own part in all of this makes me ashamed. Ashamed. Ashamed. But here it is... it had been so sweet at first. We had had some of the best times drinking prosecco on my sofa, laughing and laughing and just talking to each other. He was generous to a fault, funny and attentive and respectful.

But I didn't put my son first. I put him in a situation where he felt insecure and unwanted. Because actually he wasn't wanted. Here was a man who saw him as competition, as an inconvenience and annoyance. And for my own part? I was a struggling single mother who needed input and took it from the wrong source. I didn't believe in myself, I could not back myself, and so when the wraith-like spectre that was Lee came calling with his charm and seeming competence, I was only too quick to let him in.

Late in April when my son was recovering from chickenpox; better enough to go out but not enough to go to school, the three of us were in Costa coffee. I'd bought us all a drink and we were enjoying the early morning buzz of the town coming to life. Except that He wasn't enjoying anything at all. Suddenly he started asking me when we were going to have a weekend together, when were we going to have time to ourselves. I'd been talking about a festival I think, and how I'd be there with my friends in May over a weekend.
I see now that he was angry that the one child free weekend I had I was 'choosing' to spend it with my girlfriends. He gave this condescending, laugh as if I was ridiculous to think that it was acceptable to treat him that way.
But of course my son heard it all and took it in deeply. And it was my fault. I didn't guard him. I didn't protect him. I was too busy trying to make Lee OK. I abandoned my son for this man in that moment by not standing up and calling out his abusive bullshit.
The strange thing was we'd just come back from spending Easter weekend in west wales together, a weekend I had sacrificed being with friends because I just knew he wouldn't cope if I'd done that instead.
And on that weekend I'd cried and cried because I'd wanted to be with my son, with my friends, anywhere but that arid, awful place with him where there was only pressure to be different, to not cry, to not take the antidepressants I actually needed.

The only saving grace I have is that I was in survival mode. This man was trying to rip everything that supported me away. Everything. My friends, my son 'the inconvenience',  my faith (I was doing it wrong, 'thats not right...that's not how they do it, I've spoken to my  friends and none of them agree with what you do'), my job 'well that's not really work is it?!' or 'why don't you try and get a job here...' I was being eroded and I couldn't see it. All I could do was roll with the punches.

So much of what I went along with was non verbal. I just knew his limits, his sensitivities, what he could handle, what he wouldn't. I was the perfect codependent by then because he didn't even need to tell me anymore. I was already deeply afraid of him. It wasn't love, it was fear. And he didn't love me either. he hated me. And if that sounds dramatic, it really wasn't. He hated everything I was and did. Starting with the fact that I took citalopram.

It's not linear, this remembering. It stops and starts and breaks the line again and again. From a beginning made in frosty brilliance to a beach in Cornwall, just six months later. Late July, 2015.

I'd had a cold all summer, what started out as a cough had moved to my chest and stayed there, causing me to lose my voice completely at one point. 
From a devastating diagnosis of herpes in February my health had taken a beating. I was run down to the point of almost breaking but I could not voice it. Not once, that would never have done to show such weakness. And so I was croaky that day, but on the mend it seemed. I'd booked and paid for a campsite for three nights not far from my where family were staying so that I could spend time with my sisters, their children and our parents. 
On that day everyone was on the beach together, the sun was shining and the surf was up. He had been marvelling at me in my bikini, telling me I was close to perfection and things seemed to be easing out of something unspoken and rocky that I had put down to him finding being in a parental role difficult after so long.

The relationship with my son's father had degenerated again. He had become unreliable and evasive when pressed for details of his living arrangements, or requests for maintenance. To the point where he stopped contacting me for the six weeks prior to that day. He had told me he couldn't afford to come and see his son and I'd just left it there. It was nothing new: He often did this over the summer as he preferred to be drunk in a field to actual parenting. 
Needless to say this had put a strain on my relationship with Lee who really had little interest in being part of a family unit.
But out of the blue, that day on the beach when everyone was having a good time and the sun was shining, my phone beeped. A message from my son's dad. My anxiety was sky high, to the point where I could not read the message in case it was something aggressive so I passed the phone to Lee and asked him to read it for me.
Could my son go to his dad next weekend was all it read. Immediately Lee said great, we'll go away to west wales... 'of course', I said, 'why not?'

But then I remembered, the following weekend I'd already made arrangements to spend time with friends. Thinking that my son would be with me that weekend I'd organised a trip away and everything was in place. We were in the queue buying Lee something to eat when I remembered and I said it, almost off hand, 'Oh I just remembered I can't that weekend, I'm away with friends...'

It was like dropping an atom bomb. He was so silently angry. He called me selfish, told me that my timing was bullshit. Told me I put my friends before him and that we never spent any time together. I was shocked, made a joke of it... here we are on this beach together, spending time together... aren't we?
But it wasn't enough... he went on, in front of my son again, about how he never got to spend time with just me...
I dared to ask him to apologise for swearing and for saying all that stuff in my son's ear shot... a very quiet disagreement on a noisy crowded beach. But the way he retold it later I had demanded an apology in front of my entire family and humiliated him.
They were all oblivious of course.

In the car on the way back to the camp site that afternoon I started having difficulty breathing, my throat completely closing up. I was crying, telling him that i didn't plan this to upset him but that i wasn't going to change my plans, it was something I had already made arrangements for. It was non negotiable but it went on and on. My voice disappearing till I could no longer speak to justify myself.
Only to say, I think I need to go to hospital now.

We were due to go over to my sisters that evening, but as soon as we got there I had to ask my mum to call 111. I was so short of breath, my throat so tight I was worried I would stop breathing entirely. 
Sitting on the stairs of my sisters house with my mum on the phone I started shaking and shaking. I know it was just the relief of letting go, adrenaline flooding my body because I had driven myself to the point where I could only hand over responsibility.
He drove us both to AnE and I remember laying my head down on the reception desk and trying to breath and knowing that this was just stress. deep and extreme stress. Not asthma, not a chest infection, just my body refusing to cope any longer.

They put me on a ventilator, oxygen and steroids and gave me horse pills to take for a week. It was slow going that night in AnE, being a weekend there were so many coming in needing help. At 10pm Lee took my mum back to my sisters house and I waited to see the consultant. They floated the idea of keeping me in, and though I knew I didn't need it, all I wanted to do was let them lead me away to a quiet bed somewhere away from the fresh hell of Lee and his twisted, demented logic.

But they discharged me once I was breathing easier and my peak flow had gone up again. There was no problem with my oxygen levels, there was no problem with anything other than the massive stress this man kept applying.

In the car, as he drove me to my sisters, he pointed out that he had just paid for parking again. He told me that my mum had talked affectionately about my son's dad almost non stop. He also refused to stay at me sisters that night but went back to the camp site alone.
I slept in the warm dry room with my son in a ready bed at my side. In the middle of the night he woke up and exclaimed 'Mum! You're here' and cuddled up beside me. He and I, an island, as a Cornish storm blew outside.

It didn't end there with Lee, he didn't let it go. My trip to AnE bore no relevance to him, he did not let up or soften in the slightest. The next night he gave me an ultimatum of sorts, saying that he couldn't be with someone who didn't prioritise him. 
I said that he had to make a choice then and went off to the shower to weep silently. My voice a ragged whisper still. 
He backed down of course, but not off, he loved me, he would compromise, he would be the martyr and me the selfish neglectful girlfriend.

And on the way home I guiltily offered to pay for the petrol and he made sure to fill up his tank to the brim. All £40 of it.