He Forgot???

As some of you will know this week I’ve been having the week from hell.  A variety of things have contributed to this, the kitchen not being functional, the car being off the road until I pay £350 to get it fixed and make it road worthy, the car hire people taking 5 days to give my deposit back and making me overdrawn at the bank.  The thing that upset me the most though is Chicken Licken’s Dad.

I’ve been reluctant to blog about him because it’s such a personal thing and the issues that he and I have going on at the moment are more about him and Chicken Licken building a relationship than about the way he treats me and therefore I figure that it’s not my story to blog about. However, this week we had our first argument since he’s been back in our lives and I guess that now makes it my story.

The short version of our relationship is that he was a very good friend of mine with ‘extra’s’ we got pregnant and he lost all interest because he was young and stupid.  He met Chick once when she was first born and then again when she was 4 months old.  We saw him around in the intervening time as we live in the same Town and it was kinda hard to avoid him and then he went off and had a baby with someone else and all contact stopped save the occasional sighting.  At that time I was happy to let it go thinking that I could do a better job of bringing her up on my own than if I forced him to be involved when he clearly didn’t want to be.  I accept full responsibility for letting him off so easy but I guess I was jealous of him being all settled and happy when I could barely keep a roof over our head or food on the table and it was so much easier to be angry at him than to deal with him.

Basically this year about much soul searching from me and 10,000 requests from Chicken Licken I got in touch with him and told him that he needed to man up and be involved on her life. This of course on the understanding that he only gets involved if he is prepared to give it 110% and not mess her around. So, for most of this year I have been dealing with them trying to build a relationship.  Without going into details for Chicken Licken’s sake this has involved a lot of stress, tears and adjustment on her part and me being super nice to her Dad and trying to soothe his fears at the same time whilst finding the time to meet at his request and convenience.

I think that throughout this time I have been pretty impeccably behaved trying not to rock the boat and to keep them both happy and help them build a relationship.  I never say a bad word about him in front of her and try and keep everything about him positive.  I save my rants, fears and hopes for only my friends ears and my blog!!!!  So, for the past 6 months all has been fine.  He’s called and spoken to her every other week and e-mailed me every week to see how things are and she’s had a supervised visit with him at least once a month (neither of them is yet comfortable enough to be left alone together).  Until this week!  He was supposed to come around on Monday night and just didn’t turn up….no phone call, no e-mail, nada.  Ok so I comfort Chicken Licken and make excuses for him about he must have been delayed at work etc.

On Tuesday he calls me in the middle of the work day (he knows that I work until 6pm) to ask if he can see her at 4.30pm that afternoon.  Ermmm……sorry where did I miss telling him the part that I have to work full time to support us? Oh of course I’ll skip work to come meet him???? I said no and asked him what what had happened on Monday night?  Well he was too busy training for his next cage fight at the gym and forgot.  Yep that’s right he FORGOT about our 6 year old daughter.  Well excuse me if I just freak the f*uck out for a second.  While I’m trying to stop my head exploding he says well if I don’t see her today then I can’t see her for another two weeks ‘cos I’m taking time off to take care of my other child.  Ok so I’m already trying to calm down and then I can’t help myself, I go off like a rocket.  So he can’t spare 20 minutes to come see Chick but he can take 2 weeks off to take care of daughter number 2.  I may have given him a piece of my mind, along with a few more colourful words (at roughly the decibel of a plane taking off) and reiterated the fact that I only let him get involved with her on the condition that he was 110% involved and within 6 months he’s finding excuses and forgetting to come see her.

Now Chicken Licken generally copes with all of this much better than I do.  She just shrugs and says ‘well I see him next time’ and I have to stop myself from stamping on his foot or hitting him with something extremely heavy!!!!  I find it so hard that he can hurt our daughter so easily and without any thought for what she may think or feel and I think it hurts me more because it reminds me exactly of my childhood.  The waiting around for a Dad who never shows up and Mum having to pick up the pieces and try and reassure us that he does still love us, he’s just rubbish.  I guess now I’ve had my little rant about him I’ll go back to holding my tongue and trying not to physically hurt him whilst telling my daughter that she is the most loved and treasured thing in my world at least!!!!!