The Uphill Walk & The Downhill Man

I was 7 when I first started walking myself to school. My mum was a full time nurse at Bristol’s Children’s Hospital and had to commute in the early hours of the morning, dropping my brother off at secondary school along the way, leaving me to wake myself up using my hot pink Barbie alarm clock. I usually packed my bag and laid out my uniform the night before, but I usually forgot something each day; my lunchbox, my homework, my house keys, my P.E. kit (totally wasn’t intentional). The walk wasn’t far. One steep hill that never got any easier to climb, a few suspicious alleyways, zebra crossings and a rundown Co-op later, I’d arrive at school ten minutes early or ten minutes late, never in between. My teacher’s never seemed cross. They knew why I was late. In fact, they knew much more than me. You don’t understand much when you’re seven years old, least of all the reoccurring disappointment of one’s father, sleeping until midday whilst his daughter takes herself to school.

I used to worship him. I used to tell all the kids at school that he had to sleep during the day, because he worked for the tooth fairy at night. I used to think he was the greatest man in all the world, and I was his little girl, and nothing would ever change that. But when you get older, you start noticing things. You start comparing your family dynamic to how other families sit and talk at the dinner table. You start noticing how little your parents actually kissed. You notice no wedding band on your mum’s ring finger. You realise it’s your mum who comes home from an 8 hour shift and 2 hour commute to cook dinner and make your school lunches and iron your uniforms and ask about your homework. It’s your mum who shows up to your parent evenings and nativity plays. You learn what breadwinner means, you find prescribed pills in your mum’s second-hand Radley purse and look the name up to find they’re antidepressants, you pick apart the sadness in your mum’s eyes and the anger in your brother’s and the emptiness in your father’s, and that’s when you ask your mum to leave him. But all she does is smiles and says, “He’s your dad and he loves you.”

I’m 20 now and my parents split several years ago. Despite living off of my mum’s money as an NHS worker of 30 years, living in the house she bought, driving the car she owned, eating the food she cooked off of the plates she bought, it was my father who asked to separate. I remember asking my mum why she put up with him for so long. Her answer was simple: her children. Despite the foul words and empty promises he spewed, she pretended to love him for the sake of her children. She did love him, but it’s hard to love a man who thought himself too proud to get a normal job. It’s hard to love a man who sat on the sofa all day making important calls with his fellow CEOs. It’s hard to love a father who used to sleep in on Christmas Day, and still forgets what day you were born, and believed your panic attacks were just for attention. But hey, he was the one who took the dogs out. He paid for the phone bill. You lent him 600 quid, but he'll pay you back. He calls you every once in a while. He stuck around, right? “At least we have a dad,” my brother used to say.

7 year old me didn’t understand what she was carrying on those walks to school. She thought she was late, or forgetful, or independent, or mature beyond her years. She didn’t know she was learning the shape of love by feeling its absence. At 20, I understand the truth in a sad sort of way, but truth nonetheless. My mum taught me what it means to stay, even when it hurts, and my father taught me what it means to leave long before even realising it. Maybe it’s a strange sort of mercy of growing up: understanding the people who made you without letting their lives define your own.

I walk myself everywhere now. Not because I have to, but because I know where I’m going.