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True Life Roomies Stories

Foxy Mum of The Year Nominee SnG

We were always arguing, my Mum and I, as far back as I can remember, just seemed destined not to get on. I got on better with my stepfather David, who lived with us. In fact, he was the one that made life seem bearable back then. Until the unthinkable happened that was.

It was July 2004, in middle of the night when the police came. I was 13. I was staying over with my grandfather. I’d often end up there when my mother and I were fighting.

"Your daddy’s had an accident," the police officer told me. "He’s in hospital". But there was no accident. My stepfather had been suffering from depression, and that night he’d tried to kill himself.

I can’t remember how it felt. I had so many emotions. I kept thinking of the argument my mother and he had had. It was hard not to blame her.

I was the only one who went to visit him in hospital. I spoke but he couldn’t answer. He just mimed back ‘I love you’. I didn’t go again, I just couldn’t. It was too upsetting.

A few weeks later David tried to take his life again, pulled his breathing apparatus out. This time, by the time they found him it was too late.

I felt I couldn’t go back to my Mum’s house after that. The memories were too painful. My two older brothers had moved out, my two younger sisters were in foster care and my only option was to live at my Dad and stepmother’s house. They were in the middle of a divorce and he was drinking too much, but I didn’t want to go into care so I moved in there.

I shared a room with my stepsister Laura, then 14, who I’d only met a few months before. She was messy, used all my stuff and we’d squabble a lot. It felt like torture sometimes. I got on well with my stepmother though, so it wasn’t all bad.

I lived there three years before Dad finally moved out. I couldn’t go with him and it wasn’t right to stay, so I went back to live with my mother again, running back to my step-mum’s when it really got bad.

In September 2007 I met my boyfriend Steven and within a few months I was staying at his house most nights. I got on really well with his family, was welcomed like a daughter by his parents Rachel and Ian. It was great.

Then, one month later, things really blew up with my Mum. We had a huge argument and I ran to Steven’s house. As soon as I got there the phone rang. It was my mother, telling me my bags were outside her flat. She doesn’t live in a very nice block, it’s full of alcoholics and drug addicts, and she’d thrown them into the passage. I didn’t know where to turn.

Then suddenly, right when I felt most desperate, my luck seemed to change. "Bring them here," Rachel offered reassuringly. “Bring them here and come and live with us".

I couldn’t believe it. For the first time in years I felt really cared for. And it didn’t stop there. Rachel, Steven and Ian became a mountain of support to me. They took me to the council office and helped me fill out my benefit forms, drove me everywhere I needed to go. Rachel taught me to do housework, how to look after myself. Most of all she was just there for me, whenever I needed to talk. I was part of a family.

Then the 8th August this year, Steven and I moved into a flat of our own. Rachel and Ian helped us every step of the way.

Having found them doesn’t stop me loving my real Mum of course. I’ve just learned to accept that we can’t live with each other, or in fact without each other. If anything happened to her I would be devastated. It’s just that we can’t live under the same roof. So now, after years of struggling to do just that, I couldn’t be happier that I’ve got my own place, a place I can finally call home.