Having children

As I got a bit older in my twenties... when I was about twenty four, I met my husband, who I had grown up with previously like at school. Not at school, but we met along the way.

So I met him previously before my first son was born, so I knew him. And then we met up again in our early twenties and we got married when I was 26 because I fell pregnant. And I was a mother of three by the time I was 26. I used to drink all day when my husband would go out to work cause the shop was just up the road and they had cheap wine as well... like, it was only $4.99 at the time.

I used to go up there with my friend and we used to get the wines out, and just sit at home drinking all day, doing our children too. Like, I was a pretty good mother. Well that’s what I thought. That, you know, I could do my babies, clean the house, do the gardening... but I would tip all the wine, my chardon into a coke bottle so my neighbours couldn’t see, cause we didn’t have fences or anything... so they wouldn’t think that I’m drinking.

And you know, my husband wouldn’t know because I would act like I hadn't had a drink. And then one day he actually came home. And he sprung me. “You have been doing this a lot, haven’t you?” And I said “no no no, I haven’t”.

Then I just started lying about where I was going, what I was up to... because I had to get out and have a drink.

That went on for a few more years. Then when I was about 33. I realised... and I had seven children by then... I was an ugly person (crying). I treated my kids like shit. I called them every name under the sun.

With other children, I could be nice to them, speak nicely to them. But with my own, I just sort of had this anger inside of me. I felt like I was being a mother, but it was never given to me. Like, I never had the parents. I didn’t have any skills of being a mother, and I was like trying to pluck everything out of thin air to accommodate these children.