Teresa

 My mum....... Does she deserve that name? She was a hugely important part of my life at one time. During my teen years, I placed her on a pedestal and wanted to be like her. I didn't know her but I thought that if I was more like her, she would somehow realise and come back for me.

She left me with my grandmother when I was eight for an entire summer. I didn't think she was coming back and was quite content to go between my grandmother's and great grandmother's home, being fed decent meals and getting compliments. Looking back, that was probably the happiest time of my life. Possibly the only period where I wasn't plagued with fear and self disgust.

Sadly my mother did drag me out of there eventually with my great grandmother pleading with her to stop while trying to grab me from her wheelchair. My mother said that we could get mcdonalds and that was enough to encourage me to go. She never did get me the mcdonalds.

Life quickly reverted to what it had always been with her. Tiptoeing around her when I was allowed out of my room and dreading the outbursts of violence and hate. I could never quite work out why she seemed to hate me so much. It came out in little things - being forced to eat food that I hated - weetabix will always be a food that I can't eat, and then not being fed at other times. If my stepfather was working an evening shift I knew I wouldn't get fed. I would go into school, if it was a weekday, and I had to visit the office first. There my lunchbox would be checked (if I had one at all) and then I was taken into the headteachers office. Mrs Delaney was our head teacher and she would give me a plate of chocolate biscuits or some other treats.

I'd previously been in trouble at school for stealing from other children's lunchboxes, taking already eaten ape cores out of bins and having salmon paste sandwiches made with mouldy bread. I had 25 pence bus fair each day as I walked and got the bus myself and there had been days I'd spent the money on food at the shop next to the bus stop. I was usually beaten quite badly for acts of defiance like this but nobody particularly cared. 

My mother was arrested one time for how badly she'd lost her temper and was charged with assault. This was just before the children's act came into play in 1990 so there wasn't anything in place to protect children from violent parents. School tried to help me, documenting and logging all the bruising and making reports to social services. 

The night my mother was arrested I was taken to the hospital and a paediatrician wanted to keep me in but my mother came and got me. Reading my social services file a few years ago I can see that some people cared. Just not the ones who could do anything about it. We had been under social services for my entire life. For the most part they believed my mother that I was just naughty. As the years progressed, people started to become more aware that there were issues with her.