I got the call on Sunday morning. My mum’s voice was steady, the way it always gets when she’s holding everything together for everyone else. She told me straight, no softening it: my dad had taken his own life on Saturday night. Just like that. No warning, no long explanation, just the plain fact of it. I sat on the edge of my bed in my flat, still half asleep, and waited for the feeling to hit me. It didn’t. Not properly. I said all the right things on the phone, asked if she was okay, offered to come down, but even as the words came out they felt strange in my mouth, like they belonged to someone else. When I hung up I just sat there in the quiet, staring at nothing, trying to work out what I was supposed to do with the news.
He left when I was seven. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t. My mum sat me on the bottom step of our little house in Basildon and told me he’d gone to live somewhere else. She said he was having a midlife crisis, that he’d met someone else, that sometimes grown-ups make choices that don’t make sense. I remember asking if he was coming back for my birthday. I remember the look on her face when she said no. That was the last proper conversation I had about him for a long time. He didn’t say goodbye. There was no big dramatic scene. He just disappeared from our lives and started a new one somewhere else with someone else.
Mum never turned him into a monster in front of me. She kept it clean. She’d say things like “your dad wasn’t ready to be a dad” or “some people aren’t built for staying,” but she never called him names or filled my head with hatred. I did that part myself. Even as a kid I knew what he did was wrong. I felt the absence of him everywhere. Birthdays, school plays, Christmas mornings, sports days. Other kids had dads who showed up. Mine didn’t. Mum tried so hard to make everything special that it almost made it worse, because I could see how much effort it took her. She worked, she raised me, she never once made me feel like I was the reason he left. She just got on with it.
As I got older the anger settled into something colder. Indifference, mostly. He became this background figure who existed on paper but not in any real way. I didn’t look for him. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t want updates. When Mum would occasionally mention that he’d moved again or sent a late Christmas card, I’d just nod and change the subject. It was easier to keep him as this vague shape than to let him take up any more space in my life than he already had. He’d already taken enough by leaving.
Now he’s gone for good, and I’m still not sure what I’m meant to feel about it.
I keep waiting for the grief to arrive. I thought it would hit me in a big way, like a wave I’d have to fight against. But it hasn’t come. Not yet, anyway. Instead there’s this strange, flat kind of nothing sitting in my chest. Not peace exactly, just an absence of the big emotions I expected. I feel guilty for that. Guilty that I’m not crying more, guilty that I’m not falling apart, guilty that part of me is almost relieved that I’ll never have to decide whether to let him back into my life or not. I know that sounds cold. I’ve spent the last few days wondering if there’s something wrong with me for not feeling more devastated. But the truth is, he was never really there to begin with. Not in any way that mattered. So how do you properly grieve someone who was already gone?
I feel angry too. Angry that after walking away from us when I was seven, he still managed to make his death something we have to deal with. Angry that my mum, who raised me on her own and never once made me feel like a burden, now has to handle the funeral and the questions and the clearing out of his things. She didn’t deserve that. She still doesn’t. When I spoke to her yesterday she sounded tired but steady, the same way she always sounds when life tries to knock her down. She told me she’d been sorting through some of his belongings and I could hear in her voice that she was already moving through it in her own quiet way. She’s always been the strong one. She’s the one who stayed. She’s the one who showed up every single day. And now he’s gone and she’s still the one holding it together.
I keep thinking about that little girl on the bottom step. Seven years old, asking if her dad was coming back for her birthday. I wonder what she’d make of me now, sitting here in my flat in London, not sure if I care that he’s dead. Part of me thinks she’d understand. Part of me worries she’d be disappointed that I’m not more broken up about it. The truth sits somewhere in the middle. I don’t hate him any more. That would take more energy than I have left to give him. But I don’t love him either. I don’t miss him. I don’t have warm memories of him reading me stories or taking me places or doing any of the things dads are supposed to do. What I have is the memory of him leaving and the life my mum and I built afterwards without him.
And we did build something good. It was messy and loud and sometimes really hard, but it was ours. Mum worked herself into the ground so I could have what I needed. She never left. She never chose someone else over me. She just kept going, day after day, year after year, until I was old enough to stand on my own. I moved to London, I found my voice, I built this strange and beautiful life with The Coven and my writing and all the women who show up for each other. None of that needed him. We made it work without him. So now that he’s gone, I’m left with this quiet space where he used to be. Not a hole, exactly. More like a room in the house that was never really used. You walk past it every day until eventually you stop noticing it’s there. And now the door’s been closed for good.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to mourn the man or mourn the idea of what a father was meant to be. I don’t know if I’m allowed to feel relieved that I’ll never have to have the conversation about whether he gets to be part of my life again. I don’t know if the numbness means I’m broken or if it just means I already did my grieving a long time ago when he walked out the door. All I know is that I’m still here. Still standing. Still writing. Still showing up for the people who never left. My mum is still here too, still steady, still the one who raised me when he decided he didn’t want to. And maybe that’s the part that matters most. Not how I feel about his death, but how we both kept living after he chose to walk away. I think that’s what I’ll hold onto. Not the man who left, but the woman who stayed, and the daughter who learned how to keep going anyway.
Quick Hertfordshire update.
Most of you found me through the adverts, and I’ve always had a couple of no-go zones where I’m not allowed to post. Essex is the big one, obviously, including my home town. It causes too much trouble for people if I do. Now it looks like Hertfordshire’s been added to the list too. I don’t actually know why. My guess is it’s too close to Essex and bad news travels.
It’s a bit of a pain, I’m not gonna lie. Certain posts make me a decent amount of money, so cutting off a whole county stings a bit. But at the end of the day, I’d rather just wipe the area and keep the peace. I don’t want my posts causing problems for friends or people I know. It’s not worth it.
So if you’re in Hertfordshire and you like my stuff, just throw a sub on here. You’ll get everything straight to your email and you won’t see the adverts any more. It’s free to follow, takes two seconds to set up. And if you write too, I’ll follow you back. I don’t share my follower list with anyone, so don’t worry about that.
Sometimes you’ve just got to cut certain places off to protect your peace. It feels a bit over the top wiping out a whole county, but I’d rather do that than keep causing drama. My life’s actually good right now and I’m happy, so if I have to make a few sacrifices to keep it that way, then that’s what I’ll do.
And listen, this is the part I really want to say…
The death of my father has made me think.
If you want something in life, fucking take it.
I don’t mean be a prick for no reason, but if there’s something you really want, something that lights you up, something you’ve been quietly craving, stop putting everyone else first. Stop worrying about who it might upset or what people might think. Your life is yours. If going after what you want means pissing a few people off, burning a few bridges, or cutting certain things out completely, then do it. I’m cutting out a whole county to keep my life contained and happy. That’s two whole counties. I don’t get a lot of traffic from those places anyway, but sometimes you have to break things to create new ones. One day I’ll have a boyfriend, I’m sure, and we do it for that, so why not do it for yourself.
Don’t shrink yourself or water yourself down just to keep other people comfortable. If it’s important to you, go and get it. Be a bit selfish about the things that actually matter to you. Because at the end of the day, no one else is living your life for you.