I can’t bear this. The emptiness of an empty house; I was goint to call it a “home” but without my children, the place I’m living in doesn’t feel like home. No laughing, no shouting, no arguing, no giggling, no crying, no recorder playing, no arguing over the computer, no one asking for a cuggle, or a snuggle, or a hug or telling me that they love me (”to the moon and stars and back againm,mummy”) that they love me, that they miss me, that they want to sit next to me at the dinner table, that they want to tell me about their day at school, about the fights in the playground, about the lesson they found boring, about the exciting new game they’ve invented, about the picture they’ve just drawn, about the pig they’re making in pottery, about the lunch that they didn’t like, about the cheating in the maths test…………………

No little person creeping into my room in the depths of night scared from a nightmare and wanting to snuggle up to mummy to comfort them and take away their fear.

Nobody running into my room in the morning to tell me that they managed to tie their shoe laces for the first time, that they’ve got themselves dressed without being asked, to ask me for their favourite breakfast, to ask me if they can sit next to me at the table as it’s their turn to sit next to me…..No chasing around trying to find a mislaid tie or a beret or the other plimsoll……No practising spellings or times tables over the breakfast table, answering the hundredth “why” question or explaining why God doesn’t have a mummy, or trying to work out how far we are away from the Sun, or why some people are mean to each other……..or why mummy and daddy can barely talk to each other…….or why they can’t see me more often…..or why the CAFCASS think mummy can’t see them more often…..

Nobody.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Just an empty house. The television adverts show me all the family adverts: adverts for family cars, adverts for washing your children’s dirty clothes, family holidays, family home insurance, children’s medicines to stop them coughing at night, calpol to help your baby sleep………I have been deprived of my “Right to live a family life” which, by the way (or at least in my case its “by the way”) is one of the Rights set out in the Human Rights Act…..

No family for me anymore.

Just an empty house. And silence.

I can’t bear it – it hurts too much…….It really hurts….

 http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Legal/Legal+briefing+The+Human+Rights+Act+1998.htm