Under pressure

I am still procrastinating over starting this whole legal and local process of taking daughter on full time. There's solicitors to set in motion to get Parental Responsibility and start thinking about getting a Residency Order. There's teachers and heads of year to contact to let them know I'm on the case with her educational progress and ask for help if it's needed. There's forms to fill in which open up my simple finances for all to see, and forms for all manner of benefit and housing applications to be made.

And there, hovering in the background like a scorpion ready to strike is daughter's mother, who's finally contacted our daughter after a few weeks being incommunicado. Her first interaction with her daughter in more than a month and it's full of lies - 'my phone was broken, I lost my free texts blah blah fucking blah.' Yes, you managed to text me two days after your phone broke so I know you're full of shit. Don't lie to your daughter because now she comes to accept it as fact and rarely trusts anything you say.

It's eating away at me now that I'm stalling and putting it off. It almost feels slightly self-destructive and it's the first time I've felt anything like that since I finished my counselling. This in its own right scares me quite a lot. It's comforting that I recognise the warning signs and now I'm in a position to do something about it. That something is pulling my finger out and starting the balls rolling on these applications and processes. That analogy paints a picture in my mind - that once I've put the effort in and started the balls rolling, their momentum will carry them some way until I need to give them a little push in the right direction.

I am very scared. It's only been over the past couple of weeks that I've felt the walls closing in somewhat, both in a metaphysical sense and one of metaphor. I hadn't realised until recently how the pressure and responsibility of suddenly becoming a full-time father has effected me. I also keep coming back to the housing situation and the fact that I don't really have any personal space or 'me time'. My small house feels incredibly small now there's another person living there and as much as I'd never, ever turn her away, I'd really like to sleep in a proper bed with a proper duvet instead of a sleeping bag and proper pillows instead of the rubbish ones I'm using.

I suppose though that these latter matters are trivial and transient to say the least. If I get on the case, new accommodation is simply a few months and a professional decision away and will be backed-up wholly by social services, so if I can deal with things for a time it should settle down eventually.

As far as the pressure and responsibility are concerned, I'm more than happy to take them on in return for the incredible gift of having my daughter around every day. She's just such a beacon of brightness and amusement, so thoughtful and kind. Oh, but there's the catch I think. Remembering how horrible and eternal the pain was when she first moved out with her mum nearly twelve years ago, I'm terrified I'll have to watch her leave again if her mother digs her claws in and decides she wants her back.