Aftermath

I sit on my bed and read the Guardian.
Maisie has gone shopping with Sylvie who has anorexia. Sylvie is very sad and going shopping with her makes Maisie feel sad too. It also makes her feel fat. Maisie is not fat, she is perfect but she has a genetic propensity for feeling very fat so I am worried.
Zac is being very quiet in the playroom. Bim has gone home. Bim said he was very sorry. I feel sorry for Bim.
I read the Guardian family section which normally makes me feel very inadequate. Today the Guardian family section is oddly reassuring. A woman has written about how her daughter died from taking MDMA. She says she is smothered. Her daughter is very beautiful and her daughter is dead. I am glad my children aren't dead, although I probably shouldn't have had them.
Then I read that Lucien Freud wasn't cut out to be a father. I read about what an extraordinarily bad father he was and how his son is very sad about this but has come to terms with it. I feel quite liberated. I am a very bad mother because of the wine and the rowing and the choice of father but actually it transpires that you don't need father much.
Phew.
I go downstairs with The Guardian and I read this to Zac who is sitting on the sofa next to some vomit staring at the floor.
"Young men often come with a narrative in which they feature as victim. By seeing myself as victim," recounts David McAdam Freud, "I felt powerless and blamed my weakness on strength I granted others. I can now own the responsibility for accepting or changing these things."
Zac looks quite interested. "So you see," I say. "You need to stop wanting something from someone who can't give it to you. John is not a bad man, he is just remarkably unsuited to being a father. Lots of very high achieving men are poor fathers," I add "because they are doing one thing at a time, which is what men do, and that is being successful rather than fatherly."
Zac looks sceptical.
"Anyway," I tell him. "You don't need and you can't have this fantasy father thing you're after. You can manage perfectly well without it just as millions of other young men must."
I don't say "Man up." but I nearly do.