Day Eleven

This post is supposed to be another lot of pictures of my friends and I. Instead I think I'll make this one about Aedin's dad, Justin.

I met Aedin's dad in 2003. My best girlfriend moved to Brisbane to be with a man she had met online (they eventually married). Jess and I stayed in constant contact. She would often call me when she was out drinking with her new boyfriend and his mates. One night they put me on the phone to a guy named Justin. Justin and I hit it off right away and he asked if he could email me. I gave him my email address which he memorised, even though he was drunk. We began emailing constantly, progressed to text messaging, and eventually hour or more long phone calls. By this stage I had already decided to move to Brisbane as I was bored with Wollongong, NSW and needed a change. Needless to say, as soon as I arrived in Brisbane, Justin and I fell into a relationship with each other. Blah blah blah, and I fell pregnant shortly after.

Now I'm not going to pretend that our relationship was super healthy, but it wasn't always bad either. We were very different people. I'm silly, immature and playful. He was serious, adventurous and shy. After a while the bad times overshadowed the good and we eventually broke up in August, 2005. Aedin was only 18 months old. Even as separated parents we often didn't get along, although we still managed to maintain a degree of understanding and mutual respect. However as a father he drifted further and further from his son. Justin and Aedin only saw each other a maximum of once a year, and he only called Aedin once every couple of weeks.

As many of you know, Justin unfortunately passed away in July, 2010. My heart broke. I still cared for him as he is/was the father of my only child. I was also devastated for his parents, his girlfriend, and for my son. We still don't have an explanation as to why Justin didn't wake up on the morning of his birthday. I think it's making it harder to deal with, not having an understanding as to why it happened. Justin was head strong, independent, defiant, secretive, untrusting, and somewhat tortured. We argued regularly, and I hated it. Sometimes I would wish that he would just leave us alone. Now I feel guilty for thinking that. Now I would give anything to argue with him.