During my period of medical incapacity in 2020, I was running amok. Without work giving me structure or purpose, I had even more time to disappear into the chaos I had created around myself. I was doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and with whoever I chose. Addiction was still controlling a huge part of my life, and consequences were usually something I worried about after they arrived.

During this time, I had a friend with whom I occasionally had casual encounters. There was never a proper relationship between us, and eventually we went our separate ways, largely because she was struggling with significant addiction issues of her own. Months passed without us seeing each other. Life moved on, or at least I thought it had.

Then one day I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a post she had made. She was asking for recommendations for a suitable daycare for her two-year-old son. I read it again. Two-year-old son? As far as I knew, she didn't have one.

I sent her a message asking, "What two-year-old have you got?"

Her reply immediately made my stomach turn.

"I didn't want you to find out like this."

Find out what?

Then a photograph appeared on my phone. I can still remember staring at that little face. For a moment, everything around me disappeared. Looking back at me was a little boy who looked almost identical to photographs of me at the same age. The resemblance was so strong that I almost dropped my phone. I kept staring at the picture, trying to process something my brain hadn't caught up with yet. I knew what she was about to tell me before she even said it.

That little boy could be my son.

I didn't know whether to be angry, devastated, terrified or excited. I think I felt all of it at once. One minute I had been mindlessly scrolling through Facebook. The next I was looking into the face of a child who may have carried my blood for nearly two years without me knowing he existed.

Nearly two years.

That was the part that really hit me. While I had been carrying on with my life, somewhere out there my little boy had been born. Someone had held him for the first time. He had cried, smiled, crawled, learned to stand and eventually taken his first steps. He had started developing his own little personality. He had celebrated birthdays. There had been nights when he was sick, mornings when he woke up smiling and hundreds of ordinary moments that make up the beginning of a child's life.

And I had missed every single one of them. Not because I had chosen to walk away. Because I hadn't known.

Apparently, after we had parted ways, she had discovered she was pregnant. She carried the pregnancy and gave birth without telling me there was a possibility the child was mine. She told me there had been uncertainty about whether she might place him for adoption, and for reasons that belong to her, she had decided not to tell me.

The thought that my son could have been adopted without me ever knowing he existed was incredibly difficult to process. Addiction had made me selfish, unreliable and destructive in many areas of my life, and I make no excuses for that. But being addicted did not mean I didn't love my children. My sons have always occupied a part of me that addiction could never completely destroy. Whatever condition I was in, had I known there was a possibility this little boy was mine, I would have wanted the chance to be his father.

A photograph wasn't proof, though, no matter how much he looked like me. A paternity test was arranged.

Then came the result.

He was mine.

There is something difficult to describe about finding out you have a child who is already nearly two years old. Normally, becoming a father gives you time to prepare, even if you never truly feel ready. You hear about the pregnancy. You watch the belly grow. You wait for the birth. Then suddenly there is this tiny person in your arms and you begin figuring it out from the beginning.

I didn't get any of that. I became his father almost two years late.

There was happiness in discovering him, but there was grief as well. I had gained a son and, at exactly the same moment, learned how much of his life I had already lost. I couldn't go backwards. I couldn't hold him as a newborn. I couldn't hear his first laugh for the first time. I couldn't watch him take his first step. Those moments were gone forever.

All I could control was whether I missed what came next.

As I became involved in his life, my happiness at discovering him quickly became mixed with concern. I began seeing the environment he was living in, and what I saw frightened me.

I won't describe everything. Some parts of this story are extremely painful and deeply personal. More importantly, they are part of my son's story as much as mine. One day, when he is old enough, he can decide what parts of his childhood he wants people to know. I won't make that decision for him.

What I can say is that, from my perspective, the conditions were putrid. I became increasingly concerned about neglect, instability and the environment surrounding this little boy I had only just discovered was mine.

Initially, I tried to help. I cleaned up the mess. I provided money. I paid overdue rent in an attempt to keep a roof over their heads. I tried giving advice and offering practical support. Some of those efforts were interpreted as me trying to control the situation, but I wasn't interested in controlling another adult. I was looking at my son and wondering what would happen to him if nobody stepped in.

At the same time, Jenny and I had started talking again. That meant I had another conversation I desperately didn't want to have. After everything I had already put her through, I had to tell her that while we had been apart, another child had entered my life.

My child.

Understandably, Jenny was hurt. Once again, I had brought another consequence of my chaotic behaviour back into her world. She had already endured years of my addiction, lies, selfish decisions and instability. Now, just as we were beginning to communicate again, I arrived carrying another enormous complication.

There was no clever explanation that could make it easier. I had a two-year-old son.

But there was something different about this situation. Standing in the middle of all the adult hurt and dysfunction was a little boy who had done absolutely nothing wrong.

We attempted co-parenting, but it became extremely difficult. There was instability, unreliability and constant uncertainty. I kept trying to help financially, but eventually another call came. His mother had lost her employment again and was facing homelessness. Once again, money was needed to stop everything from collapsing.

By then, I had reached my limit. I wasn't prepared to keep throwing money at a situation that never seemed to become stable. More importantly, my son wasn't going to keep paying the price for decisions being made around him.

I made my position clear.

She might become homeless. My son wouldn't.

He had somewhere to go.

With me.

Even if that somewhere was a converted bus.

The irony wasn't lost on me. I was hardly living the stable family life anyone would imagine for a two-year-old child. I was medically unable to work, living in a bus and still deeply caught in addiction. My own life was far from healthy.

But that bus was my home. And if my little boy needed it, then it was his home too.

I knew I wasn't perfect. I knew I had enormous problems of my own. But I also knew I couldn't stand by and watch my son potentially enter foster care while I was alive and capable of putting a roof over his head.

There is much more to what happened during this period. Some of it is too painful to put onto these pages. There are parts involving my son, his birth mother, Jenny and me that will remain private. Not every wound needs to become a story for strangers to read.

But one part deserves to be told.

Jenny.

When Jenny met my little boy, she could have looked at him and seen everything I had done wrong. She didn't. She saw a two-year-old child.

And they hit it off almost immediately.

I watched this woman, whom I had already hurt more times than I care to admit, put those feelings aside because there was a little boy who needed someone. She understood that if I didn't take responsibility for him, there was a very real possibility that he could end up in foster care. Neither of us was prepared to allow that to happen.

Jenny opened her heart and her home to him. And somehow, despite everything I had put her through, she opened them to me as well.

What happened next says more about Jenny than anything I could ever write.

She took that little boy on as her own. There was no biological obligation. There was no reason she had to accept responsibility for another consequence of my chaotic life. She could have walked away from the entire situation and nobody could reasonably have blamed her.

Instead, she became his mum.

She gave him routine when his life had known instability. She gave him a safe home. She fed him, bathed him, dressed him, comforted him, disciplined him, laughed with him and loved him. She was there for the ordinary moments that nobody takes photographs of, the moments that actually build a childhood.

She didn't just tolerate my son because she loved me. She loved him because of who he was.

That distinction matters.

I had discovered my son through a photograph on Facebook. Jenny discovered him through her heart.

His birth mother is no longer part of his life. The circumstances surrounding that are complicated and painful, and they will remain private. My responsibility is to protect my son, not to publicly reopen every part of his childhood. What matters is that he grew up knowing stability, safety and love.

To this day, Jenny continues to be the best mother this boy could ever have asked for.

Sometimes I think back to that Facebook post and wonder how differently everything could have turned out. What if I hadn't been scrolling that day? What if I hadn't seen it? What if I hadn't asked that one question?

"What two-year-old have you got?"

A few words changed the direction of several lives.

I will always carry sadness for the first two years I missed. There are memories between a father and son that I can never create because their time has already passed. Addiction stole enough years from me, but discovering that I had unknowingly missed almost two years of my child's life carried a different kind of pain.

I couldn't change that. What I could do was make sure he never again had to grow up without knowing his dad wanted him.

At that stage of my life, I was still a mess. I was still addicted. I was still making terrible decisions, and there were darker chapters ahead. Discovering my son didn't magically fix me. But he gave me something else to love.

And perhaps the greatest gift in this entire painful chapter wasn't what I did. It was what Jenny did.

After all the hurt I had caused her, she looked at an innocent little boy who arrived unexpectedly in both our lives and made a decision that helped change his future. She chose to love him. She chose to protect him. She chose to become his mum.

And when I think about the life he could have had compared with the life she helped give him, there are some debts of gratitude that I know I will never be able to repay.