They call it love

The sunlight creeps through the blinds,
And she's managed it again,
Oh yes - she's asleep on my side.

She is wrapped up in the duvet,
She will wake in the night,
Sneak it back over me,
Like a ninja,
She will pretend it was there, untouched.

I love her. So so much.

It's always her most beautiful hour,
The waking minutes...
Before we get up, get out and shower.
Somewhere between awake and asleep,
We steal glances in the morning,
She's a sneaky one, a little sleep creep!
Inching closer for a kiss on the cheek,
It's followed by the first words shes says every morning,
I open my eyes just to hear her speak.

I love you.
Then she says my name.
And I remember who I am,
And how I found myself.

A shadow on a wall,
Always just out of reach.
It tricked me for so long,
I only existed when the sunlight came out,
Flickering in places
Fading away at the end of the day.

Darkness.

So maybe she's the moonlight, the sunlight,
The dusk, the dawn.
All I know is when she holds me,
I'm somehow reborn.
Each day a new beginning,
A new start, a new chance.

Sometimes we fall asleep,
I don't know where I end and she starts,
Because we are bound together,
I can hear the beating of her heart.
I fall asleep on her,
Sometimes she laughs when I have a little snore,
Sometimes she pokes me,
Because she doesn't want to hear anymore.

There has been nights where she talks,
Completely in the dark,
Fast asleep and dreaming,
She pulls on my heart.
She whispers I love you in the silence,
And I press my lips to hers.
Oh shes clever this girl,
I fall for it everytime,
She grabs me like a tiger and says quietly that shes mine.

So I can be lost,
She will find me,
I can be broken,
We will fix it.
I can be everything I want to be,
I can walk on water,
I can conquer,
I can triumph,
I can shine.

Because that girl,
The love of my life,
She makes everything just fine.
Like a fire burning brightly,
We'll move forward together,
And hope for love to last forever,
Until the end of time.

Pause for thought

What a night.
So humbling.... I'm overwhelmed really, a room full of beautiful hearts and resilient minds.
A girl tapped me on the shoulder while I was at the bar and said "Are you TheBarkerBaker?" and that she was an avid reader of this blog and she found me to be an inspiration.
Well. I was stunned. What a lovely thing for someone to say, even if it did leave me feeling a little lost.
I am so proud to have found the strength to address all that was wrong in my life, bit by bit, taking it apart and building it bigger and better than ever before. I heard people's stories today at the Mind Charity event and I had to look at the floor for some of it so as not to draw attention to the tear in my eye.
Such bravery. Where do we find the power to stand tall and face our demons and then go the extra mile to exorcise them in public in the hope that in doing so it inspires someone to do the same, find the hope, the better day, the real tomorrow.
Claire Symonds said she was ashamed, ashamed to be so broken. If I could have hugged a woman I'd never met without it being completely weird, I would have dashed across the room and the stage and just given her a bloody squeeze.
Broken. A word that packs such a punch.
I am broken. I have been broken for a long time. I've been resentful of it, I've hated myself for it, I've blamed other people for it, but it's only recently that I've come to be OK with it.
So I've baggage a plenty and a horror story of a past, should it be my undoing and the destruction of my future? Of course bloody not.
I lived in such shame, scared to talk about it, scared to admit it, for a girl with a lack of identity to admit she was broken... would that be my only label? Not much of a way to move forward when having a tagline like that.
And lo' I'm here, I am strong, I am proud. We are incredible and we are strong.
A room full of people, all muddling their way through life, up hill struggles, heartbreak and hurt, damage to the soul and to the body, we are broken.
We came together with that in common and we move forward with it in our hearts, to recover, to regain, to live.
I met a girl when I was at University, we passed through the years, she had her secrets and I had mine, it's only today we saw eachother for who we really were and it was something quite beautiful.
She is beautiful with an energy for change that just makes you want to be involved!
And so, I baked, I sold, we made some money for a great charity, but it's me that came away with the real prize, I got to see I'm not alone, I shouldn't have suffered in silence and that I never have to.

A few loaves and a few words, giving to charity soothes the soul, especially if its a guilt burdened as mine for the things that I have done.

I will always have an open heart to the people who need it, a loaf, an ear, a hand, a hug.
Thank you for reading, and thank you to all of you who told me how much these words mean to you in times of darkness and light.

<3

The hardest habit to break....

I let cocaine take over my life, I ran with it firmly in my hands and in my heart for a long time.
It was a love affair. A toxicity I couldn't quite shake because of its beautiful escapism.
What a strange way to describe a vice that almost destroyed me. It seems I hold such destructive powers
close to my heart no matter what damage it causes.
It's a quality of mine I am all to familiar with, knowing when the right thing is to let it go, and not wanting to.
Heart vs Head. Sometimes it's not that simple.
For example, as soon as I made the choice to stop hiding behind lies and drugs, I set myself free. An instantaneous decision that changed my life for the better, forever.
When it comes to family, things are a little harder to loosen my grip on.

I'm a lost little girl inside a 26 year old woman's body. I go about my day to day life like it doesn't hurt anymore, like it never did. But the hole remains gaping, aching and it yearns for what it's never quite had.
Family.
Oh I can fill the gap, I can plug it with hopes and desires and friends and lovers, I can fill it with hard work and dreams to strive for.
But its hard to ignore the fact that I'm alone in this world, and that the legacy I'm working to create begins with me, with no trace of anything that happened before.
I tell Sarah all the time, I want to build something great, to be remembered, for the good; not the bad. For the positive. For the change. I can do all of those things. I have a passion and a hope that burns so deep in my heart it almost shouts louder than whats lost.
I want to marry her, to grow old, to hold her hand for as long as its mine. I want to say I love you every day and feel it in my fingertips when they find hers.

I text my dad today. He turned 60. I woke up with this searing fear, tears in my eyes from the moment of realization, today is the 9th May, he's another year older...and so am I. We are another year apart, with a bridge that burned long ago, with a heart that broke on both sides, and somehow we can't seem to find eachother.
Have you ever woken up with fear, sheer fear, of loss. What is it I am loosing? A father? A friend? Neither?
He may not live up to the title as our labels burn away, but he is my daddy, he's the man in the trendy leather jacket and the sparkling blue eyes and now he's older, he's less Pierce Brosnan and more George Bush but my god, it's toxic, this absolute adoration and love.
I wish I could quit it, I'd erase it if I could, but I can't, because all three of them run through my heart and my mind, every single day, just like my blood.

Unrequited, not a lover, but a daughter, a sister, whatever my title is to be.

Will it be like this forever? A text message like an arrow.

I strive everyday for things that will make our lives great, happy, easy, forfilled.
All of which is completely attainable. I have no doubt the greatest things are yet to come, because I know how I feel and what I want.

So one day when we are older, we are married, with a house full of cats and kids, baking, teaching, learning, loving, cuddling, will they be a part of it? Or just a memory?
Sometimes I trick myself and wonder if the memories I have are just stories trapped in my mind, little lies I told myself once and didn't go away.
Like our last meal together, it was just me and him, sat at the kitchen table, talking, really talking.
He was sad, he was honest, he knew we had no chance, but we lied to eachother and pretended everything was fine. I was happy, he was happy and we smiled and ate our dinner.
He tricked me that day. For one, what he said were mushrooms were actually lamb kidneys and I almost choked as he laughed. He knew I wouldn't try them if I knew. A fathers trick. I'll have to try that one...
For two, we pretended we were... as we should be, when we knew that's just not what we are.