When writing this, I was listening to songs I listened to as a teenager, sat crossed legged, on my bed, in my parents house, wondering why we weren't connected the way we should have been. Today I'm 27 and I'm learning its OK to be apart, because we shared a journey and now I'm living my own. It doesn't stop it hurting any less.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9WIM2zZ2nI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMt3_p04XaQ
I didn't send your card this year,
And I'm sat here thinking I did the wrong thing,
I should always put that card in the post,
Through that door,
Whatever it takes for it to find you.
Even if I can't do the same.
Should, should, should, should.
Would, would, would, would.
What is about you that brings out the "if only's" in me
I'm just fine the way I am.
I'm fine with the choices I've made,
The right and the wrong
They all brought me here
And that's perfect.
Because here is where I was always meant to be.
I've ripped my hair out, my heart out,
Torn my tongue out, shut up, screamed out, shouted out.
Love me, love me.
Why won't you?
Why don't you?
20 years of wasted emotion and a love lost on an ocean,
Because we won't find eachother,
We won't spend another Sunday like today in the same room,
Because every day I'm dead and buried,
Like someone who died a long time ago,
And I sit, in moments of silence, on Sundays, Mondays,
Christmases and birthdays.
My heart looks for you,
Like a text will get a reply,
That every word you hear me say isn't received as a lie.
Because I'm the daughter of a past life,
That you let go and let die.
It's a strange place to be,
Yesterday I found myself in hysteria for no reason at all,
I got caught up in the loss of you,
I felt my heart break inside my chest,
And I let it all go and crashed to the floor.
My knees hit the carpet of my lovely new home,
All I wanted to do was call you and say "I'm home"
And then it hit me harder than the fall,
Home will never be at your door,
I won't get to hear about the right way to the plump cushions on the bed,
Even if I do the exact same thing here
I won't get to hear any of it.
Because you just don't talk.
You come close to death,
And I hear it through the grapevine
I rush as fast as I can to the place I think you'll be,
I wait in the shadows, outcast, cast out,
Hoping to catch a glimpse of you,
God I want you to be OK,
I sneak gifts of diet coke and sponges to the receptionist,
I sneak peaks at whether you come and go,
Because I can't leap out and squeeze you like I need to.
This is a life. Hiding in a waiting room.
Trying to find out if the love of my life is dead or alive.
Would I even get to know that?
The day I came out of court,
My day of reckoning,
I was at my lowest ever point,
And then I bumped into you,
And the knife was plunged a little deeper.
In a court room, I was judged for an hour out of a day.
Given my life to make it right, and to pay,
But one look from you and it came flooding back,
The punishment, the resentment, the bitterness and the hate,
You looked at me with such disappointment,
It made the judge look like a happy clown.
Only you have the power to knock me further down.
I tricked myself you were there to see me,
To make sure I was OK.
That it wasn't worse case scenario and I didn't get sent away.
But you weren't.
You'd been to lunch
You were hob-knobbing on the street,
Having a chit-chat, obvlivious to your daughter,
Suited and booted and standing across the street,
Crossing traffic to get to you,
To reach out, in false hope,
And you turn and say, after years of silence,
With such disdain and exasperation
"Oh dear, they let you go,"
So mother dearest, Happy Mothers Day
I'm sure you will have a great one
Because you will spend it in your little land of Barker,
Where nothing bad ever happens
And the world is never darker,
Not now I'm out of the picture,
And I only seep into your life through Christmas cards
And Mothers Day texts.
You will forever be, my biggest regret.
I wanted to hold onto you,
For all of time,
To call you mummy, to call you mine,
But we are just not those kind of people,
We are meant to live apart,
Or I wouldn't be on this path,
And there would be space for me in your heart.
I love you.
Happy Mother's Day
Sunday 15 March 2015
Sunday 8 March 2015
International Womens Day 2015
This time last year, a beautiful lady and friend of mine wrote a little piece about me in her epic blog (http://ginfuelledbluestocking.co.uk/international-womens-day-inspiring-women/) and since she wrote those lovely words a lot has changed in my life.
When a woman like that see's the good in you, the potential and the hope, you know you are on the right track, even if you went the ass-backwards way of getting there!
Charlie, it's been a year. I've worked my socks off. Won two awards. Taught over 60 workshops. Talked at events all over the country sharing my story. And if I didn't have people like you, Debs, and a few other stars tucked away in the side lines spurring me on, it would have taken me a long time to realise that everything I want is entirely possible, because I can make it so!
So. A year ago.
I almost lost it all. Again.
For the sake of the money that lead me here, the money I stole and squandered. The thief, the fraudster, the druggie and the whore.
I've had a lot of names, I've been a lot of people, but who I am today is the girl who was fighting throughout it all, shinning, in dark spaces and horrors of places, I was in there. Glimmers of hope trying to rise to the surface, but too overshadowed by the sorrow, the wallow, the pessimism, the anger and the hate.
So a free bird becomes a new bird, and I let it all go.... The anger that bubbles within me, like a volcano that just won't go out, there's a constant danger that it will rise up in me and destroy everything that stands tall. But I won't ever let that happen.. Not anymore.
When you have lived a life like I have and you've covered emotions over, papered up every single crack, you slapped on a fake smile and never shed a tear, because emotions are just weakness, that how I have lived all these years.
This week I opened up the ultimate pandora's box, the box that came before the box, the box that pre-dates Barker fucks ups, fights, and losses.
I opened up the Kehoe files and had a peek inside.
For the first time in my life, I have photos of the woman I thought I might be. I have photos of the monster that lurks somewhere deep inside. And she is beautiful, but you can see shes lost with no way back.
Is that what my photos look like? Smiles on the outside, gone forever on the inside?
I was so scared that everything in me was her. Our mental health disorder. Our drug addictions. Our promiscuous nature, the eternal whore. The broken families. The broken minds. The self pity and the anger. But I'm not.
I'm Francesca BARKER, and whether they love or hate me, they gave me more. The bridges burnt between us showed me how strong I have to be, to live this life, eternal, with no love from a family.
I have lost two mothers in my lifetime and I don't know if either loved me at all. They both let me go. Like I was nothing. Like I don't even exist anymore.
I can't live like that.
With empty spaces and memories. I love them both. And I will fight for them.
International Womens Day, I celebrate two very different women. Both who made me who I am.
There is Mrs Barker, the first woman I ever fell in love with. Blonde hair, eyes just like mine, the day I met her it was like a fairytale playing out before me.
White Mercedes pulls up, wind in her hair, she steps out, flawless. I knew she was the one. So I asked her. Blunt as I have always been; I asked her if she would be my mummy. And she said yes.
We have had moments of bliss in the 22 years we spent together, where shes been my mummy and I've been her Fran, we've made summer puddings, we've plaited hair, we've had moments where we love each other and I've thought she will always be there.
It will be a sunny Sunday, she is sat on the big leather sofa she dragged us around DFS for hours just to buy and shes drinking tea, a pot. Laid out on the table. Like the queen is chilling out on the other sofa across the room. Newspaper in hand, shes pensive. The intelligent woman. Shes thinking. And then she says into the silence "Pick up a bargain? 8 letters"
She will look at me for the answer, because she knows our common love is knowledge and we are both the brains of the family and always have been.
I look at her, thinking.
She asks me to sit, but says to grab a pencil. And there we stay until the bitter end, when its just 4 down to go, and we are human and we are love. And she is perfect. We both are, for a few moments in time.
It's Wigan A and E, I've shattered my ankle, it's horrendous and I've never felt such pain.
She rushes to me, down the M6, for-goes the Thursday night manicure to be at my side.
I'm off my tits on morphiene and take her hand in mine.
"Mummy your nails look beautiful"
She laughs, with tears in her eyes and says "Oh I do love you you know"
I'm obviously overdosing and have misheard this illusion and exclaim to the whole ward "Fuck me, someone break the other leg just so I can hear that again"
And so we are broken, like the ankle. Horrendous and I've never felt such pain.
I love her, and I've hurt her, and she's hurt me, but shes my mum and thats a love affair that will never end. I will never give up the hope she will see me, her daughter, as the girl she loved once, as the girl she was hoping for.
Mrs Barker, the incredibly brave but incredibly stupid woman. Determined to stand by her choice. Determined to prove I'm nothing like her.
I still do the Times crossword, on the sofa, on a Sunday, with a cup of tea and I bet so does she.
Bridie.
Where does one start.
My mother. By blood. By the lovely gifts of genetics. A legacy of utter crazy.
I've spent my whole life wondering who she is, what she is like, why she abandoned us, why she let bad things happen to me.
I've been angry. But I've been sad.
I've never understood how she got so lost.
Until I was that lost.
I faced the blackhole and turned my back on it before it sucked me in and kept me there.
She didn't.
She walked right into it and made it her home.
So why am I writing about her on International Womens Day, a day for inspiring women?
Having met my beautiful older sister this week, I came to understand a few things. Things I have been grappling with my whole life.
You reach a point on the road to destruction where there is no turning back, because even if you wanted to, the guilt of it all would devour you.
I had a small taste of that with my colossal fuck up. The guilt of it all still haunts me. Keeps me awake at night. Makes me doubt myself and my choices. I second guess everything that I do and check and double check to make sure I've got it right, so there can be no margin for error or bad choices.
Imagine the guilt lingering in the mind of a woman who lost herself, lost her children, lost her freedom and caused the loss of another humans life?
Overwhelming and never ending I should imagine.
There is no greater punishment in the world, than that of self-punishment. No prison sentence, no rehab, no mental health intervention that can make you feel so guilty and so remorseful than your own conscience.
Upon hearing about her progress and her fight against her wrongs, I was proud. That even a woman so destroyed has found a glimmer of hope and understanding that no matter how great the wrong, there is always a way back. She can't give back what she took, not like I could. She can't give me and my sister and older brother back our childhoods and the repair the damage she caused.
But she can live a life understanding what she did and taking responsibility for it.
SO
I have two mothers in my life. One is a brilliant woman, with a heart I can't thaw and one is a broken woman, who is trying to be a better person.
I respect both. I admire both. And that's just plain odd.
As for my third mother, well - the mother-in-law, now there is a woman International Womens Day is all about, she is strong and she in kind, she is loving and she is honest, she cares for me in a way that sees my past and see my future and she supports every part of it.
A true gem <3
Today is about great women.
We all are
When a woman like that see's the good in you, the potential and the hope, you know you are on the right track, even if you went the ass-backwards way of getting there!
Charlie, it's been a year. I've worked my socks off. Won two awards. Taught over 60 workshops. Talked at events all over the country sharing my story. And if I didn't have people like you, Debs, and a few other stars tucked away in the side lines spurring me on, it would have taken me a long time to realise that everything I want is entirely possible, because I can make it so!
So. A year ago.
I almost lost it all. Again.
For the sake of the money that lead me here, the money I stole and squandered. The thief, the fraudster, the druggie and the whore.
I've had a lot of names, I've been a lot of people, but who I am today is the girl who was fighting throughout it all, shinning, in dark spaces and horrors of places, I was in there. Glimmers of hope trying to rise to the surface, but too overshadowed by the sorrow, the wallow, the pessimism, the anger and the hate.
So a free bird becomes a new bird, and I let it all go.... The anger that bubbles within me, like a volcano that just won't go out, there's a constant danger that it will rise up in me and destroy everything that stands tall. But I won't ever let that happen.. Not anymore.
When you have lived a life like I have and you've covered emotions over, papered up every single crack, you slapped on a fake smile and never shed a tear, because emotions are just weakness, that how I have lived all these years.
This week I opened up the ultimate pandora's box, the box that came before the box, the box that pre-dates Barker fucks ups, fights, and losses.
I opened up the Kehoe files and had a peek inside.
For the first time in my life, I have photos of the woman I thought I might be. I have photos of the monster that lurks somewhere deep inside. And she is beautiful, but you can see shes lost with no way back.
Is that what my photos look like? Smiles on the outside, gone forever on the inside?
I was so scared that everything in me was her. Our mental health disorder. Our drug addictions. Our promiscuous nature, the eternal whore. The broken families. The broken minds. The self pity and the anger. But I'm not.
I'm Francesca BARKER, and whether they love or hate me, they gave me more. The bridges burnt between us showed me how strong I have to be, to live this life, eternal, with no love from a family.
I have lost two mothers in my lifetime and I don't know if either loved me at all. They both let me go. Like I was nothing. Like I don't even exist anymore.
I can't live like that.
With empty spaces and memories. I love them both. And I will fight for them.
International Womens Day, I celebrate two very different women. Both who made me who I am.
There is Mrs Barker, the first woman I ever fell in love with. Blonde hair, eyes just like mine, the day I met her it was like a fairytale playing out before me.
White Mercedes pulls up, wind in her hair, she steps out, flawless. I knew she was the one. So I asked her. Blunt as I have always been; I asked her if she would be my mummy. And she said yes.
We have had moments of bliss in the 22 years we spent together, where shes been my mummy and I've been her Fran, we've made summer puddings, we've plaited hair, we've had moments where we love each other and I've thought she will always be there.
It will be a sunny Sunday, she is sat on the big leather sofa she dragged us around DFS for hours just to buy and shes drinking tea, a pot. Laid out on the table. Like the queen is chilling out on the other sofa across the room. Newspaper in hand, shes pensive. The intelligent woman. Shes thinking. And then she says into the silence "Pick up a bargain? 8 letters"
She will look at me for the answer, because she knows our common love is knowledge and we are both the brains of the family and always have been.
I look at her, thinking.
She asks me to sit, but says to grab a pencil. And there we stay until the bitter end, when its just 4 down to go, and we are human and we are love. And she is perfect. We both are, for a few moments in time.
It's Wigan A and E, I've shattered my ankle, it's horrendous and I've never felt such pain.
She rushes to me, down the M6, for-goes the Thursday night manicure to be at my side.
I'm off my tits on morphiene and take her hand in mine.
"Mummy your nails look beautiful"
She laughs, with tears in her eyes and says "Oh I do love you you know"
I'm obviously overdosing and have misheard this illusion and exclaim to the whole ward "Fuck me, someone break the other leg just so I can hear that again"
And so we are broken, like the ankle. Horrendous and I've never felt such pain.
I love her, and I've hurt her, and she's hurt me, but shes my mum and thats a love affair that will never end. I will never give up the hope she will see me, her daughter, as the girl she loved once, as the girl she was hoping for.
Mrs Barker, the incredibly brave but incredibly stupid woman. Determined to stand by her choice. Determined to prove I'm nothing like her.
I still do the Times crossword, on the sofa, on a Sunday, with a cup of tea and I bet so does she.
Bridie.
Where does one start.
My mother. By blood. By the lovely gifts of genetics. A legacy of utter crazy.
I've spent my whole life wondering who she is, what she is like, why she abandoned us, why she let bad things happen to me.
I've been angry. But I've been sad.
I've never understood how she got so lost.
Until I was that lost.
I faced the blackhole and turned my back on it before it sucked me in and kept me there.
She didn't.
She walked right into it and made it her home.
So why am I writing about her on International Womens Day, a day for inspiring women?
Having met my beautiful older sister this week, I came to understand a few things. Things I have been grappling with my whole life.
You reach a point on the road to destruction where there is no turning back, because even if you wanted to, the guilt of it all would devour you.
I had a small taste of that with my colossal fuck up. The guilt of it all still haunts me. Keeps me awake at night. Makes me doubt myself and my choices. I second guess everything that I do and check and double check to make sure I've got it right, so there can be no margin for error or bad choices.
Imagine the guilt lingering in the mind of a woman who lost herself, lost her children, lost her freedom and caused the loss of another humans life?
Overwhelming and never ending I should imagine.
There is no greater punishment in the world, than that of self-punishment. No prison sentence, no rehab, no mental health intervention that can make you feel so guilty and so remorseful than your own conscience.
Upon hearing about her progress and her fight against her wrongs, I was proud. That even a woman so destroyed has found a glimmer of hope and understanding that no matter how great the wrong, there is always a way back. She can't give back what she took, not like I could. She can't give me and my sister and older brother back our childhoods and the repair the damage she caused.
But she can live a life understanding what she did and taking responsibility for it.
SO
I have two mothers in my life. One is a brilliant woman, with a heart I can't thaw and one is a broken woman, who is trying to be a better person.
I respect both. I admire both. And that's just plain odd.
As for my third mother, well - the mother-in-law, now there is a woman International Womens Day is all about, she is strong and she in kind, she is loving and she is honest, she cares for me in a way that sees my past and see my future and she supports every part of it.
A true gem <3
Today is about great women.
We all are
Wednesday 4 March 2015
Long Lost little girls in London
So, yesterday will be remembered for a long time to come.
I met my sister.
How's that for your average Tuesday?
On Friday 27th February, I won an award, award number two in the short space of 6 months. Epic.
On Friday 27th February, I found out my long lost relatives had been searching for me for over 20 years.
And I found them.
We found eachother.
And yesterday my big sister (still weird to say it) travelled from London to Manchester, whilst 6 months pregnant with her incredible other half to meet me, to stay with me and to have a conversation with me that we've both been waiting for our entire lives.
She looks like me. Shes the beautiful version, with big, kind eyes and pretty hair. When your a lost little girl, you fantasize about families. Big sisters, little brothers, mummy's and daddy's and babies and pets. Big houses and cars, and holidays. School, friends, love.
I've been the lost little girl living in fantasy land for over 20 years and yesterday parts of me fell into place.
Like looking in a mirror and for the first time realising, I'm just fine. Me, Francesca Barker - perfectly OK to be just me.
This is a woman who lived a life like me on paper, with a sadness behind the beautiful eyes that only I would recognise, because I have the exact same look. It's the "I'm smiling but I'm broken" look.
You learn to perfect such a thing after years of practice. And yesterday, we both had that look.
I was worried. What to do, what to say. what to wear. I spent hours with Sarah turning our little house in the country into a palace, fluffing cushions, hoovering like a cleaner on crack, brushing the cat so even he was on top form to meet my long lost relative.
Sheer insanity. But when mad meets mad, that turns out, normal.
Donna Kehoe, daughter of Bridie Kehoe, my older sister. A girl lost in time.
We have one big difference, she tried to save our mother from the demons that took her, from the life she let slip away, and she failed, because the sad truth is, some people just don't want to be saved.
I found myself glad to hear about her, out of prison, in a hospital, cared for, caring for herself, something I would never have expected in a million years. I have hated this woman for a long time, resentful she would let such horrors happen to me, that she would let me be passed around by my father and his friends, such anger. Harboured for such a long time.
Horrors trapped in a little girls mind and growing stronger every day. Horrors never spoken about and certainly never fixed.
So yesterday opened up pandora's box. Anger. Like I've never felt it.
Anger at my parents. They adopted a girl who had been passed around like Christmas, so broken and bruised, at the age of 4, there was no coming back. At the age of 4, Francesca Barker was the whore she turned out to be at 20 something.
The worst of it? My parents had been communicating with my birth mother every step of the way. Whilst I was living in middle class surburbia with a broken heart and a broken mind with 101 questions to ask and no answers given, they were sending photos and updates and whats more, they were getting letters and photos back.
My brother had the luxury of sitting down with my mum and dad with a box full of memories, photos, letters, stories and truths. He got to learn, in the safety of my parents arms, that his sister was a plaything passed from pillar to post and that was probably why she had ended up in a crown court room and due to go to prison - just like her real mother.
Such anger.
I have struggled all morning between being the girl I have become, the honest, hard working, positive and optimistic human being I am proud to have become. I am brave and I am kind, I am guilt ridden and I am broken. But I am happy. I am in love. I am loved and most of all, I am lucky.
But I am angry and I am sad, I am resentful and bitter, that a boy who needed no answers, got them handed to him with a bow, with a hug and a kiss, with an open door. A boy who gets to pursue this if he wants to, if he cares to, and denies my very existence on a daily basis.
So he gets his happy ending and the big sister, it just so happens, that big sister isnt me.
Alas, I strive for more than sadness and wallow. My life is built for more than that, so after the tears and the rants, and the vacant expressions. I am grateful.
Today is the 4th March. I have a sister.
I am happy. I am in love. I am loved and I am lucky.
And quite frankly, no past demon, or present broken heart can take away from that.
I am hopeful and I am driven.
Today is a day that is a Barker Baker day - #positivesovernegatives and nothing will ever change that.
My goodness, I have grown.
I met my sister.
How's that for your average Tuesday?
On Friday 27th February, I won an award, award number two in the short space of 6 months. Epic.
On Friday 27th February, I found out my long lost relatives had been searching for me for over 20 years.
And I found them.
We found eachother.
And yesterday my big sister (still weird to say it) travelled from London to Manchester, whilst 6 months pregnant with her incredible other half to meet me, to stay with me and to have a conversation with me that we've both been waiting for our entire lives.
She looks like me. Shes the beautiful version, with big, kind eyes and pretty hair. When your a lost little girl, you fantasize about families. Big sisters, little brothers, mummy's and daddy's and babies and pets. Big houses and cars, and holidays. School, friends, love.
I've been the lost little girl living in fantasy land for over 20 years and yesterday parts of me fell into place.
Like looking in a mirror and for the first time realising, I'm just fine. Me, Francesca Barker - perfectly OK to be just me.
This is a woman who lived a life like me on paper, with a sadness behind the beautiful eyes that only I would recognise, because I have the exact same look. It's the "I'm smiling but I'm broken" look.
You learn to perfect such a thing after years of practice. And yesterday, we both had that look.
I was worried. What to do, what to say. what to wear. I spent hours with Sarah turning our little house in the country into a palace, fluffing cushions, hoovering like a cleaner on crack, brushing the cat so even he was on top form to meet my long lost relative.
Sheer insanity. But when mad meets mad, that turns out, normal.
Donna Kehoe, daughter of Bridie Kehoe, my older sister. A girl lost in time.
We have one big difference, she tried to save our mother from the demons that took her, from the life she let slip away, and she failed, because the sad truth is, some people just don't want to be saved.
I found myself glad to hear about her, out of prison, in a hospital, cared for, caring for herself, something I would never have expected in a million years. I have hated this woman for a long time, resentful she would let such horrors happen to me, that she would let me be passed around by my father and his friends, such anger. Harboured for such a long time.
Horrors trapped in a little girls mind and growing stronger every day. Horrors never spoken about and certainly never fixed.
So yesterday opened up pandora's box. Anger. Like I've never felt it.
Anger at my parents. They adopted a girl who had been passed around like Christmas, so broken and bruised, at the age of 4, there was no coming back. At the age of 4, Francesca Barker was the whore she turned out to be at 20 something.
The worst of it? My parents had been communicating with my birth mother every step of the way. Whilst I was living in middle class surburbia with a broken heart and a broken mind with 101 questions to ask and no answers given, they were sending photos and updates and whats more, they were getting letters and photos back.
My brother had the luxury of sitting down with my mum and dad with a box full of memories, photos, letters, stories and truths. He got to learn, in the safety of my parents arms, that his sister was a plaything passed from pillar to post and that was probably why she had ended up in a crown court room and due to go to prison - just like her real mother.
Such anger.
I have struggled all morning between being the girl I have become, the honest, hard working, positive and optimistic human being I am proud to have become. I am brave and I am kind, I am guilt ridden and I am broken. But I am happy. I am in love. I am loved and most of all, I am lucky.
But I am angry and I am sad, I am resentful and bitter, that a boy who needed no answers, got them handed to him with a bow, with a hug and a kiss, with an open door. A boy who gets to pursue this if he wants to, if he cares to, and denies my very existence on a daily basis.
So he gets his happy ending and the big sister, it just so happens, that big sister isnt me.
Alas, I strive for more than sadness and wallow. My life is built for more than that, so after the tears and the rants, and the vacant expressions. I am grateful.
Today is the 4th March. I have a sister.
I am happy. I am in love. I am loved and I am lucky.
And quite frankly, no past demon, or present broken heart can take away from that.
I am hopeful and I am driven.
Today is a day that is a Barker Baker day - #positivesovernegatives and nothing will ever change that.
My goodness, I have grown.
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