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
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