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.
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