Brutal

I had the worst nights sleep for a long time last night.
Caught between nightmare after nightmare, it would have been easier to have stayed awake.

And so this morning, I'm left with the devastation and destruction my own mind has caused.

There's a tower block somewhere in Manchester that I try to avoid like the plague. When I enter the city, I choose my path wisely and make sure it stays out of my view.
Strange to live in a place that invokes such fear. Such memory.

Sarah's dad took a wrong turn with me sat in the back of the car. We parked practically outside where it happened and I had to wind down the window so as not to be sick.
I was filled with such anger.
My hand squeezed the door handle and I shut my eyes. I can't bare to look at it.

And yet, with my eyes closed its more vivid than it ever was. I retrace my steps, the lift, metal clanging, creaking to the dreaded floor, take a left and there's the door. Bright red, number x and it will forever be the door that closed behind me. Locked behind me. The door that wouldn't let me out.

My dreams last night were like rewinding time, seeing it all through fresh eyes, like my brain was telling me not to forget.
So vivid. Sounds. Smells. Reliving history.

The door closes and I see the look in his eyes change, to danger, to smugness, and I realise I'm in trouble, make my excuses to go back to my friends, his friends, and put my hand on the door. He puts his hand on the door and says with a laugh “I don't think so”

So then I know what's about to happen and my brain overloads looking at windows, doors, weapons?
We are so high up even if I tried I wouldn't be able to.

It's strange how dreams can take you back in time, sometimes it's a blessing. Last night was a curse.

I have to exorcise this. I woke feeling sick this morning. With tears on my cheek. My fingernails imprinted on my own palms. The fear rocked through from subconscious to conscious and I'm having a wobble.

That day destroyed any chance of me understanding who I was. Thankfully enough time has passed for the wounds to heal and for me to piece my life back together.
But that day set in motion my destructive choices.

I loved those jeans. My brother had the same pair.
River Island, with a woman's silhouette painted down one leg.
In the days of being a size 12, I went out in those jeans and a blazer with just a bra.
Feeling pretty fucking hot. Hitting up the gay bars with my friends.

Ive never been able to feel that way since.
Certainly never strived to look that way again.
I gave up.

I can't even look at myself today, I feel like I could burst into tears from searing memories.
For days I had grazes on my cheek, burnt against the carpet, made to look at it all take place.
The day after my jeans were so torn they were barely worth clinging onto, blood, knees bleeding, elbows, barely able to stand.
I saw myself in the smashed mirror that had been my front row seat the night before, beaten, bloodied but set free.
I stared at myself in that mirror last night.

I sat in a bath and the colour changing to red and I washed.

And that was the end of it.

My dreams shifted last night from one horror to another.

From the monster to the pretender; a girl I thought I loved, my cocaine partner in crime, a relationship fuelled on fantasy and white powder.
She was angry. Frustrated with me for saying no to her latest flight of fancy. One hit. Two hits. Three. I hit the floor, wiping the blood from my lips.

And it became apparent, these destructions are part of who I am. From day one. To now.

Love?
No.

Dragged to the bathroom to “clean myself up” – she said I was s mess and as I reached for the cloth my face smashed against the toilet bowl, on my knees again, blood pouring. Tears pouring. I lay on the bathroom floor and closed the door.

So this is who I am
This is all my worth.
This is what I am to become.

I can't let you close. Because You're too delicate
You might break.

I wake.
Feeling sick.
Feeling loss.

I didn't realise how much I needed you until just now.

Are you proud?

Today will be a day I remember for the rest of my life.....

My work and my vision will be shared with more people than I ever thought possible as the BBC air a film about my workshops and the work I do.

Sometimes I have to sit back and pinch myself.

On February 8th 2013 as you know, I was convicted of Fraud in the Crown Court in Manchester.

The most damning and demoralising day of my life. Where I stood in a room full of people, in the dock, bag packed, next to my feet, looking the judge in the eyes as she read out what my fate was to be.

I almost ruined my life. Not to mention the damage I caused along the way, with lies and bullshit a plenty, drugs and prostitution and a life of shame that leaves me wondering whether I dreamt it all as it is a million miles away from the life I have today, from the person I am today.

I have grown. I have learned. It's a work in progress and always will be. Rehabilitation is a lifetimes work, undoing the bad habits, undoing the things you did wrong, and trying to piece yourself and your mistakes back together.

I could make it my life's work to right every wrong I did but I fear it would be a task that would take me forever, as there is only so many times you can say your sorry, only so hard you can work to make things better.

So instead?

I put my effort, my heart, my passion and my mind into something much more worthwhile. Helping other people, just like me, who don't know how to make the change and to make it better.

It's simple.

Just but a little selfish. Put all your effort into fixing you. Into understand you. Into working hard to be the best you can be. No-one can fault you for that.

Feel pride. Feel hope. See a future. Build a future. Then you can give back what you took, through every positive step that you take, by promising to make good, to do good. That is the punishment, that is the life lesson, that is the rehabilitation.

My rehabilitation has spanned from drugs to lies, to paying back thousands of pounds, to not having a pot to piss in and living with nothing and still feeling like I have everything.

Why?

Because I'm loved.

I feel love. I deserve love and that's something I've never been able to understand.

Years spent lashing out at a world I didn't think understood me, that wouldn't love me, want me, need me. That all I was good for was a price on my head, in my bed or up my nose. Always wanting to have value but being completely without worth.

There is a fine line.

I am reborn. I am Francesca. I am proud. I am work in progress and very very OK with that.

I have a job that brings people I would never normally meet, never normally interact with, right into my life, into my kitchen, into my work and I love it.

You will never find more honesty than in the faces of people who are desperate to be...better.

You will never find more disappointment in the faces of people who are desperate to be.. someone else.

My star baker, as you will see tonight, is a woman called Michelle. I looked into her eyes and saw me, two years ago.

Wondering what the hell she is doing in a kitchen, baking bread.

Why bother?

What the bloody hell is making a loaf of bread going to do for me?

Well tonight you will see exactly what making that loaf of bread does for people.

We find ourselves a little lost and in a room full of lost people, we put our hands in bowls of flour, together, skin on skin, and we bake, and we laugh, and its disastorous, it messy, its funny, its pure.

We break down boundaries and share our stories of where we come from, why we are there, what we did, how we feel, and we bake.

We knead, we shape, we proof, we drink tea, we smoke cigerettes, we laugh.

We bake together. We clean together, For a day, for an hour or five, we are a team and we are not lost. We are great.

I put my hand on Michelle's shoulder when she was making her white dough and I lent over and said "Michelle, that looks great, really proud of you, you are doing a great job"

The workshop carried on, as they always do, different places, different people. all the same.

Tea break, Michelle comes over to me and says "Did you mean it Francesca?" 

I say "Did I mean what?"

"That you are proud of me?"

I looked this woman in the face and said "It honestly doesn't matter if I say I'm proud of you, even though I am, all that matters is that you are proud of yourself, are you?"

She laughed with a tear in her eye and said "Yeah, I am actually, I really am"

That my friends is mission accomplished and that is why as my star baker of the day I decided to change things up a little and invite Michelle to come and do work experience with me, because sometimes all we need is someone to say what we can't see - that you are doing a great job, you are working hard, you are tenacious and brave and facing your demons and your past, present and future alone is the hardest thing you will ever have to do, but you can, and you will.

And if she needs reminding, I will have my foot firmly up her arse to make sure she believes it!

There will always be people who don't believe, you will always be the boy who cried wolf, because you put your own noose around your neck with the choices you made, the lies that you told. Thats the burden of bad decisions.

For me, there was a day, sat in a room with my probation officer, where she looked me in the eye and said that Greater Manchester Probation Service weren't going to print the article they had written about how much I had enjoyed my bread course and how I wanted to start my own business.

Why?

Because I was liability. I was a liar and that nobody believed I would actually do it.

A woman from a mental health group who almost derailed all of my progress, looked me in the eye and said "Fran, you are the boy who cried wolf, documented in court case files that say you are a compulsive liar. This bakery business is a fantasy of yours, nothing more. Nothing will come of it. You know that and I know that. Now stop it with this silliness. It's boring. Just accept what you are"

I'll never forget it. I walked out of that place right there and then, screaming with rage and a broken heart. Was that my fate? To be branded? To be doubted? To be left to fend for myself in fantasy land? With no help or hope to nurture the good in me?

So I ran with those words burning in my mind, and I built this beautiful vehicle for change, with the mantra of #positivesovernegatives

Because no-one is a lost cause. No-one is without HOPE (read between the lines my friends)

Because everyone has the ability to do good, to be good and to build a better life.

Welcome to my world, I am The Barker Baker, and I will remember that until the day I die, everything I have done to this day and until my last, I will feel proud for, proud of.

I am a strong, intelligent HONEST woman and nothing will stand in the way of my dreams and my hopes to bring about a dramatic upheaval in offender rehabilitation.

To that woman, you are a fool. The people you are supposed to save, you let wallow, let slip away, through the cracks in the system. I could have thrown it all away that day. So thank you, for making me see exactly what I feared most, that narrow minded fools are the most dangerous people in this world. Not the criminals. The foolish.

So, I am blessed.

With a job I love.

With the people I meet.

With the friends I have.

With the girl I adore.

I hope tonight's film shows you all of that <3

Thank you guys, you've made me..... me.