I started this week on a low, and I could see it coming a mile off.
It began when I hit the snooze button on my alarm and ignored it again and again.
If I don't get out of bed, something bad is looming.
I call it the self for-filling prophecy. I feel it. A darkness descending.
I lulled myself into a false sense of security. That I could be normal.
I ran out of medication and felt so fine, I didn't refill my prescription. I had conquered my mental health and it was me in control, not it.
How naive.
Lack of citalopram quickly caught up with me, with extremes of emotion, from intensely happy and positive, to alarmingly worrisome and doubtful of my choices, my life, my work; me.
I fought it. Determined to be better than this "mental disorder" - there is nothing wrong with me. Everything I have achieved, I have done through sheer sense of self and sense of will. All me.
Do I really have to be dosed up to feel like a normal human being? Or do I have to take this tablet for the rest of my life just to make sure my brain doesn't get the better of me.
I spoke with the lovely Sam Walker on the radio and told her how I was optimistic, hopeful, that when it comes to family and it comes to love, there would somehow be a way back for me and my family.
Today proved that just isn't true.
And despite being back on an even keel, it has hit me hard.
I pondered whether to right this, whether admitting vulnerability and occasional instability would show flashes of weakness and that isn't what I'm about, it's not what my business is about, its about hope and hard work and therein lies the key to this blog post - there is no shame in writing about your own weaknesses, the things that make us human.
I can't be inspiration and light all of the time ;)
It's a pleasure and fascinating that some even think so.
I'm Francesca, I'm flawed, and today, I am absolutely flailing in the wind.
But I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
Since my court date, I've been on this incredible journey of optimism, challenges, hard work. successes, awards, media, television, workshops, people, friends, life.
I honestly haven't stopped.
So is it any wonder?
This isn't the old fashioned cruise control.
This morning I did a podcast interview for the BBC, with a woman I'm increasingly fond of; she is kind and honest and one of the people my heart has reached out to......
Through this journey I have had lightening bolts of emotional connection, I think she is one of them.
We cried together this morning, huddled up to a microphone, as we talked through my carcrash of a life.
It was an incredibly raw and insightful few hours. You'll soon get to hear it for yourselves.
It is essentially this blog compounded into brutally honest and emotional radio.
Beautiful.
I left her house skipping into Manchester to go about my day, and whilst wandering through the city, there she was. My mother.
Dressed in black. Like she was fresh from a funeral. What I didn't realise when I was busy bounding across the road is that the funeral she was hoping to attend, was mine.
I tricked myself, perhaps with this delusional sense of self, that with everything in my life growing greater, stronger, prouder, she would see that, and see me, for who I am. A snap shot across a pavement, the daughter she always wanted and desperately missed.
And I knew as soon as the words left my mouth there were going to be greeted with venom, with eyes looking through me and not at me, we were back in Cheshire ten years ago, and she was looking at me like a stranger, just like she did then.
"Hi, how are you? You look great" I say with a smile on my face, so so happy to see her, healthy, well, there!
"God, did you have to?" She said in response to me crossing the road to greet her
"What do you want me to say Francesca?"
I stumble, mumble, a little taken a-back "Hi Fran, how are you, are you well, how are things?"
She smirks "I was half hoping you were dead to be honest"
And she walks away.
And then I realise that I actually, physically have my hand outstretched to reach for her.
And with tears burning in my eyes, I snatch it back.
Embarassed. Devastated.
Did she just say that?
To me?
The girl who cried into a microphone about a blonde princess who saved her from a life she was terrified of?
The girl who told Sam all about the day we rowed down the Thames in Stratford upon Avon.
And so maybe it is exactly what I feared...
That my life as a daughter, is a memory book inside my head, and forever more, all I will ever know is how to turn through the pages, and look back on days that once were.
But to hold her, to touch her, to say I love you outloud.
Those days are gone.
So.
I'm sat on the sofa, in my little house in the country, with mascara on my face, waiting for the Chinese delivery to get here, because the thought of cooking makes me ache.
Sarah's got me locked in a cuddle, the cat won't leave me alone with concerned cuddles, and I'm just typing, and writing and exorcising the pain.
Because I honestly don't know what to do.
I lost her.
Or she lost me.
I don't know.
All we will have is a graveyard and thats something that breaks my heart
