A few weekends ago, I was sat in a room full of family.
Celebrating a birthday. Someone getting older.
Every one was happy to see me, interested in my life, my love, my business, what I was doing.
I was hugged as soon as I walked through the door, bought a drink or two, I spent my evening laughing, looking around, feeling grateful and yet somehow desperately sad.
It wasn't my family.
Whilst it is a beautiful thing to be part of Sarah's family, it always invokes a great sadness within me.
So after a lovely evening spent at some social club in the depths of St Helens, I got back to Sarah's parents house, turned the laptop on and started to write.
It's been over two weeks now, and I haven't had a response.
I wrote to my father.
Sharing much the same as this blog.
"Last night I went to Sarah's uncle's 60th birthday party in Billinge; and it was lovely.
Sarah has an incredible family, who all get together for birthdays and Christmas' and whatever excuse they can find.
Everyone was pleased to see me, they wanted to know how the business was, tell me they'd seen my on the BBC, asking about our wedding plans and what we are doing.
And I missed you. So much.
It is a strange thing to be part of a family, but that family not be mine.
This morning I woke up and had coffee with Sarah's mum and she showed me hundreds of photos of Sarah and Dan when they were younger. Holidays. Birthdays. The day Sarah was born.
I want to do that. I want to sit down with Sarah and Val and share my life with them, because despite how things turned out for us as a family, you are a huge part of my heart and you made me who I am.
I'm aware I've made 100 mistakes and told 100 more lies, that I've hurt you and disappointed you; but every part of me that's good and kind and honest, you and mummy created, somehow. I take all of this on my shoulders and I say I'm sorry at every opportunity. Are you not? We can't do this justice if its always the black sheep who broke the Barkers.
I miss you. When I find out things like jay getting engaged through bloody Facebook it breaks my heart. I am his big sister. It should have been me that found out first. Not last.
When mummy gets ill, I should know about it, not find out from uncle bill when it's too late for me to do anything about.
I'm scared that we are so far gone and so far down the road of no return that I don't know who are you all are anymore, what you do, if you are well, happy, healthy.
I worry about you all the time.
I worry I don't see you enough, don't talk to you enough and that as we grow older, I loose you.
One day you'll be old and grey and I won't be there to hold your hand and tell you you look like an old fart!
I keep kidding myself that we can find a way back, that I've changed enough for you to see me for who I am.
I'm living a life I never thought possible. I'm happy. I am loved. I am safe and I am secure.
But I don't have you.
The three of you mean more to me than anything or anyone. Not having you in my life breaks my heart every day. I think about you all the time and I wonder how to make it right.
I can't live my life in mourning or regret and I won't punish myself for things that have come to pass.
I will fight for you and try for you and hope for a way forward.
But if you could be honest with me and tell me if that's never going to happen it would be a lot easier for me to let you go.
I've spoken to counsellors and psychologists who all advise the same thing - let it go. Let you go.
I don't want to.
I love you too much.
So what do I want?
I want to have more than a half an hour coffee with my father.
I want to talk to you about my life not just my work, your work.
I want to hug you and not feel like a stranger.
I want to see mummy look at me like a person not a mistake.
Jay loves me, he tells me so, and I'm aware we have a lot of ground to cover but given time, there may be hope for us. We have time.
What I would like, whilst you mull this over, is photos.
To borrow some photo albums for a few hours, so I can show Sarah the life I had (because the memories I have are starting to feel like I've imagined the whole thing)
Photos. Of us. Of me. Of jay. So I can snap shot them on my phone and so that I have a piece of my history.
To show my children.
I don't want you to be a story I tell.
I want you to be a part of it"
Despite being hopeful of a response, it never came.
So I suppose thats an answer in itself.
I've spent the past few months pin pointing absolute turning points in my life, events that changed my course, decisions I made, that I shouldn't have.
I made a promise to myself to make as much right as I could, salvaging friendships from the ashes and reaching out to people I lost along the way.
I am 28 years old and I've broken hearts throughout my life, not in any sort of egotistical manner, through being a sheer car crash of a human being and wreaking havoc on those around me.
At Sarahs uncles birthday, I looked around the room, full of people who love eachother, and I realised I didn't want to get to 60 and have noone of real substance to share it with. I want a room full of friends who have been my side all the way through, I want people there who have shared my life.
So it began, the tracking down of the broken hearts and the apologies and the hopes of bringing back the people who meant most to me. And my friends, it has been with great love and success that the people I have loved most in my life, have found their way bak to me, and me back to them.
The space in my heart they once occupied, its once again theirs and will stand to be for a long time to come.
A test of true love, that no matter how much time passes or how much a wreck you have been, the people who are meant to be for life, always will be.
I have lived a long time in regret, that when I lost my family, I lost everything that meant most to me. The friends I grew up, the people I had known all my life, disappeared and I was left wondering whether I had dreamt it all.
Sometimes I still do.
I wake in the middle of the night and think it was all some dream, some ridiculous Fran-ism and that there was nothing that came before this.
I think about the family holidays, the friends in the sea, the drinks, bars, bbq's, birthdays, weddings.
I was a bridesmaid, I was a friend.
None of it exists anymore.
Not a Barker, not a part of it.
It wasn't just family.
It was all of it.
Every person I had come to know and love, evaporated.
I had never been so alone.
And thus is the true test of time, the people who I needed and wanted, have come back, the ones I met at University, on a Warrington canal in a rowing boat, my friend from school.
I am loved.
What is it they say?
You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family?
Well thank fuck these people chose to love me.
I am blessed.
