Like a surgeon, like a chef, like someone who needs to be clean.
I run the water so hot, it's almost scolding, with soap, always to much, and I run my hands over and under, fingers interlacing, palms brushed together, wrists together, like they're about to be tied.
Over and under, over and over.
It's obsessive.
I had forgotten that I do it.
And have done for a long time.
The compulsion surfaces during times of sadness and vulnerability
I find myself standing over a sink staring into space. Just washing.
Washing it all away.
I have a memory that grazes through my brain, from such a long time ago, of a mans arms around me, washing my hands with me, I don't know if it was my father, or if it was a foe. I don't remember, all I know it was the action "like this" and it haunts me and somehow travels with me.
It's a strange fibre that moves with me through the years.
I remember the feeling of my thighs burning in the water, as I sat in the bath, until the hot water turned cold, until the transparency turned red. Grazed knees, bloody mouth, black smudges on my cheeks, dirt and desperation under my fingernails. I sat. In disgust. In denial. Hoping the water would just wash it away.
I flinch when she touches certain parts of me, or if I feel certain fibres on my skin.
We walked through a shop a few months ago, and there was a mirror hanging on a sideboard, identical to the one I had to look into that night.
Broken pieces.
It made me feel sick.
A certain shade of carpet and it tricks my body and I swears it can feel the burn, against my knees and my cheek.
The smell of Angel aftershave, makes me want to curl up in a ball and put my hands palm down on the floor.
Anyway! I got out of that bath, got dressed, and went about my life like nothing had happened.
I'm good at that.
And through the weeks and the months that followed, I couldn't stop. I stood in the shower for what felt like days, my hands wrinkled from the water.
When I found out I was pregnant, I felt dirty from the inside out, I couldn't get that thing out of me quick enough, every fibre of my being resented the very presence of that night. I laughed at the hilarity of fate, giving me such a sick reminder. It couldn't just let me walk away, forget it. Oh no, I had to have a repercussion.
The day I found out, I was pissed up and in A and E, not feeling well. I couldn't understand why, I had drunk that much before, why did I feel so bad?
"You're pregnant Miss Barker,"
It's a good job I was lying down when they told me because I couldn't catch my breath.
19. Pregnant. What would my parents think?
I rang my dad.
I asked him to pick me up from the hospital. He didn't even know I was in the area, I had come back up north for a weekend of hardcore drinking, not family guilt and realism.
The whole thing was so inconvenient. He told me so.
It was conditional, for me to stay.
I would go straight to my room and not come out - they were having a family dinner with my brothers new girlfriend.
I would leave first thing and get the train back to Uni, no questions asked.
I agreed.
And so, he picked me up, we sat in silence on the short ride home. I went straight to my room as I had said I would and I spent the whole night, psychotic, alone, and in shock.
Putting different sized pillows up my shirt and staring at myself in the full length mirror in my teenage bedroom. That mirror never was my friend, and now it was showing me a 2 month pregnant horror story.
I went back to Uni, I went straight to the doctors and I asked for an abortion. The doctor asked me why, I told him. It was liberating, to tell another soul why I needed this exorcism as fast as possible.
He agreed, as long as I promised to attend counselling, I would have said yes to anything at that point.
So from the dirty deed in October, to the abortion in the 3rd week of December 2006, I washed.
Long hot showers, sporadic lectures and seminars, drinks with friends, promiscuous behaviour, more hot showers.
Anything to distract me from the feeling of filth.
I was dirty.
I have always been.
It's that feeling that made prostitution such an easy option for me, it was an absolute acceptance that I would be good at it, because it was at my core, dirty soul and dirty mind, I might as well seize the power and the money and make it part of me.
So I did.
And I was good at it.
Because there are two things I excel at in this life - sex and lies.
It's not as glamorous as it sounds, but it does allow the escapism for all involved to be whoever they want to be.
Of course, that all comes unstuck when you actually fall in love.
How do you give yourself to another person when you actually care about who they are and how you make them feel.
How do you let love take you?
Sometimes she whispers how much she loves me, how beautiful I am, and I hate to hear it, because I don't believe it.
And I get scared.
I want to give her all of me, not just a projection of what I think she wants.
She noticed the hand washing obsession, she asked me about it, and I told her the truth.
Its rare but it does happen.
She knows about the night when I was 19, shes had to pick up the pieces 10 years on.
She knows I'm the hooker, the fucker, the druggie and the whore.
She still says I love you, and it confuses my mind.
ITV had a camera pointed in my face a few months ago, and they asked me a question that made me cry.
And those of you who know me, it takes something profound for that to happen.
"How does it make you feel, to know Sarah loves you, despite knowing all of it?"
Dirty.
Still so dirty.
I find it hard to let go.
Yesterday I read yet more vicious spouting from someone insignificant, but that maintains a hold on my emotion because she knows my sore spots.
And it made me feel so defeated.
And then it made me laugh.
Always so inaccurate that girl.
Train station? Oh no my love, I've never been that kind of girl, oh once upon a time you could find me in a locked warehouse giving it away for £35 a go, with 50% going to the man in charge.
But then there are times you could find me in my 5* serviced apartment, making £300 an hour to make a man believe I was his. Paid in cash and cocaine and shiny, pretty things. It was quite a life. And I wouldn't change it, despite its imprints on my mind.
We don't all give it away for free.
Alas, a small victory from a small mind, it hurt. Because it struck my lowest chord.
That the world sees me as I see myself, tainted.
And then it occurred to me, tainted and dirty and filthy at the core I may be, but I read those messages and those little comments and I held the hand of a girl who loves me more than she loves herself, the stupid thing.
She held my hand and said "Don't you dare cry,"
And I said "I'm sorry," that is embarassing for her to always have to defend and pretend shes OK with who I am and the choices I've made.
And once again, she rescues my broken mind and says as she looks into my eyes "I'm not embarassed by you, I'm not ashamed of you, I love you,"
So I suppose our water bill is probably higher than it should be, and I'll carry on washing away my sins, over and under for a long time to come, but that doesn't mean it all has to be undone.
One day I will wash my hands, and I will look up in the mirror that hangs over our sink, and I'll be OK with the person who is looking back.
One day.
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