There was a time, a time that feels alien, as I sit and type this on my laptop, whilst marking my students work, and thinking ahead to the lessons I have planned for them throughout this week and next.
A time when I wore the same clothes for two weeks straight, until I hit Primark with a tenner like Victoria Beckham storming Selfridges.
A time when staying a night in a hotel with a strange man, was a free night in a hotel with hot water and a warm bed, regardless of who was in it.
But it's now 2019 and my mind is a-buzz, whirring with 101 exciting prospects of how to ignite digital technology passions in these optimistic young souls.
And I look at them, each on the precipice of a great adventure, a bright future, so much choice and opportunity. Their little optimistic faces as they talk of their dreams of becoming the next Bill Gates, or Rockstar games latest coding hot-shot.
Yesterday in class, one of them was so pleased with the web design work he had done, he took his wire frame home to show his mum - bearing in mind, these are not school children, not anymore, the sense of pride and purpose was a thing of envy.
I think the last thing I took home to show my mum was an edited report I had doctored in 6th form so that she wouldn't see my poor attendance percentage.
I had a conversation with Sarah the other day whereby I expressed my immense sadness at the lack of purpose in my life, which is inaccurate, given that I have a job that I love, friends I adore, and a life I never thought possible.
I should feel grateful, and full of pride; and I am, but I feel an emptiness and a void that lingers.
I look at my life and all I see is wasted time and wasted opportunities. I am bright, I always have been. I am tenacious.
Once upon a time I was supposed to go to Manchester High School for Girls, the Oxbridge, then become a lawyer, get married to a nice rich man and have some babies.
In a parallel universe I am living an unhappy life, as a successful lawyer, with two children under 5 and sleeping with a man I probably don't love and certainly don't want, but I stayed the course and I chose the path of least resistance. I became the Barker child.
Who am I now? A late blooming professional, forging my path and my name in an industry I never expected to fall into, let alone fall in love with. A failed business woman, with a mountain of debt that keeps me awake at night, that chokes me in my sleep and in my waking breath and feels an impossible mountain to move, and a chain that Jacob Marley would laugh at.
I am a woman of few friends, because I don't know how to make them, let alone keep them. The ones that have survived the fires of Fran, remain true and kind and blindly supportive of the car crash that I am and the ones who burned, either by my fire or theirs, remain ashes that linger that Pompeii. Historic, tragic and where something died.
Sarah looked me in the eye as I wallowed in my self pity at being less of a woman and a person that I felt I should, given the choices I've had, I told her I had seen the most beautiful girl on the metro who I went to 6th form with and that time had made her even more pretty and a thing of awe, and in my chubby gaze, I glanced at her on public transport and thought "there's a girl who's got her shit together, she always did, at 16, and 30, and here I stand, no-makeup, hair tied back and a bristly grizzly face shirking behind the collar of my coat in the hope she won't recognise me in my less than fabulous state.
Sarah scowled and scorned, scalded me, with a look and a laugh and said "I'm sure that girl had a family who loved her, when she went home from school, she went home to supportive parents, friends and love, she went on to do what she wanted to do, and grew. She didn't run away to London and live on the streets, she wasn't homeless, hopeless and alone,"
With that in mind, I suppose it's a miracle I am who I am now, that I have a roof over my head and have escaped my past.
But it hasn't left me.
Today I had an email "Your payslip is now ready to view"
Always an email met with excitement and dismay, for my salary tends to be carved and served up on silverware for all those who invested in me and my fledgling limited company - oh joy. The crash of the company meant the finances crashed down around my ears, and despite me working in a joyful, lovely job, my wages don't remain my own, they leave the door faster than they come in.
I work my full time job, work my titties off, I work harder than anyone I know, truly, overcoming my own brain mental health psychosis on a daily basis to get up and out is a miracle.
A daily fucking miracle.
So when I get paid, I think HURRAY, I can pay the rent - I have a roof. I can buy food - I have food, I can live like a normal person, who does normal things, who at 31 should be doing.
I can function.
And then I slice the cake 101 which ways and pay everyone whats due as they shout MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE. It's never enough.
I count my change and stretch it as far as it will go and pray for normalcy and that Sarah is happy, that shes truly happy and that money isn't everything and we can live like this.
Should we live like this? Forever? Chained to the mistakes of a failed dream? I don't know, I just don't know.
Regardless, today - the clanger. Good lord. The kick in the fanny I truly did not need.
Attachment of earnings deduction - what fresh hell is this? £147.60 - how bizarre? What a strange amount of money. For what? For who? Why do I have no idea?
DWP payroll tells me.
Alarming - I have never had a benefit in my life.
So I call our governments finest entity and am told it is the collection of a crisis loan taken out in 2009 by me, when in London.
I almost drop my phone.
I ask what the fresh fuck this man is talking about - he tells me that I attended a job centre in Bayswater London in 2009 and received a giro cheque for a crisis loan, registered address at the time - a dingy dodgy fucking hostel, that at the time was the lap of luxury, once you had ducked and dived the polish ladies washing line hung from bunk bed to bunk bed, it was practically a Hilton.
I ask him, why has a crisis loan payment been deducted 10 years later from my now already stretched and hard worked for salary, he tells me this is standard practice and that DWP collect on old debts as and when they "loop round," and that a letter had been sent to my address - again, said hostel, to inform me.
I screech, in posh blaspheming and anger.
To summarise - when I was homeless, and living and working as a delightful lady of the night, and duly decided I couldn't stomach the streets or the dodgy brothel where we locked in day and night by Steve the Italian pimp with a mole the size of Sicily on his face and sought the help of our fair country by way of an emergency crisis loan to help me get a bed for another few nights in the hostel and not just the one night of luxury I could afford at the time.
This, yes this, wonderous life saving payment of £147.60 has now ten years later been taken from my now full time wages.
In a time where I budget every pound and every penny to pay The Barker Baker bullshit, the DWP decide to remind me of who I am, who I really am.
I am the scraper. I am the borrower. The beggar. The drain.
So whilst I'm sat marking my students work, and evaluating the delightful deduction of £147.60 from my now diminished paycheque, I'm angry and I feel totally worthless.
Will I never be free of the worst parts of me?
Or am I just the street rat who works to pay the past over and over and over until I die.
Such optimism.
Such joy.
I'm so glad I got out of bed today to face a brighter and better future.
It's what I work so hard for right?
Thanks DWP, alongwith HMRC, you've really had a good month on me! Don't spend it all at once.
