We all have milestones, we all have memories, we all have dates of celebration and dates of avoidance in equal measure.
For me, today is one of those days. Etched in my memory and I wondered when sitting down to type this, for the third time today; whether to continue to give this date, this memory, this moment in time, oxygen. Feeding it seems couterproductive as it keeps it alive and perhaps if starved and left in the dark, it'll fade away.
Alas, it's nearly 9pm and here I sit.
Christmas tree lights sparkling from across the dining room table.
1970's teak furniture, g-plan dotted around a dimly lit living room, Christmas lights hung in the front window, dazzling passers by in the December darkness.
It's familiar. But it's not.
11 December 2020 saw me thrown into the back of a prison van and escorted to HMP Styal for what at the time of sentencing, I knew only to be 27 months. At the time of gavel banging and the judges words ringing in my ears, I didn't know that you only served half your sentence behind bars and the remainder in the community. So for me, 27 months, was 2 years without freedom. Two years without Sarah, without my wife, my life, my home, my friends, my job, everything I had rebuilt through the chaos and the crash. Gone.
I'm blessed, I am.
I sit now, in a home, which is safe, which is warm, which is ours.
The lights on the tree, we hung together on 1st December, as we have for the past 13 Chrismasses together. A real tree, the kind we don't know if I'm allergic too or not and the only way to know how is to have Sarah shove and brush me different variants in the garden centre each year. Spotty, blotchy Fran = NOT THAT ONE.
Sarah's on the sofa, working on her Phd, after a long day's work.
Yesterday she worked later than expected and text me an update as to why "Just been holding a ladies hand whilst she was having bone marrow done, distracted her talking about strictly,"
My wife ladies and gentlemen. The woman who fights cancer by day, and holds patients hands when they need her to, and then comes home, riding her bike like the Levenshulme lesbian she has become and finds her way home - to me.
We were just like this 4 years ago. Oblivious of what was to come. With terrible legal advice and a promise that everything would be OK, neither of us could have known a custodial sentence of such severity was coming down the line, we were looking at life objectively through our own lens - judges want to see rehabilitation and growth, and they would. Judges want to see there's no threat to society, and they would.
They didn't. They saw stuck up privileged posh girl who had her chance at redemption and blew it. They saw entitled little miss barkerbaker who had tricked even my character witnesses into kind words. The judge herself said "Much like you did with your victims, you have shown the best side of your character to the people who wrote these, and we both know, that is not you. You are a most deceitful, dishonest woman,"
Those words rang in my ears for the duration of my prison sentence. They still do. As I type.
But this post is not about the doom and gloom and horror of what came to pass, or how it came to pass, it is to mark the journey since.
4 years.
1 incarcerated.
1 on license and probation
And 2 as a free person.
What does life look like as free?
What does freedom look like? No license conditions? No bars? No prison vans?
- There is no freedom for women who have been convicted of crimes and reported so widely in a digital age.
If you googled me now, the press that scattered the globe on 12th December will still be the highest ranking in google. Not the work before and not the work since. Because the world loves a villain. And the world loves radiator bread bullshit.
What you won't read is that in my two years of supposed freedom, I have built a life of joy, love, truth and kindness. The foundations were already there, so many years ago, and I'll admit, it did takes part of the prison journey to see their true value, to understand the emotion, motivation, dignity, choice. But what prison really taught me; for the majority. There is no good and there is no evil. There is right and there is wrong. But by god it's a layer cake of who, how, where, what, when. Then we arrive at why.
Alas, the criminal justice system doesn't work like that. We have the who, when and what. Rarely the why. The why opens the door to muddied waters, and judges like sentencing guidelines and by the book, if they step outside of the lines, it's usually to punish harsher, not to diminish.
If you read my blog, you will know all too well, my prison OAYS offender management paperwork defined me as 0.07% risk of reoffending in a two year period. We are 3 years post incarceration and 8 years post criminal act in 2016.
It also noted the reason for my sentence - punishment.
Punishment.
Today, the government continued with their propaganda machine of making a safer society and fixing the conservative fuck ups.... in creating 14,000 more prison places and I quote for "dangerous criminals to be locked up," - I'm intrigued by the definition of dangerous in this capacity, does dangerous mean violent? Surely then the language used by the Ministry of Justice itself should be "violent criminals," and "locked up," perpetuates the societal desire to cage and segregate those deemed unsuitable for society. The language is always the same. Designed to inflame, shame, dehumanise.
Don't get me wrong, for the violent, the depraved, the sex offenders, rapists, child abusers, child killers, there's a place to keep society safe, where behaviour needs to moderated, mediated and modified. But for the thousands of non-violent offenders? What of them? Dangerous?
I was dangerous. To myself, my family, the people I stole from. I was dangerous. In 2016.
But in 2020 when in prison, found by offender managers, prison officers and psychologists to be 0.07% risk to the public. But incarcerated non the less.
I was literally the definition of who we don't send to prison and who we deal with in a community setting through appropriate, proportionate measures and means.
My pre-sentence report recommended a suspended sentence. My barrister recommended a suspended sentence.
Prison. Punishment and public humiliation and annihilation.
Still.
Just a few months ago, I was sat in a classroom space, ready to deliver a Coming Home session to 10 new faces. Nobody turned up. Someone involved in my court case (again from 2016!) had ghost booked all 10 spaces and delighted in contacted me 1 hour into said session to let me know it was them. To remind me, they're still there. In the background.
And I suppose, it made me evaluate my purpose and my place, and my freedom.
In 2024, still not free and still held to account of the actions of a Fran that hasn't existed for a long, long time.
When I look at my life and what I have achieved post-prison, I'm proud.
And I struggle with pride as an emotion, it's not something that's been part of my life, my childhood, my adolescence, and I've always strived for the approval of people, parents and more so it's a novelty and a joy to be so completely in awe of my own action, integrity and direction of travel, with no care or emotional investment or need of the approval of others.
Women like me, who began as children like me, we become the needy, insecure, desperate for love and approval creatures we evolve into. That presents in trauma bond relationships, impulsive outlandish behaviour, dependence, addiction to substances, people, lies. Everyone has a vice. A familiarity. A safe place.
I had a moment yesterday, I stood on some weighing scales, and I weigh less than when I came home from prison. When I came home from prison I was 15 stone, but I looked emaciated, sallow, pale, unwell. And I was. I was untamed, unkempt, undernourished. It was like going back to the beginning.
And as I stood looking at the numbers flashing at me yesterday, I was met with a surge of anger.
My relationship with food, is a lot like my relationship with addiction in general. It comes from deprivation. It comes from shame. It comes from defiance.
Before I was adopted, I was a malnourished street rat from London, a ward of court, poor, emaciated, sallow and pale. In care. Not cared for.
I was taken in by a final foster home, a joyous experience of love and safety. Where food was plentiful and never shameful. But I still sexually propositioned my foster father for the sake of a buttery crumpet, because I didn't know any other way to please a male figure in my life than to offer myself.
It made me think of prison. If someone had offered me a buttery Marks & Spencers 5 grain crumpet for the sake of flashing a tit, I probably would have. Sadly, prison officers lack such taste and merely coax hungry women behind bars with chocolate bars and vapes.
That cycle of deprivation got me thinking. Ages 0-4, impoverished, feral, famine, sex object. Trafficked in my 20's, locked in a warehouse, impoverished, feral, famine, sex object.
But most disturbing, it brought back memories of my purported privilege, where food was plentiful, but shameful. Where my mother would count the biscuits in the cookie jar, to ask how many I had had, and then berate me if I told a lie.
I got clever. I counted the biscuits too, binged the packet, went to the nearest shop (a 1 mile walk away) and bought a new packet, ate the right amount and lo' - child brain Fran, satiated on biscuits and misdemeanour. But with the upper hand.
She used to look through the recycling outside the backdoor to see if I had snook or bought in treats and naughty food - pulled packets out to ask where they came from, did I eat in one sitting. Disgusting. I was disgusting.
Where food orders in restaurants were commandeered and commanded - I'll have steak and chips, interrupted and silenced with - No, she will have steak and THE salad.
Body shamed into body dysmorphia. Homophobic jibes rampant, I dressed like a dyke because I was a big girl and if I just lost the weight, I'd find a nice man and I'd learn to dress better, feel a sense of pride in myself.
"Do you want to be the fat girl who can no longer shop in Selfridges? Do you want to be the fat girl shops in Evans? Do you?"
And so, this strange creature from care, became this secretive beast, sneaking food in the night, hiding garbage in strange places, and eating eating eating. And lying.
My parents found out I was gay - not through any diction from me. I was on a school trip and they had gone through my things in my bedroom whilst I was away and found a love letter from a girl. I came home from said school trip and the letter was placed squarely in the middle of my bed. Words were had. Blows exchanged.
My father would always say he was never violent, if he ever raised a hand in anger; I had pushed him to it. And I must have. Because he never hit anyone else at home.
I could always sense the rage before it landed. A bad day at work. A baggy pair of jeans on me. An empty wrapper on the side. An unwashed plate. An un-ironed school skirt once resulted in being hit with the ironing board.
But even that was my fault - for being too lazy to help my mother with the ironing. The audacity of a 13 year old girl.
It just so happened my mother had an ironing lady who came once a week to do the lot, so I was particularly perplexed that day at the scalding.
A split lip in a city centre hotel, having staggered in pissed, 17 and having clearly been to the gay village when I had told them I was out at Deansgate Locks. An incredibly gay looking friend walking me back to make sure I was safe gave the game away, and for me. It was game over.
I type for catharsis. On a December night, when I wonder, how did I get it so wrong in life that I put myself in prison.
It's all tied together. Fran who tells lies. Tell lies, because that's all she's ever known and all she's ever been. To protect yourself. From the fat shaming, the homophobic insults, the jokes at my expense, the berating and belittling. To hide the scars on my arms. Lies. To cover up the truth. I was miserable and I was alone and I was nothing, to no-one.
All compounded and consolidated when finally disinherited and made the pariah of it all, the black sheep gone too far, the hooker, the druggie, the homeless rif-raf, the criminal, the dyke.
Women in prison are not there because they want to be. Not because they saw their lives playing out that way. They are there because somewhere, somehow, they didn't know how to be anything other than what they became. They learned to exist. Sadly, often at the expense of others. And that is true sadness of it all. Those who are victims, become perpetrators.
Which is absolutely why we need to address the trauma, the behaviour, the interventions and preventions, because sending women to prison only adds to the Tetris build up of harrowing life experiences, but worse, it sends the message - this is all you, this is all you are worth, this is all you can and will be and it doesn't inspire change, it doesn't install hope, it doesn't promote engagement and rehabilitation, it takes more than it gives from people who have nothing left in the tank to fight for.
Where 37 year old women write blogs like this, because the trauma thread gets pulled, what starts with Christmas lights in a living room of love, verges into prison van whizzing past city lights and saying goodbye to Christmas and to hope, to wondering what Christmas is about, remembering what it was, and what I wouldn't want it to be again.
Where Christmas is food and family, and the memory of those make me want to curl up in a ball and cry - or worse, eat a packet of biscuits.
But I look up, and there's Sarah typing away, completely oblivious to this little EUPD spiral on paper, but it's to remind me, remind you.
All progress is progress. All acknowledgement of pain and finding the path through and not around is vital to sustained recovery. I became my own therapist, my own food coach, my own cheerleader. I map my choices, thoughts, traumas and logic and I look at them with balance. In a world of black and white, I have taught myself to find the grey. To see the impact, consequence and outcome of everything. Work, life, family, finance. It's exhausting. Second-guessing and safeguarding against your inner chid and its defence mechanisms which have existed much longer than your new way of living but it's worth it.
4 years ago today, I was looking at a bed sheet and wondering if I could loop it around a pipe. Forgive the stark nature of that statement.
I didn't see a future and certainly not one as beautiful as this.
But thank god I didn't pull, thank god I didn't tie.
Thank god I didn't die.
But for the sake of Fran who came before and serving a short sentence for a non-violent crime. I almost did.
Some are not so lucky.
We are fast approaching the anniversary of Annalise and the fact we are 4 years on from that tragedy and no real change has come to pass and no accountability has been upheld - that keeps me awake.
27 months for me.
0 for the prison who aided her death.
Grotesque.
And so, the fight goes on.
Always
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