The unempathetic empath

One of the things that stood out when reading all about Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, was the stark explanations and validations that people with a variety of BPD's lack empathy, where as other medical journals and articles would cite that actually, people with BPD, in particularly EUPD have heightened empathy and are vastly emotional beings.

So I wondered where in the quandry, my brain chemistry lay.
My brain is a zebra, it is streaked through and through with both of the above. Lack of empathy and absolute empathy. But how and why do the two co-exist?
How can I be inherently selfish, and self-preserving, but in reality, the most giving and selfless of many I know?
Is it some sort of moral see-saw, that constantly balances itself out?
For me, it's not a case of behaviour correction, when I am at my lowest, my most vunerable and my most unstable - through lack of medication, or perception of threat, abandonment, loss, then my brain switches to chaos mode, and I lash out and start making rash decisions which some part of me knows will lead to all of my perceived predictions of danger, abandonment, loss, but I essentially become, like clockwork, a self fulfulling propechy.
It is a time where it becomes carte blanche in my mind, anything goes, nothing is off limits, hurt or be hurt, chase or be made to run. It'd childish in essence, but I suppose that is the point of this mental health disorder, it's origins, born in chaotic childhood trauma, developed in confusing and isolated adolencense and left to fester, grow, evolve into adulthood and lo'; here I am.

It's a strange concept which I find quite perplexing, the two streams of consciousness running side by side.
Stability and safety bring about positive behaviours and envoke the ability to achieve more than most, it makes me somewhat unstoppable with my ambition and desire to learn more, to do more, to be more.
On the flip side, instability takes me to the darkest of places, where I lack self worth and become the worst version of myself, I think my short stint in London playing secret diaries of a call girl proves that, the abject drug addiction that I let define me, became my only purpose. I think it says alot that you can exist as two people in one mind.

I have always known I am someone who can conquer and achieive, it's my ability to maintain and sustain that scares me, I can be the success, for as long as my mind is focused, content, that the constants in my life remain that way - the love, the home, the bills, the friends.
IF they stay constant, I do too. If they wobble, I do. I create an earthquake throughout my life and it all starts to tumble.


I digress.
I have been working, doing something that has made me a better person.
It's been some sort of accidental social experiment.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a doctor, I wanted to help people.
When I got older, I wanted to be a politician, because I wanted to help people.
Through my decades on this earth, I have always had core good intentions and pure morals, despite the sketchy choices I have made.

This job, has tested every fibre of who I am.
Am I truly the caring, hard working person I believe myself to be?

Hell. YES.

Am I capable of stability and sticking with something even if it's harder than I ever dreamt it would be?
Again, I say, HELL YES.

I have got up and gone to work and hit it out of the park every single day. I have learned that empathy and caring is exactly who I am, and it is what makes me soul happy. I love to know that what I do makes a difference to someone, somehow.
I know it harks back to the childish need to please, which makes up a large part of my personality, but in reality, if I know these traits of mine are there, then why not tap into them and turn them into positives?

Believe me when I say, this joyful venture of full time employment has been no picnic, I was optimistic and naive as to what I was getting myself into and was desperately disheartened when I realised I wasn't there to be anything more than a body of the floor, an extra pair of hands for the dirty work, and by god, I mean dirty.
It wasn't exactly testing my intellectual ability, or my realms of experience with people, people like me perhaps.
If anyone knows how to navigate the world of mental health and know what will bring about positive changes - its me.

Alas, that is a story for another time, and what a story it will be.

My point is - I have let my mental health disorder define me, I have accepted all the negative connotations that come with it, and allowed them to be the defining features - and that was wrong.
Yes, I am a sandwiche short of a picnic, but maybe picnics don't need to be just about the sandwiches.
Sarah will be proud of that very loose little metaphor right there.

If you feel you are defined by your label, the question is why?

It's only you who has the power to define anything.
So make the right choice, and just be.... you?

So this is Christmas

Sarah bought me a beautiful fountain pen for Christmas so I could do my writing in my favourite way - with Dickensian flourish and flare; with ink!

So here it is :-

Friday 13th

Tomorrow will mark 11 years... what feels like a lifetime, but somehow, feels like yesterday.

More poignant than any other year that has passed by, as tomorrow is the first exact Friday 13th October since that night in 2006.

What is Friday 13th to you? Superstition? Legend? This month is it a fun run up to Halloween? Spooky and all!

I'm not good with any Friday 13th, its a date burnt into my mind and my memory, so whether its a sunny day in May or a cold October, it makes no difference to me.

Or so I thought.

I have watched my calendar counting down, knowing this day was coming. It's a strange feeling of foreboding, I should feel grateful to put another year between me and it, another year means progress, I survived, better than that, I thrived.

Today the news is saturated with Hollywoods latest sleaze ball grabbing tits and arses left right and centre, and its disgusting. Its so synonymous of the sad world we let grow, where men can do as they please with little consequence, even more so those in a position of power, wealth and influence. Living in Rochdale, the local news is all about Cyril Smith, the disgraced Liberal Democrat MP who haunted homes of poorly and vulnerable children, masquerading as a man of kindness and care, all the while abusing his position, a harsh similarity to that of Jimmy Saville - also benefiting from his "man of the people" persona.
What is this society?
A place where monsters no longer lurk, but prowl, openly, in plain sight, shrouded in the arrogance of knowing fear will prevail and no-one will speak out.
Well DAM GOOD ON YOU LADIES.
Find your voices and your courage and scream it from the roof tops, no-one deserves to feel that way.

I spent nearly a decade thinking what happened to me was my fault, that day, that night, my choices, lead me there. Or, my sins caused a karmic storm which was sent to test me and I failed.

Consumed with guilt. Self-loathing. Self-doubt. The constant state of dirtyness, like I couldn't clean my soul from the inside out.

Power, the power people yield over us and control us, for seconds, for lifetimes, with words and actions, we become theirs and we loose our voices.
Don't.

I read a beautiful piece of writing by a girl a few months ago, incredible actually, so raw, I found such affinity with it, I had to get in touch with the person who wrote it, and not surprising, she is a woman of strength and beauty and pride. With words of conviction and honour, she spoke out, shouted out, and built something brilliant upon the back of a horrible horrible thing. This is what we must do, as women, as victims, speak out, share, care, support, love, rebuild, fight, campaign, prosecute prosecute prosecute, change change change.
It can't go on.
Where cat-calls and up-skirt shots are banter for the boys, and tit pics of ex girlfriends seep across the internet for all to see, where relationships are "fuck me, or else," and we are left with no choices, as objects, as things, as desires with no feelings, emotions, wills and purpose.

No.

Tomorrow is Friday 13th October and I have made my choice, it's long enough. It's time enough. No more.
He lives in the past now. I screamed out, I shouted out, for the world to hear me. And they did. So now instead of me standing on my soap box crying about a night of hell and a decade of pain, I won't talk, I will listen.

That's what I'm here for, that is why I write, you need a voice, you need an ear.
You shout, I'll listen.

The irony of "justice"

"And how did these actions damage you Miss Barker?" asks the prosecution

"I tried to kill myself," I reply.

An hour later

"Are you being over-dramatic with regards to how these actions damaged you Miss Barker?" asks the defence

"I tried to kill myself, so I wouldn't say so. I think wanting to die, having the police attend your property, going to hospital and duly being sent to Birch Hill Mental Hospital, no. Not over-dramatic I'd say," I reply.


This response was laughed at yesterday, with a smirk like a Cheshire cat, across a court room.

For the first time since this all began I spoke to the person who tried to ruin my life, I couldn't control myself.
This person was laughing at me. At my sadness. At my desperation.

"It's still just a game to you isn't it? I said standing in the witness box, gripping it so hard my knuckles had turned white.

The person smiled, a grin, a nod and the word "yep,"

The magistrates looked disgusted, I felt sick, but was aware the hole this person had dug themselves was getting deeper by the second.
Such blatant disregard for what they had done. No remorse. Just pleasure. Absolute pleasure at the suffering, the chaos.

I couldn't get past the fact that back in 2013 when I stood in the Magistrates myself, I shook with fear, suited and booted and pleading guilty, I was so consumed with guilt, I could barely bring myself to speak.
Isn't that the point? To feel remorse?
For every mistake I have made, then and now, I live in purgatory, of guilt and wonderment of how to right the wrong. It doesn't matter how, where, when, who, what, all wrongs have to be righted.
How could you live with yourself if not?

I think I took the defence by surprise, their primary tactic was to highlight "I had form"
I had a criminal conviction for fraud, and therefore, it was likely I wasn't telling the truth.

It's no secret, the truth and I are not the best of friends, but yesterday, I stood in a court of law and said in front of Magistrates and lawyers and the poisonous creature who possessed my life for a short time.

"You are absolutely right. I am a convicted and admitted liar,"

Well where do you go with that?

Can you use the fact I'm a liar against me when I've just said its a true fact.
That part of my nature is lies. It's woven into my history and will stay with me for the rest of my life.
It's a shameful fact, I know.
It's a curse that contaminates the best parts of me.

I took control.
I am a good person.
I believe it. Whole heartedly, and it has taken me a long long time to get here and to see that, and even with mistakes that I continue to deal with, I know in my heart, I don't hurt people on purpose, and if by chance of Fran freak accidents and chaos, I fix it. I have to. I apologise. I admit. I move on. I make it better.
There is no shame in telling the truth about the worst parts of you.

The fact of the matter is, this was weaponized, by this beast of a human.
Knowing the weakest parts of me and my life, used, abused and magnified.

I was tortured. On a daily basis. Relentlessly, from all angles.
I was made to feel like a monster, when I never was.
I was made to feel like nothing.
Like I didn't deserve any good thing in my life.
And that it would be taken from me.

And that person did a dam good job - but here's the thing - everything I have and everything I love, it's still here.

My business - it is me, I am it, so I don't have the extravagant retail outlet empire I delusionally thought I was building. GOOD. That is not what the business is or ever was.
It is PEOPLE. Good people. Positive change. Hard work. Decency. It is incredible bread that inspires hope.
I thought I could change the world by offering the world and his dog a job, that I was helping people by giving them chances, I wasn't.
I am at my best when I teach, when I share, when I care, when I give, when I bake.
So now I'm back at the beginning with a business model that was never broken, just misguided.
I am The Barker Baker, and you can never ever take that from me.
People trusted me to be better, to do good, and I will do it until the day I die.
But that day is not now. Not anymore.

My love, my Sarah.
My heart breaks.
Such pain.
Such a casualty.
She was so hurt in all this.
Hounded. Humiliated. Hurt.
And what does she do through it all? Protects me.
Loves me.
Holds me together.
She's the one who ends up holding my hand in the hospital.
She's the one who makes sure I've taken my medication and I haven't taken ALL of it.
She's the one who picks me up off the kitchen floor.
And then?
She gets up and goes to work and is amazing, passionate, driven and strong.
Her mothers daughter. No doubt about that.

Sarah stood in court yesterday, alone and had to relive the horrors.
The messages, the statuses, the videos, all of it.
She came out, she hugged me and she took me for lunch.

I sit and write this, and shes a work, plodding on as per usual and she will come home and ask HOW I AM.

In a video she recorded, a person banging on our front door can be heard saying to her, to my Sarah,
"You're worthless, do you know that? You're nothing,"

At the time, I was in the kitchen cutting vegetables and making dinner, the banging, screaming, shouting commenced, the windows, the door, the letterbox.
I had a big ass knife in my hand.
Sarah told me to stay in the kitchen and not to listen.
And then I heard it.
"You're worthless,"
You don't say things like that about the most precious thing in my life when I have a big knife in my hand.
The rage. The anger.
My god.
I can't even.

But she recorded, she waited, she didn't engage, they tired and left.

It was played in a court room yesterday and she had to hear it again.
And I'm sure they laughed, I don't know, I wasn't allowed to be there when Sarah gave her evidence.

This person, was our friend. Was someone I trusted. Implicitly. Who I relied upon. I helped. I thought I did.
And if I didn't.
Sarah bloody did.
She was a good friend, dinners, drinks, hugs, listening to problems, support, always.

It was Sarah who tried to show me, to tell me, to protect myself. To fire this person.
I didn't listen. I was scared, because I knew the poison within. I had seen it, and I was terrified it would turn on me.
So I didn't fire them. I plodded along with no clue how it would end.

Like this apparently.
In a court room.
Which in itself is hilarious.
Throughout the entire process this person broadcast to anyone who would listen.
Fran is a liar.
There are no police.
There is no solicitor.
Fran is a liar.

She a fraudster.
Shes a groomer - don't get me started on that one!

Fran is a liar.

I'm getting Fran arrested.
Fran is a liar.


Solicitor - check.
Police - check.
Court case - check.

So who is the liar?

So easy to white wash me with that label. Even easier for it to believed given my circumstances.

Fran stood in court yesterday and told the truth, and guess what the outcome was?
BIG FUCKING GUILTY.

You come to my house and you torment me.
You seek out my friends one by one on social media and try to turn them against me with bare faced lies.
You seek out my business partners and supports and scare them shitless with your dramatic portrayal of the monster boss.
You call me a liar, a groomer and a fraud.
You hurt innocent people along the way.
You shit on the memory of my dead grandmother because you know no boundaries of disgrace.
You laughed about the worst parts of my life, of rape, of prostitution. You shared it. You humiliated me.
You laughed at my (and might I add - fully verified, documented by a full psychiatric 27 page report) mental health issues and then tried to use your own, of which we now know are just not true.
It's sick.
It's all so sick.


You made my life so unbearable, I wanted to die.
You made me so unhappy, and feel so worthless. I didn't want to be here anymore.
You scared me with your psychotic behaviour, I couldn't leave my house.
I crawled on my living room floor, into my kitchen, for fear of moving the curtains.
I lived, in my bedroom, where it was safe.
I felt disgust. I worried people would believe you.

I gave you every good thing you will ever know, and you took it, used it, abused it, discarded it and then used it against me.

You.
You are the monster.
You are the liar.
You are the fraudster.
You.
Well, you are nothing to me now.

A horrible moment in time, and the biggest regret of my life.
You made me doubt who I AM.
You made me hate MYSELF.

Not anymore.

I will move past this, with strength, and love, and hope.
I will be better, I will work harder, I will do whats right, because that is what we do.

As I said in court yesterday "It's easy to answer questions when you are telling the truth,"

Love wins.

Ban the box

So, last night, a job I quite fancied called me, brilliant conversation, really productive, with a date for this Friday set to go through the motions and to have a proper chat about what they could do for me and I could do for them. It was a great opportunity, 25k, company car, real growth prospects. 

The Barker Baker is still a huge part of my life, and for as long as people want to hear me speak and want me to teach, that is who I will be, but in a time that requires stability and security, self employment is too fluctuating for the commitments I have and the life that I'm building.

Needless to say, I was pretty gutted when I got this text today.

This is the second time in just a few weeks I've been cut down from a job that I thought would be a dead cert, I've got the right qualifications - impressive on paper, with a job history to die for, with references to boot; so to be point blank rejected due to my criminal conviction has left me feeling pretty gutted.

I have often written about how there are two pieces of paper that define me, one being an impressive CV - which incidentally, has grown more impressive POST conviction, and the other being my criminal conviction for 2013. For a first time offence might I add. 

I can see why people are passionate about the "ban the box" disclosure policy, it's debilitating, it's stress inducing, and ultimately, its humiliating.  

My conviction is not the worlds best kept secret, I decided the best way to control my mistakes would be to admit them, of course I took that to another level when creating The Barker Baker, a business built entirely on the premise of being an offender, knowing I was someone serving a suspended sentence and limited in terms of job prospects with compulsory probation and drug rehabilitation commitments. I knew no-one would be willing to take someone so fresh out of a court room on. With the beautiful twist of fate, it was probation that sparked my passion and opened the door to a solution - self employment. I could control my own fate, and I did, for a good few years, but then business became more about me than my message, which meant it needed a break. I needed a break. I needed space from the machine I had created. 

To re-evaluate why it wasn't what it should have been.

In this time of rethinking and rehabilitating, I decided a new journey was needed, a new direction, a challenge. 

So, a dusting off of the old CV, an updated LinkedIn, some online courses to get to grips with things I needed and wanted to brush up on - and off I went. The problem being - I had no idea what I wanted to do.

I promised myself after my conviction I wouldn't live a life of mediocre again, I wouldn't do something without passion and purpose. 

I want to write, so perhaps something journalistic, copywriting, PR, media - my only experience being this blog, and the interactions I've had with the media through articles, radio, tv. 

A little over reaching I think. Dare to dream.

Social care, charities, community groups, I am passionate about people, about helping people be the best they can be - a huge part of the business and a huge part of who I am. So it was logical to apply for jobs helping others.

Politics - mad about politics, local, national, with a focus on criminal justice and how to change the system for the better. Same problem, after graduating, I worked in London, I was an academic, I was good at it. Once I set my mind to something, I do it and I do it well. No, I do it brilliantly. Once I want to learn and achieve something, I do it better than most. If there is one thing I excel at, it is being the best at what I set my mind to.

So when I got the call last night for the marketing job I wanted, it was spot on, food, marketing, people, engagement, travel. They were excited, I was excited. Then BOOM. Conviction. Not interested. Best of luck.

I find it fascinating. In the life I have had after my conviction, I have achieved more than most could dare to dream. Why then, is that my stumbling block? Surely from an employers perspective, someone who has triumphed over adversity, someone has created something of purpose through drive, hard work, self motivation, those are good qualities? Employ-ability qualities?

I used the worst parts of myself to spring board the best parts of me.

I work hard. Really hard.

I give anything I do, my full.

I dedicate myself entirely to a cause or a purpose and always strive for the best outcome.

I am fiercely independent but somehow an avid team player.

My qualifications are great.

My job history is great - eclectic, but great.

My references are impeccable.

So what the hell is going on?

When my conviction becomes spent, employers won't be able to black ball me, by law. So why should they be allowed to now? I have paid my dues, I have done as I should have.

The irony is, when my conviction becomes spent, it doesn't really. Put my name into google, my life history comes up, this blog is an example of that. Thats my point.

I am strangely proud of my conviction - it is a battle scar of my mistakes, of my history, of my bad choices. It is the benchmark I live up to every day. The measure of decency, kindness and honour.

It is what defined me - for the better, not for the worse.

So why don't other people see it that way?

Distinctly Average

Distinctly Average

The cover note of my school report from the headmaster once read “In order for Francesca to fulfil her true potential, she must realise it and work harder to achieve it,”

I always found it a back handed compliment.

My parents saw it as the forewarning of a tirade of criticism from my teachers to come – it was a mixed bag that year; praise from some, disdain from others, I seem to bring that out in people. I always have.

I’ve held that comment in my mind all these years, back then, what was my true potential? Better GCSE grades? Because lord knows, I could have and should have done better, but I was an arrogant little shite who thought I knew better – again, I trait I have carried with me throughout my life – I always know better….. Alas, with distinctly average GCSE’s from a girl who had a dam good education, it’s no wonder my grades were met with a sigh.

Good enough to get me into the ponsey girls grammar school, my parents wouldn’t let me apply or go to college, they thought the lack lustre approach to studying would tie in all too well to my lack lustre attitude to… studying!

Still, hilarious irony of sending the daughter they hoped was “going through a phase” to an all-girls grammar school – thanks guys!

I’ve always been a bit of an anarchist, in that, so much was expected of me; that I just didn’t want to deliver. I didn’t want to live up to great expectations and be the bright one; I just wanted to cruise along and make my own choices and figure it out like everyone else.

I always felt like I had to prove my worth, even back then, I had to show the glimmer, the glamour, the brains, the beauty (!!!)

Alas, here I am typing at the lovely age of 30 and I’m irritated. Plagued with “What ifs”

Maybe if I hadn’t been such an ignorant, stubborn little girl, who grew into an even more resentful, pissed off teenager, and duly into a completely deluded and lost woman, well, maybe, life would be different.

This blog is about trying to understand something I still can’t grasp.

What am I supposed to be? Are we supposed to be anything? What is this predestined bullshit we grow up with? This expectation and pressure to drive towards something?

Growing up, I imagined at the age of 30, I would be married – to a man, because I would have knocked this gay thing on the head and kept my family happy, I’d have a child or thinking about another in the near future, and I would be just like my mum, working my tits off in a high powered job, paying the mortgage and planning the next holiday abroad, whilst popping into the supermarket on the way home.

No. Instead, I am a 30 year old gay woman, living in a rented house in a place I didn’t even know before we moved here, with the love of my life, and it’s not the life I thought I’d have.

ITS BETTER.

So much for expectation and destiny.

I admit, I’m disappointed – in myself, in my life choices, in the paths I took that diverted me away from where I wanted to be. Stupid choices, colossal mistakes, and dangerous.

But I’m here. I am loved. I am capable.

The business sucked the soul out of me. I don’t think that’s news to anyone. I had such a grand ambitions and such heart, I believed it would be the biggest thing for me and for those it touched. It was. For a short time.

For a short time I was exactly the person I wanted to be. Hard working, honest, kind, giving, inspirational. I won awards from people I never dreamt would even know my name. And then I lost myself. In a land of delusion and fear, that I had to do bigger and better things, with this warped sense of expectation that I HAD TO BE SOMEBODY.

I didn’t have to be anybody, I was fine just being Fran, I didn’t have to be the superstar barker baker life changer extrodinarre with every endeavour I touch turn to gold. I set myself up for this epic failure long before other people joined me on the ride.

For-fil my true potential? I did. And then I overshot it. There’s no doubt, in a normal sense of self, with a brain that doesn’t operate based on medication and a lot of hard work to keep it on the straight and narrow – maybe then, I could have achieved all I hoped for, but the fact is, I’m just not that person. I crippled myself, through perceiving this immense pressure, from the outside world. I hurt myself, through building a house on sand. Hoping with hard work it would be enough. All the hard work in the world won’t save a sinking ship when you are the captain.

Seriously? Who puts a loony bin at the helm?

I am so head strong, I can tackle the greatest of things and find the solutions to problems that people can’t see. The solution to my problem was me.

Too much too soon.

Too big too fast.

And not enough sense of self to know the difference.

When I was at 6^th form college, I got the highest score ever known at that school for my politics AS level, my teacher was amazing, I was passionate about the subject and I really wanted to be a politician. Then talks of attempting to shoe me into Oxbridge for applications, my parents got excited, the teacher got excited – I didn’t. I was never ever going to work hard enough for that – because I didn’t want to. Can you imagine the pressure? I chose Universities I wanted to go to because I knew they would be good for me. Not good for them.

Ironic.

So I blackballed them all. Fucked them off as quick as I could and did well enough to go where I wanted, I didn’t want all their jazzy options, I didn’t want to be my mother. I wanted a great grade in politics and I wanted to go and get my degree, do well enough to get a masters, and then I wanted to become a lecturer and get into politics.

Of course I didn’t. Fate set me on a different path and hijacked my course of action in year 2 at University, we all know how that story ends.

So is ever too late to be the person you want to be?

Sarah sent me a “TED Talk” last week while she was at work; and it is truly excellent (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MBaFL7sCb8)

As it turns out; no. It’s never too late to be the person you want to be.

I am the girl who walked out of a court room with a head full of chaos and a lifetimes worth of habits to change, there and then.

I am the girl who conquered addiction. I am the girl who started a business on a shoe string. I made a living of hope out of bread – BREAD! Frigging chocolate orange bloody soda bread!

I won awards. I was in magazines. I was on the TV. SO WHAT?!

All of that fluff and all of that excitement shows me ONE thing.

Right work ethic, wrong direction.

I want to get back the person I was, the kind, honest, hard working one. Well then here I am. Bring it on.

I want to study more, learn new things, use my intelligence and find my passion for politics, so I am. Online courses, here I go.

I want a career that makes me happy, that makes me work hard, that gives me purpose – I got myself a job doing just that.

We are not predestined. We are not bound by expectation. Passion. Pressure.

You can spend your whole life waiting for it to happen, or YOU can make it happen.

Constant state of flux

I whittle away my days, with grand ambitions, big ideas, and more determination than most people I know. There is no doubt, that Francesca Barker working at 110% and focused is a force to be reckoned with; that aspect of me is the person who won business awards, who built something from nothing and had something to be proud of.

The other aspect of me is the fruit loop, the worrier, the needy "help me, save me, I can't do this,".

How do those two aspects of one person co-exist?

It is a constant battle in my head and in my life. I am SO capable. I always have been. Such potential, and always thwarted by own mind, my bad choices, my dark places.

It's such a chore to juggle these two minds in one body.

Now, Fran Barker, Barker Baker, geeky politics girl, avid write, poet, lover of all things jazz and beauty, well shes a formidable, capable, driven, ambitious, passionate person.

With qualifications and a CV to be proud of, she walks into room and people listen.

She gets up in the morning, early, excited.

Breakfast. Showered. Dressed to impress, with a dam good effort at a pretty face and snazzy hair - and if all else fails, crack out the good handbag.

This person is a person of love, empathy, understanding, sorrow at the sadness in the world and fire to change it. The person who would give their last penny to someone who needed it more, and then find a way to multiply it, It's not quite Jesus and his fishes, but its the same concept at heart.

This person built a business on a shoestring. Worked a full time job and worked weekends on market stalls and managed to survive; dare I say it, thrive.

People took notice, people felt proud. 

I felt proud. For a while.

And lo' demons awake, and the paranoia, the fear, the pressure, consumes the good and brings out the bad.

I can't do this on my own.

It's not enough.

I'm not enough.

I can do more.

I want more.

People are watching, waiting, wanting more.

Prove yourself Fran,

I broke my first rule. Fuck what other people think.

I had it nailed for a while, at the heart of my progress was me, just me.

And it morphed and twisted into a toxic mental health breakdown that engulfed my entire existence.

Self employment was supposed to be liberating. An escape from constant criminal disclosures on job applications, explanations and fear of judgement.

How can I win? How can I be better?

I work for myself - I crash.

I can't function.

Who saves me now?

I go days without showering, barely leaving my bed, whilst my beautiful Sarah gets up and goes to work, brilliant as ever.

She comes home, the house is a mess, I haven't cooked dinner, she never complains. She looks at me with worry, with sadness, she can see I've got lost again and she is trying to find me. Reach me, and bring me back.

The fridge is empty, I did the Asda shop two weeks ago, but I still haven't reclicked the delivery slot. It would take 2 minutes, less. But somehow I don't care. But I'll still have irrational anger towards an empty cupboard.

Then I'll switch back, epic clean mode.

The house is blitzed. Show home standard. Bleach fills the air, nostrils burning. I could do with a bit too.

Showered. Shaved. The bath looks like the yeti had a bad day. Clean hair, smells of coconuts.

Sarah lies with me in bed, nose planted in my scalp, she breaths in, coconuts. It's the shampoo I used when we first met.

Is that nostalgically lovely or desperately sad?

I'm not sure the emotionally unstable personality disorder with a criminal conviction and ex drug habit is what she signed up for.

A shinning star of ambition and intelligence, she goes away this weekend, for the opportunity of a life time.

I cried when she told me, not sad or fearsome she may realise what life should actually be like instead of what it is, I cried with pride.

Shes quite incredible and she deserves more than 50% of me.

We both suffer the frustration of knowing how incredible I can be.

I didn't want to be here at 30.

I wanted to be.. me?

Settled, secure, stable, financially sound, own my own home with the love of my life, have a child.

Tomorrow I'll wake up and I'll strive for all of those things and set them as my goals and I will steam full speed ahead to get them.

Saturday may come and I'll wonder why.

It's a constant state of flux and its exhausting.

I love my business, I love my life. I do.

I am just not doing a very good job of living it.

I feel like hurdles pop up when I think I've jumped them all and it fills me with resentment, frustration, anger.

Will it ever be easy or is this the price I pay for the choices I have made?

I know, in my heart and soul, I will be everything I can be, everything I dreamt I could be.

I just don't know how to maintain the constant where I can do that all of the time, and not some of the time.

Running a business, managing debt, maintaining mental health.

No sleep. Shitty diet. Sporadic meds. No exercise.

It's all a recipe for disaster.

I am a creature of habit, and routine is my only salvation.

I create timetables, like school.

From waking up to going to sleep. Hour by hour.

I tick off my little lists of things I've done. Achieved. Eaten.

But heaven forbid I don't stick to my timetable, it envokes a feeling of failure, disappointment.

And round and round we go.

Living with a mental health issue like emotionally unstable personality disorder means I live my life according to my distorted perceptions of the world around me, Consumed by fear of other peoples opinions of me, paranoid of what people say and think. Which leaves the compulsive lying little girl in me to pop up and counter that with a wonderful story which leaves no room for criticism.

Lets say it as it is.

I am Fran.

I am rebuilding my business, bit by bit, loaf by loaf, and I don't know if I'm making the right choice because this business almost ruined me and I it once before.

It's lulled me into a false sense of security because actually, things are better than they ever have been and it feels like life could be...easier?

But I'm waiting..... what's next?