a journal gap chapter

For the people like me, in a journal gap chapter of life

There are gaps in my journal
The chapters my heart isn’t quite brave enough to be honest about
Yet
And lately there’s been a big one
As I have been rebuilding my life, decision by decision
As I have created, day by day, a life I have been writing about and visualising for so long

My overwhelming gratitude has been balanced out by the gap where she isn’t there anymore

I find myself, in the pockets of time between new furniture and rearranging book stacks forcefully reminded that she won’t just walk through my front door one day

She won’t enter my home and comment on the way she likes how I have put things

She won’t sit to have a tea with me and observe all the ways my home reflects the one she raised in me, all the subconscious selections I have made because things feel like home

It is a heavy, hearty
Oh
And a teary, lonely exhale
That she won’t get to see herself reflected back in the art and little things
The magnets and quirky utensils that fill my kitchen draws
The easels and egg cups
The poetry and pictures that hang on my fridge
The women’s weekly birthday cake book with ripped pages and post it notes still stuck and handwritten recipe suggestions and fingerprint marks from the mid making page turn with floury hands 

She doesn’t get to see how my desire for freedom and independence, my unwavering commitment to living a life I love, has her grit and courage at its core

That I don’t get to thank her for being the reason I know how to do all of this alone
All of these big life things
Because she taught me to keep trying, and surviving, until I learnt and grew and achieved and celebrated

Oh how I wish
More than any of the things I can visualise and create and design and attract
We could sit in my home for a minute
Me and her

In the home she helped me make