Missing.

Tonight, I feel like everything is just beyond my fingertips. A chain of hands, clasping hands, something solid and worthwhile, but I can't reach it.

I can't connect with the old, the internal setting isn't right, and to keep me sane, this ending cannot be a tragedy. While its a reminiscence it can't hurt me, but if the book closes on a tragedy, then it will be finished forever.

The new has me in its sights, I feel its breath on my cheek, but I cannot embrace it. All of those people who surround me, who seem to care, but I'm not ready to throw myself in to this hurricane.

The constant is shaking, and I cant be quite what it needs of me. I dig it up so it can trip me over, and I fall in to its familiar arms, to find them pushing me away even as I am drawn to it.

And at the centre of it all, is me. Steadfast, with no reason to lean, to fall in to any of these worlds, looking up for an answer. And all I see, is the tiny bait of your words, flickering, in the corner of my sight, an unknown taste, a tease and a warning sign, but when I look it straight in the face, it is beyond me, and I do not know if the climb is worth the likely fall.

XX

You're like the shine on an apple

The last thing I do before I eat an apple, is buff it up until it has that wonderful opaque sheen. Without it, the apple tastes just as good, the flesh will be as crisp, and the flavour will be unchanged, but it is the shine that makes the apple beautiful. This evening was good, relaxing, longer than the last four, but I was hoping for that gloss to make it perfect.

.

A tale of three homes

Tonight I cried from homesickness, for the first time in a long time.

The thing is, I'm caught in the middle of three homes, but my heart is not fully in any of them. My family home sometimes seems so many more miles away than the 100 which separate us, the sound of a voice only causes a yearning for the arms of my family, but at the same time, I know that my time in that house is limited. Whatever I make of myself, I will soon have to leave it, to create a space for myself, a life for myself, and so the first home, while welcoming and familiar lives on without me, and this is breaking my heart.

My second home is also ending. While it has not been the foundation for the magic I imagined freshers year at uni would bring me, it has become my place. As each of the people who shared it with me leaves, in one way or another, I feel the wind begin to creep through the cracks, as another home, a temporary home yields to the constant change my life has become. While I am anxious to return to my family, I hesitate to fill the boxes, as if somehow moving the things I love in to them will take them away forever.

And yet I anticipate my new home, my first house, the home I chose, paid for and dreamed. I am projecting all my hopes and prayers in to this new vessel. The little women I will share it with, all with their own dreams, what we will make of it, who will come to be a part of it. All of these questions burn with a nauseatingly anxious excitement, for the home which I hope will make everything make sense.

As I work to pay for my one small fantasy, I hope most of all, to find a place I can pour my heart in to.

A home, a hearth, a heart.

Catching a moment

This week, it has been proved to me that good people will make the wrong time right. Without agenda, expectations or promises, the beginning of something, a friendship, a work relationship, with or without the glimmer of romance, is a beginning to be treasured.
When a beginning arrives at the end, finding out that this doesn't spell a premature finale to something which seemed so natural from the get-go, is a small blessing. Being able to work at a chosen pace and on my own terms proves that against the odds, there are people in this world who are worth getting to know.
Capturing such seeds, alongside the fruition of other, longer laid plans, has made this weekend one of the happiness since I left for university. Spending a perfect day with two wonderful people, acting like kids on our way to growing up, has made me appreciate those relationships, and will help to sustain them through the long summer ahead.
To the people who made these days what they have been, I owe two days of laughter, sweet dreams and the promise of more to come.
XX

Year end

As a year, or at least the length of time uni has deigned to give us and call it a year ends, I find myself sitting in my room on my own, in a bizarre reflection of my first week here. Outside, the sun is bright, boys walk wrapped up in their shorts clad not quite grown women, there's an air of frivolity, but also finality and I can't muster the mood to match the weather.
People laden with boxes stagger to their cars, and I'm wondering what the things that I'll carry from this year will be.
People for one. I feel a bit like a jeweller, presented with a box of someone elses jewellery. There are those pieces I immediately desired, their lustre, size and boldness dazzled me, but now I've polished off the surface, I can see the flaws, the shiny gold is cheap metal and the design has been stolen from a million better places. There are the smaller pieces, which linger in the mind, but never capture the imagination. And the hidden gems, maybe tarnished, or with a clasp that sticks, but having worked with them, I can now see the beauty. I am weary of wearing some of my jewellery, the pieces I have worn for years are losing their appeal, they don't suit me anymore, but equally, I worry that with other, newer ones, that my initial valuation will be disproved, or over the long four months to come, I'll lose them. And then there are a few pieces I've picked up on the way, that I still don't know the reality of, and the closing of the year means I may never get the chance to see if they fit.
I'm going to leave behind many of my fantasies. Rolled up and hidden in the backs of drawers, for next year's fresher to put on, and naively wear, maybe for them, it will be the year it was meant to be. May they find themselves, find eternal friendships, find passion, direction and love. But for me, I now expect to have to search those things out for myself. A moment in time can echo the portrait of this year you had ready, a moment outside on a sofa at a seedy bar, where a connection can be made, and then snapped short days later by just the passage of time, never quite knowing what may have been, and wondering if you handled it wrong. But knowing the limitations of such a lovely moment is necessary to move onwards.
I'll spend four months, in the tiny village where I've lived out 14 years of my life. I'll visit the same places, stand in the same skin, in the same well loved clothes. I'll go in the sunrise to my favourite place, look at the world falling below me, but will I dream the same dreams? Am I the same girl who wrought such romances of her future as the curly haired child who stood in those shoes a year ago.
I'm afraid for the answer to be no, but in my heart of hearts, I know that child has moved on, vanished inside that which I have become. And while I can miss that, it is the woman who will stand there a year from now who I need to try and reveal.