(no subject)
Dear You,
I don't write here that much anymore. But I think of you every single day. Maybe it's just practice, but thinking of you, even though you're gone, doesn't hurt as much as it used to. The way my whole gut used to drop and my breath used to hitch in my throat when it slammed home that you were gone? That doesn't happen anymore. Maybe I'm just over trying to convince myself that it was all some horrible joke and that you're still at home. My heart finally has caught up with my brain and KNOWS that you're dead. It isn't trying to fool me with a desperate, deluded hope that breaks me every time it crashes down around me. Which sounds like a really bizarre thing to say, now that I think about it. But I haven't seen your face or heard your voice in a long time now. Two years. Now you're very definitely dead and not just "gone". The difference between those two things is kind of important, even though it probably doesn't sound like it. I can now say, out loud, that you, Kel, my wonderful, beautiful, insane sister, are dead. It's not something that other people need to whisper for me anymore. You wouldn't believe the number of times Darcy's had to murmur an explanation to random acquaintences after I've snapped at them. Or just gone silent. Or excused myself awkwardly so nobody would see me angry and glassy eyed.
I don't have to do that anymore. I can throw lame childhood anecdotes into conversations as easily as I did when there was just a couple of oceans and continents between us. There are some photos of us from our 21st that I have framed in the kitchen. Someone asked about them the other day and I told them about you and laughed (those photos are fucking hilarious.). Your tardis cookie jar sits on my kitchen windowsil in the sun and I no longer want to throw it out the window because it hurts so much to look at you. You've become a part of my life again, not just something glaringly missing from it.
I still miss you though.
But I'm okay without you.
There's still that dull, persistent ache of something missing, but it doesn't define me anymore.
So what's new with me? I think you'd be quite surprised actually. I'm trying my hand at growing tomatoes on the roof of my place (the herbs are going good, but I think it's still too bloody cold for tomatoes), training for a half marathon and applying for jobs in Sydney. Yeah. Moving home. Not sure when. Just investigating things at the moment. But D will come too. Just decided I wanted to go home. I'm tired of running. And that's what this Finland thing was. Running. Admittedly part of it was running TO Darcy, but it was also running away from you. Running away from everything that reminded me of you and how you weren't there. But you know what? I miss you. But I also miss gumleaf grey, purple mountains and turquoise sky. I miss the ocean too, Kel. I'm ready to come home and sink my teeth into dealing with the shitstorm that is mum. I'm ready to settle and for somewhere to feel like home. I'm ready for things to remind me of you because I want to think of you now.
So yeah. It's a little way off, but I'm aiming for January. D will have finished his masters and is umming and ahhing about doing a PHD at Cofa. Or he says he might just give up on this academic bullshit and just concentrate on making some art instead. I need to look into visas and stuff, so we need a little time. But still. The prospect of actually going home permanently makes me happier than I can say. You always used to joke about my fucking wanderlust. But I think you knew I'd come home eventually.
You'd be proud of me, Kel. I know that because for once I'M actually proud of me. I did always cotton onto those things a little slower than you did.
Hope you've made friends with some cool dead people. I expect autographs.
much love, Me