Dear Diary,
My house burnt down today.
Carla closed the diary, sighing. She remembered holding that black pen, writing with a cold, steady hand. She remembered blocking out the pain and the emotions, by not feeling at all. She remembered the tears that never fell.
My mum was trapped inside.
Carla traced her finger over the words, her writing perfect and untouched. The lined paper wasn’t crinkled, wasn’t tearstained, wasn’t smudged. It was cold and smooth, without a trace of fear or heartache. And Carla hated herself for it.
We’re moving to a new house.
And they did. Her dad grieved, but he let go. Her brother rebelled, but he let go as well. And Carla... She had nothing to let go of. Because when her mum died, Carla didn’t hold on.
Holding on was too hard. And holding on, meant letting go. So Carla took the easy way out. She wrote in the same diary, as though nothing had happened. She lived the same life, as though everyday were the same. She lived with half a heart, because, a year ago today, Carla let half of hers go.

Carla stood, and placed the diary down, slowly. She walked towards her closet, and opened it, reaching for the dusty box inside it, that had remained unopened for a year. Carla’s fingertips tingled, and her head felt light. She wasn’t sure she wanted to open it, but her body was moving on it’s on account now.
The lid was cold as she lifted it off, and the air inside was old and stale, a familiar scent hidden beneath musty, sour air. A sense of familiarity and remembrance, recollection, shot through Carla, crisp and sharp. And for the first time in a year, it hurt.
The bits and pieces left behind, to Carla, were bits and pieces of her mum. They were the photo frames that survived the fire, that were saved, when she wasn’t. They were the silver necklaces and gold rings that shone the beauty that she couldn’t, any more.
Looking through the box, Carla felt feelings that she had blocked out since the fire, let memories flood her, that she had hidden away for a year. She felt a year’s worth of emotions, and it hit her hard and fast.
She’d wasted a year of her life, she realized. She hadn’t been there for her dad, or her brother, when they were both feeling what she was blocking out. She’d let her heart hide away beneath a thick ocean of denial, ignoring every nibble and knock at the door, reminding her that something wasn’t right, that this wasn’t how she should be living.
Reminding her that she was wasting something so precious, wasting something that had been stolen away so brutally, unjustly, from her own mother. She was living life with half a heartbeat because it was easier for her, less complicated. And now, she sat by the foot of her closet, a photo of her mother clutched to her chest, a sea of emotions, regrets, thoughts, swirling around her- and it was the hardest, most complicated moment of her life.
And, with a head pounding, and a heart aching, Carla did the only thing she could. The one thing she had denied herself the right to, the one thing she had put off limits, for a year.
Carla cried.

Carla started a new journal that day.
She wrote about the past year, she took a hard and bumpy ride down a lane of jagged, torn memories, and she wrote from her heart.
It was a journey for her. It was one she should have stretched out over the past year, given time for, but she was feeling it right now, she was living it right now. It was a journey through time, and today she went back to the day she lost her mum, and cried the tears that had been buried deep inside her, wrote the things she hadn’t let her voice whisper. Her heart was beating hard and fast, every throb pumping thick emotion through her. And the hurting, the crying, the sorrow- it was what made Carla alive.
Carla found a part of herself, that day; a part of herself came back to life. A voice tickled the back of her mind, and she listened to it, and promised she’d never shut it away again. It told her that she was crying, but she was alive. It told her that she’d wasted a year being numb, but now she was feeling. And it told her, it whispered, in the faintest little voice... That she missed her mother.
And Carla took those last words, she said them aloud, she cried them aloud. Her dad rushed in, paused, then kissed her forehead, and held her tighter than he’d ever done before. Her brother followed, and placed his hand firmly on her shoulder.
Carla picked up her diary, smudged, tearstained, the paper crinkled. And with a shaking hand, she wrote,
I miss my mum.

And now Carla was living.