Chimneys aren't that important.

It's valentines day soon. Don't worry this isn't a sob story or a love conquers all story. It's just a story about a house and a young kid (me) who was lucky enough to discover the beauty of rebuilding at a young age.

It's started when I was 5. She meant everything and I never got over her.

We sat side by side on the floor, we sat next to each other at the table and we sat by each other in the playground. We drew, ran, laughed and complimented each other on our pure blonde hair. It was going really well, we didn't expect too much of each other and understood that we both needed our space. Like now, I was a drifter that never really stood still for too long and she was pretty popular with a subsequent busy play date schedule. So it worked. We both liked the colour blue which was a big plus for me- could have been a deal breaker. Sure, the relationship had its ups and downs. There was a period there where she had lost one of her front teeth and I wasn't physically attracted to her anymore but we worked through it.

The biggest dark patch was in the colour blue. It was a drawing project and whilst drawing my architecturally perfect house I had an important lesson in how girls were different to boys. One line at a time the house came together. My walls, door, windows, roof and chimney were all in place. I was pretty happy with the way things were looking, I'd spent a long time ensuring all the structural elements were correct and was feeling like this house was an extension of myself. As I sat staring off into space visualising how I would represent the brick work her arm creeped into my line of vision and before I knew it my masterpiece was ruined. How could she? I mean, this was the house we were going to turn 6 in and she tore it down. Three small lines reshaped the way I viewed the house, her and myself. Where my chimney once stood (parallel lines running in line with the edge of the house) was a block that no engineer would ever sign off on. It was not structurally sound which meant our relationship wasn't either. Deal breaker.

A short time later her parents had moved the family away and I never saw her again. I can't remember if we made up or not, its still too hard to think about. Its been about 25 years of wondering what could have been and if she ever learnt how to schematically interpret a chimney correctly.

It took a long time coming to grips with the loss of my house. The first cut certainly was the deepest. Accepting that loss was the foundation to rebuilding. Constructing oneself one brick at a time came with many decisions that took courage to make and consistently called to visualise the end product. It started with the walls, accepting that things had changed gave the framework to start building around. Then came the windows, it would have been easy to not let anyone see inside but its important to have some vitamin D and allow others the opportunity to see who I was. The roof provided protection and how I shaped it dictated how guarded I would be. I tried leaving the door open, I know its a little dangerous but at least I got to meet some strangers. And the chimney? I just left it unstable, its important to have a bit of character.