There is a bridge between my hometown and me. As a child I was afraid of it, the bridge was too big and everything on the other side of it too unknown. As I grew it morphed into an image of hope, a symbol of escape and when I crossed it for the final time all I felt was relief. Since then it has become a physical barrier to any thoughts of home that might slip through the wall I built in my mind.

The water it covers is not deep, but it's deep enough to foster a feeling of isolation. It felt safe as a child and suffocating as a teenager. As an adult I now have a healthy respect for anything suspended in the air, a marvel of engineering I don't quite understand well enough. I recognise how lucky I was, that my water bound prison had a thin strip of metal connecting me to the outside world, allowing my escape.

Last time I crossed the bridge I promised I would leave it behind. I promised myself I was finally free but the trappings of life have a funny way of dragging you backwards.

Everything is a shade of green, even the water. Not a fresh green but one that feels dreary and lifeless, as though the place sucked the wonder out of nature. It's cooler than I remember even though I'm used to snow now. It always felt like summer when I was a kid. But childhood memories are so bound to emotion it's hard to separate fact from feeling.

I'm stuck, parked at the edge of the road staring at the bridge as though it's trying to hurt me. Perhaps there are trolls living underneath who I will be forced to barter with when I try to cross, but that would be more interesting than the reality. It is just a bridge and the only thing stopping me from it is memory and pain.

Last time I crossed the bridge I was alone. I blocked it from my memory but I remember it all. I remember the weather was still warm but I could feel the breath of winter on the wind. At the time it felt exciting, but I have learned looked back on the memory with melancholy since.

Crossing the bridge felt like climbing Mount Everest, an impossible task I had been training for my whole life. My bags were packed, my dreams were unreasonable, and I knew without a doubt that if I made it across the bridge I would be able to do anything. That turned out to be untrue, but it felt true and that's all that mattered.

My mother's face the last time I saw her at home was stern and cold. Or perhaps she was just trying to maintain composure, I was never any good at reading her emotions. I have spoken to her since then, even seen her a couple of times. Never at home, never on the island, never across the bridge. She never said it, but I knew I was never welcome.

There's something poetic about the bridge in my memory. It feels like a representation of the last vestiges of connection to my family, to the life I used to lead, the lies I used to live. I built it up in my mind into something it never was. The island of isolation was more in my mind than it was connected to the land I grew up on.

Last time I spoke to my mother I can't remember what we said. The information didn't feel important enough to retain. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing special. It was just one of many phone calls where we both pretended we weren't angry and we both avoided topics that might spark an argument. Insincere questions and clipped conversation. Not worth remembering. I didn't know. I couldn't have known.

It feels like the bridge is growing in front my eyes. The island of my past getting further and further away as I stand and watch unable to move. Memories make it seem impossible, too much time has passed, too much has happened. It makes me wonder, will the bridge be able to hold the weight of my past?

The last time I left the island, my last bridge crossing, came from a fight. I might not have found the motivation to leave without anger pushing me forward. I suppose I should have thanked my mother for that, without her I could have been stuck on the wrong side of the bridge for my whole life. Hiding in plain sight, afraid to rock the boat, break the mould.

She's the one that started it, my mother. I would have been happy to maintain the status quo but she had to push, she had to ask, she had to spit words at me like insults expecting me to agree, expecting me to contradict the things she'd heard, deny the rumours that had spread across our tiny island like chicken pox in a kindergarten.

Part of the reason I left was shame, I can admit that now. The horror of having my mother repeat those rumours to my face was too much to bare. It was embarrassing, and I had never been much good at dealing with uncomfortable emotions. But ultimately it was the push I needed. As sad as it sounds crossing that bridge made my life a lot better.

There's no regret mixed in with the pile of confusing feelings I have in regards to that bridge and my home on the other side of it. My love of dramatics begs me to say I'd be dead without that fight and the choice I made to leave. That was always a possibility of course, it happens, but I think it's more likely that death would have been more metaphorical rather than literal.

I would have lived, on that island, alone in my thoughts for as long as my body continued. I might have had moments of joy, like the one that led to the rumours my mother was shouting about. But they would have stayed just that, rumours. Never confirmed, only whispers floating through the picturesque streets. Always on the tip of someone's tongue, never acknowledged.

My mother loved me, I knew that. Even when she hated me she loved me. That's why I called. That's why I kept in contact, despite only ever giving the smallest details of my life on the other side the bridge. Sticking with surface level stuff because although she loved me, she didn't accept me. Not really. It's hard for some people to accept, I've been told. It's not their fault. Can't teach an old dog new tricks, or so they say.

As long as I didn't mention it, we didn't have to fight. It was the only way we knew how to deal and now we'll never be able to look for another option. It was the best we could do or maybe it wasn't but it was what we did and there's nothing we can do about it now. A lot of people never get anything beyond the inevitable blow-up fight, when the truth can't contain itself anymore.

The rumour, the one that caused our blow-up, it wasn't just mine to bare but for some reason I was the only one that bore the brunt of it. I resented that for a long time. Blamed my partner in crime for avoiding confrontation. It wasn't until years later, when I finally saw her again that I realised I was the lucky one. I was the one that got out before any lasting damage had been done. She had been left alone to pick up the pieces. It had taken years, mistakes, horrors, before she broke free.

My mother saved me in a way, I should have thanked her.

It still hurt sometimes, not often, but sometimes. It's hard to ignore the pain with the bridge in front of me like a giant gaping wound in my heart.

When I left, I left with nothing but a backpack and a burning anger at the world. This time I am not alone. My anger has faded into nothing more than the occasional tingle. Even with the bridge in front of me and the pain it caused at the forefront of my mind, I can't muster up the hatred I once felt. All that's left is sadness.

Last time I crossed the bridge I was alone and I was hoping to never see my mother again.

This time I am not alone, and I know I will never see my mother again.

She's sitting in the car, listening to music waiting for me to deal with whatever it is I have to deal with. Her words, not mine. She never met my mother, it wasn't worth the trouble. She never complained, never asked for more. My mother asked about her once, I almost had a heart attack. It was nice. I think I'll remember that moment when I think of my mother. When I think of the bridge.

Next time I cross the bridge it will be the last time, a truth I'm not quite ready to deal with. Last time felt like the last time but it also felt unfinished. The bridge was still there whether I crossed it or not. It was a gateway back to my old life, to my family, to my past. I didn't want to go back, but I could if I wanted to. The gate was open, the door unlocked, the bridge was still there and I could cross it.

Now it's time for me to cross it again and it doesn't seem nearly as sturdy as I remember it being. It feels as though it's hanging by a thread, and that thread was attached to my mother. There was nothing for it to hold onto anymore except for one last goodbye.

Last time I crossed this bridge it felt like the beginning, this time I know it's an end. Not the end of me, my future is sitting in a generic hire car bopping along to music I can't hear. But it is an end to my past, and end to my mother. Someone hasn't been a source of joy or happiness since I was mummy's little girl. Still she was my mother, and I loved her through the pain and disappointment.

It's not as cold as I imagined anymore, and the green water doesn't seem as dirty. I look back at the girl I never imagined I could possibly have and smile. It was time to say goodbye. To my mother, to my home, to the bridge. This bridge was always leading to an end, and now I can the end it doesn't seem so bad.

It feels like I was always meant to cross this bridge one last time to say the goodbye I never got to say before. This isn't my home anymore, but it was and although the bridge connecting me to the island is about to fall down the bridge in front of me would remain a monument to my past, a memory of my mother.

My mother lived and died on the island, she live and died on the other side of the bridge, and for me the island, the bridge, they die with her. All that's left is goodbye. It's time to cross the bridge for the final time.