(Hi, mindless rattling today. Roll with it, my peoples, while I get better.)
Bridget's learning to hum. I can hear it. I used to sing alot under my breath but humming seemed pointless.
Jacob is singing so loud today and it's contagious and I'm embarrassed for both of us. Make it stop. What a funny song. It strikes me as very...eighties, for some reason. Jacob won't quit singing it and I'm about to shove fingers nine and ten up his nose to shut him up.
Well I'm not paralyzed
But I seem to be struck by you
I want to make you move
Because you're standing still
If your body matches
What your eyes can do
You'll probably move right through
Me on my way to you
He has infinite patience to torture me with songs he likes that I don't. Feel free to tease him, his musical tangents are really weird considering this is the same man who had a shouting match in an elevator shortly before Christmas with my psychiatrist over who knew The White Album better. Because what is life if you don't know the basis for Savoy Truffle?
I pointed out he's going to lose his hippie seventies vibe-thing if he keeps this up and he just gazed at me steadily and smiled.
No worries, princess.
Now that Jacob is home, he has relaxed to an amazing extent. Like nothing I have seen before, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. He may be the strongest person I know but even the toughest nails eventually bend. He was bending.
My friends are pointing out that I have spun myself here to sound like a wholly unhinged princess, and I apologize if anyone is worried. Please, don't be. I didn't overdose-overdose, I simply goofed and took two pills at the same time, being the responsible idiot that I am (because I didn't complain even once this time around) when I realized late last week that I had missed a breakfast pill in the morning rush. Then I was understandably confused and I continued to take two pills twice a day after that, effectively getting double what I was supposed to be taking. It wasn't until I told Claus my proud routine that he stopped me and confirmed that I was telling him I take two pills each time that we figured out why I was walking into walls. I am back to the right dosage and yes, guess who is once again in charge of dispensing?
Of course Jacob blamed himself, being busy and not having time to really pay attention to them but he was so proud that I was taking the pills at all and that I was doing okay, even though I am still slightly a degree away from okay (aren't you, Bridget?). Like sleeping. Sleeping in any solid block of uninterrupted time had become insurmountable. A few more emotional grenades were lobbed recently. And since April we haven't had any large blocks of time to spend together. It's all carried out between duties and appointments and workloads and schedules and it's become a running joke that we were carrying out a marriage on a day planner only no one was laughing. Time has always been our enemy. To use his own words, Jacob was stressed the fuck out and he threw it in. The towel or his hat or whatever you throw in when you've reached your limit.
And so he's home and he doesn't want to be anywhere else for a long while. And I'm happy he's here because we have time. I was admonished for the boasting that he was putting me first, before God. Jacob pointed out gently that God understands that Jacob's primary concern right now is the well-being of his wife and the needs of his family and he is where he needs to be and God doesn't have a problem with that. And that without God, Jacob wouldn't be able to be here at which point I'm sure I threw a faint at having an impromptu sermon in the kitchen but I got the point and I know he isn't turning his back on God and I would never want that in a million years though I do have a deep-rooted newfound sadness about having caused so much turmoil for him.
This is the part where he would shake his head and insist with all of his precious heart that this isn't my fault and possibly the only thing I am one hundred percent convinced that it is and he knows it is but he's too kind to consider it.
I have started some therapies that might surprise people, of which I'm just going to endure and not talk about here. I'm on a prescribed diet plan again, because hovering slightly below 93 isn't ever where I wanted to be. I don't have to stop or start any medications, and I get to spend my days indefinitely, fingers intertwined with Jake's, one step away from one of his annoying forehead kisses or one of his adorable nose kisses. I get to see all the expressions that accompany his words, I get to hear the songs he sings all day long (yes, even Paralyzer) and he's actually got enough still on the go that this is a matter of simply changing his base of operations and switching gears yet again. He's picked up some counseling once again, and he's going to keep the chaplaincy which I'm sure is really because of the whole firetrucks fascination. I keep poking him and telling him he might have missed his calling, which is a play on...oh nevermind. Jacob is a four year old boy when he sees a firetruck go by.
And he's relented on a big terrible issue that he has held on to for too long. Counseling me. He refused, he cut me off cold last May but he went too far, unwilling to function less than objectively, the conflict of interest being too great to be healthy. But he went too far and he wouldn't talk to me, about anything short of getting that fucking barometer and he used to talk to me about everything. Enough to the point that we had reached a strained and difficult place where we couldn't connect the way we needed to, and I couldn't articulate what had happened, but somehow with Claus' help we figured it out and now he has opened his mind again to just talking and it's made such a huge difference.
I needed him and he had shut me down out of fear that he would make it worse. But that's silly, because he makes it better. He's never experienced being with someone in a love relationship in which they ever talked about anything deeper than what was happening on the surface because of the long-distance aspect of his previous marriage and we had so little time to really get to know each other in that sense before the shit hit the proverbial fan that he had removed himself when I really needed to talk to him and it was like pounding on a door and screaming and he would never answer it. He's finally answering the fucking door and I feel like we've got a chance.
Inhale, exhale, Bridget and Jacob. And yes, in the interest of moving forward I'm letting the picture I spoke of yesterday go. It wasn't until I wrote it all down that I could see how stubborn I was being about something I don't need to hold on to.
The relief was written all over his face but then he talked about how he felt (thank you, God). Which was better than any one of Jacob's twenty-nine hundred facial expressions. And a big step for the giant blonde hippie, don't you think? And hey, it's so much easier to talk about him. Because he's fun, and he's here on a Thursday morning no less, hanging out and doing nothing but singing, which I'm sure is going to spiral into some sort of bickerish couchpotatoeyness sooner than later.
...and reading over my shoulder and saying wonderful things like this:
If you join me on the couch, I'll make it worth your while, princess.
Sold!
