I'll beg for you
You know I'll beg for you
Pick a song and sing a yellow nectarine
Take a bath, I'll drink the water that you leave
If you should die before me
Ask if you can bring a friend
Pick a flower, hold your breath
And drift away
No, I'm not about to unleash a torrent of admissions upon you. No, I am not falling into a low. No, I'm not having too difficult of a time coming down off the medications. No, I haven't done anything wrong.
In fact, everything is wonderful. Life has become the fairytale I wanted. The one that I was meant for. The one about me.
Minus the lingering doubts.
Last night I had one of those blisteringly cathartic sobfests. Usually my method of crying is a quivering lower lip and some giant tears that well up and spill over my cheeks and I'll wipe them away in an impatient haste on the back of my fist and keeping on fighting through it. But then sometimes I am reduced to the point where my whole face becomes pink and stained with so many tears as if water has been splashed on my skin and it becomes hard to breathe as I choke through endless sobs and shake all over. I simply laid my head against Jacob's chest and he wrapped his arms around me and tucked his head down beside mine and just squeezed and I let it all out until there was nothing left. One of those good cries.
I wake up in the mornings not believing my luck, relishing the shiver of anticipation when he touches me and sleepily smiles at me, so full of love and he wants nothing else ever. He has relaxed, he has unwound just enough and he is now fully immersed in his self-induced caretaker vacation in order to see me better once and for all and the only thing that will take him away for any length of time will be his chaplain shifts and anytime he goes out with the guys, to pick up wood or help someone with their truck repairs or go out for lunch, or to his own therapy sessions, separate from mine and from our joint ones, to deal with his temper, to find balance between his obsessiveness and his distance, to help him be a better person as if that were somehow possible. That would be like trying to perfect the smoothness of an egg to me.
I said that and was treated to that loud goofy guffaw laugh that he punctuates with his dimples.
And I want nothing else ever, just him. This is sort of like the moment in your life (if you've ever had this moment you'll understand what I mean) when you pick up your Life Goals list and cross off the big one at the top, you know, the one that you wrote down for fits and giggles, knowing full well that you'd never achieve it, but wouldn't it be nice.
And then you do.
Suddenly I'm faced with needing a few new goals, I've worked my way through a lofty assortment of them and my list is now a clean slate, almost, I'm just waiting for my man in the white coat to come along with his dustpan and sweep away the remaining particles of the waning stress, the grit of dealing with a life that had so many hairpin curves for a while there, I wound up carsick and then crushed, wrapped around tree somewhere down the embankment, far out of sight of rescue.
And then I dug my fingers into the crumbling dirt on the side of that hill and pulled myself back up and noticed the rest of the road was straight. I wiped the trickle of blood off my temple and felt around for all my pieces. I looked behind me and saw that I was pushed up, helped, pulled and dragged by my hands. He has traction in life, guys.
And do you know something? Bridget is still intact. Whole.
Complete, even.
Fully intact and only slightly dented and misshapen and bruised, on the inside, fading now, and it does absolutely nothing to counteract the brimming love that just spills over and over and is a fountain inside my soul.
This is very good. Cheer for me, would you? Just the tiniest of hurrahs would suffice and I will be ever so grateful.
Sometimes I want to tell you that I don't believe it was Jacob's goal in life to ever wind up with a wife so fragile and weak, that his strength would dissolve like ice in hot water when confronted with a princess made of glass, his resolve crumbling, unable to resist. I take my place in history as the one weakness of his magnificent design. The one goal he ever had. The one person he ever wanted so badly that he would shove everything else to one side to get it, taking risks he wouldn't normally take, acting out in ways so uncharacteristic of the sweet and goofy handsome preacher boy, making promises that he has woven into the finest silk, goals rubbed and polished to a shine so bright we went blind somewhere along that long, dangerous road.
Sometimes I want to tell you that I don't think I deserve this, him, anything good. Sometimes I want to scream with frustration at not doing things better, not acting faster, not trying harder.
Not being tougher.
Sometimes I want to point out that I may never live up to the image of me that he keeps in his mind. I'm still sure he sees her, not me. The potential of who I could be, instead of the mess that I am.
And when I tell him that, he simply smiles and kisses my face and tells me to hush, and reminds me that we're two now, we're together, we're it, and I am everything to him, whole or fractured. And that we will fix it and if we don't that's okay too, because he can hold me in his arms without guilt, and I can be in his arms without fear. And that the whole mess is wrapped in love and love can fix anything.
Just wait and see, princess.
I will.
That's good. Because I love you.
I love you too.
