For an end to all further pointless arguments on what's good for me and what is not, I would pay a king's ransom.
For an open-minded understanding of loving sad music and writing sad stories I would give my whole heart, except that it doesn't belong to me anymore.
I didn't last so long yesterday. His voice, raised in anger admittedly leaves me shaken and afraid and I turn inward and I don't talk and I don't want to sort it out and I just want to be away-away. The silence scares him.
The absence scared me more so I went and sought him out.
It was a first!
(I am a slow learner.)
I opened the door of the den, hesitantly. It's a quiet door, he did a beautiful job. I took one step out and looked toward the kitchen, I didn't hear anything and I looked toward the back door and he was there, at my feet. Sitting on the floor with his back up against the wall turning a key over and over again in his fingers.
What are you doing?
Trying to not hover.
What is that?
It's a key to the den.
You have a key?
I didn't want any repeats of the last time you locked me out.
So why didn't you come right in?
I'm trying to give you what you want, Bridge.
Do you even know what I want?
No. I don't. We never seem to get that far.
I want time.
Oh God. Time alone?
No, just time. Less help. No rushing. Just time.
I want you to be happy. That's all I want. I don't want you to wake up scared, or fall asleep scared, or ever be caught in this place you're in now. And I'm sorry for what I said. I didn't mean to point out the sacrifices I had made, I meant to point out that you take the first place in my life and everything else can wait because you are what matters to me. I didn't mean anything else by it.
I know. I didn't mean to tell you you could leave.
Yes you did.
Maybe I did. Sometimes I think you should. You'd be so much happier away from this, Jacob.
Then you have no idea how in love with you I am, princess.
Okay, now, hey! Look! Boundaries. I'm stopping right there, but know that much aw-ing and kissing ensued and I wound up back in the cage of arms that he keeps for me and I felt like less of a lunatic for much of the remainder of the day and possibly like butter by this morning because of his attentions and I know we're fixing fuck-all with sex but for the affection whore that I am it's exactly what I needed.
Tomorrow I have to go eat crow with Joel for breakfast but he will have a fight on his hands. What he's done is prepare, with my help, a positive-outlook plan full of lists and instructions and all kinds of wonderful things I am to do for distraction. Which is where the drive to eliminate miserable writing and painful songs came in. Constant daily reminders and exercises in being a Happy Bridget. Ways to get my hooks in to prevent my chemicals from drowning me with their ineptitudes, a way to circumvent history. Blowing up Pandora's box and changing my history as it happens. It's work and I keep trying to coast without actually doing any of it. I keep fighting it, we both get discouraged. Why do I fight it if I want to have a better life? Because that's what people like me do.
And I can do this.
What keeps me humble is looking into Jacob's pale blue eyes and knowing that he alone isn't enough to do it. Coming to terms with the fact that all the love in the world and all these huge romantic gestures and the effort he has put into living with me, which must be next to impossible and yet he does it anyway, isn't going to magically erase all the bad things about me.
Knowing that he still wants to be here, even as I test him and bend him and shut him out and try so hard to let him in and he never knows which end is up and yet he's gone hands off and he feels helpless and vulnerable and yet he's a stone soldier for me, he doesn't yield. Ever. His love is so strong for me.
It hurts like hell to know all this and try to love him as much as I possibly can and wondering if he'll ever understand how much that is and how much more I wish I could give him or how that love will surpass any description I could ever make for it, in this lifetime, with my useless, pointless words.
This morning as I hung in the crook of his elbow on the edge of the bed that he had taken up the entirety of with his tormented sleep I thought about everything we have shared in the past year and how that very first night we spent together we peeled back the layers you keep intact for friends and we stood naked, unprotected and exposed in front of each other and put our trust in being able to move from friends to lovers with no bullshit or we wouldn't move a muscle any further. I needed to know I wouldn't be hurt again and Jacob needed to have something real. We made a promise to each other and then we exchanged hearts for good measure, and we agreed to raise my children together.
We became the Unsinkable Reilly Family.
Only this time I figured out how to rescue myself.
Which, according to Claus, is really remarkable. That's as excited as Claus ever gets, so it's something, for sure.
