Sing it for me, I can't erase the stupid things I say.
You're better than me.
I struggle just to find a better way.
So here we are, fighting and trying to hide the scars.
I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
The lonely road, the one that I should try to walk alone.
I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
You're running like me.
Keep moving on until forever ends.
Don't try to fight me.
The beauty queen has lost her crown again.
So here we are, fighting and trying to hide the scars.
I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
The lonely road, the one that I should try to walk alone.
I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
Goodbye.
So why are you so eager to betray,
pick the pieces up, pick the pieces up.
So why are you the one that walks away,
pick the pieces up, pick the pieces up.
So here we are, fighting and trying to hide the scars.
I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
The lonely road, the one that I should try to walk alone.
I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
Just take a breath and softly say goodbye
Lately I've been buying skeleton keys as I find them on our antique-store explorations. This house came with precisely one key to fit eleven locks and I'm hoping as we go along to have a key in every keyhole and get this house restored to full Victorian glory, eventually.
No, make that nine locks, there are new doors from the kitchen to the back porch and to the den because Jacob broke the old ones and so he built new ones that were even more beautiful, just with new, conventional locks.
The keys I buy that don't fit wind up in the bowl painted with roses that sits on my dresser to collect my rings and stray bobby pins and quarters Jacob uses for his magical tricks.
These keys become vintage daydreams, unlocking doors in houses I've never been in and will probably never find. Worn smooth and cool from thousands of turns they're talismans of a historical sort, protectors of rooms that hold lifetimes of secrets, and someday the keys that do fit this house will be the same to someone else.
Because everyone has secrets.
So so many secrets.
None of them are secrets, though. Most of them are just things no one ever sees. All of my life everything has remained hidden. Steeped in denial I conduct myself with a pretty-on-the-outside attitude that has taken me to some amazing places. It's funny though, how no one would envy me my life, beginning with parents who demanded perfection and got enforced compliance, then a husband who demanded violence and got compliance and now it's...what is this?
Compliance and a whopping case of obsession. Addiction. The kind of thing you can't turn with a key to lock away. You can't unlock a solution and you can't just walk away and leave the door open or who knows what might happen?
Remember when I said we had learned how to argue? I think I may have jumped the gun on that one. I guess we learned how to bicker lightly without dragging in other issues.
But fighting...well, fighting isn't bickering. Fighting is all claws and teeth for us, frustrations that leave us saying things we know will hurt so bad but it feels so good to put it all on the table and get it out before it starts to eat away at our souls.
Everyone is always so surprised when Bridget has an opinion.
They prefer the doll.
And I don't get it. Jacob wants me to be strong, he pushes me so hard to get better, to fight for my own happiness and then he sabotages me and knowing him the way I do it's not an accident. He wants to be in charge. He wants to make the decisions and he wants to orchestrate all of it and then he turns around and cries out when comparisons are made to Cole.
I fired Joel this morning. No worries, no one listened to me anyway, I'm sure it will be one of many more times that I get fed up and stand up and pull on my red raincoat and collect my things and walk right out the fucking door and watch Jacob vault across the waiting room, Mr. Damage Control, who has taken to sitting right outside the door instead of going to the bookstore and having some fun because Bridget is very seriously damaged and needs help and he's the man who throws the boomerang back because it never lands where it's supposed to. And he wouldn't let go of my hand when I tried to pull away because I was going to the truck, I'll wait there, I have my own keys and I promise I won't try to drive home but I fucking hate Joel, Jacob.
And Claus comes out with his hushed-doctor voice and talks right over Bridget's godammned little messed up head and they decide I'm going back in and I say I will but only if Joel comes out and Claus frowns at me and I tell him not to say it.
Joel wants the music gone. He wants the journal gone, he wants everything gone that Bridget uses to drag herself down into the dark because it's counterproductive and oh, hey, is Jacob ever on board with that and Claus didn't say a word because he knows but he failed to back me up and I'm not going to be told what I can't do. Without certain things in my day odds are I'm one step away from opening up the window and throwing myself out of it. Music isn't going to be absent from my ears until they're useless and Joel thinks he knows me but he doesn't and arghhhhh.
He isn't worth this. And now Jacob has started back in with the softly-engineered, gentle guilt asking me if I want to get better and I asked him which side he was on and he yelled at me that he had rearranged his whole fucking life to be here and to help me and be here for me and I'm doing nothing.
Only he's wrong. And also, I thought he was here because he loved me so, so much. What the fuck is that about?
I'm spending time. Because time is what I have and when it's all gone I'll feel better. When time has run out I'll be okay and it won't be rushed and it can't be forced and Jacob can't love it away and he can't scream it away at me and he doesn't get it. I'm wasting time. I'm making entertainment because the hours go slow.
And we aren't speaking because while he was throwing verbal hand grenades to try and hurt me and force me to smarten up I was declaring nuclear warfare.
I told him I never asked him to shut down his life for me. That he doesn't have to be here, that I never wanted him to put his happiness and normalcy on hold to deal with the likes of me and if he didn't want to be here, well, then he could leave.
A long time ago when we had a similar argument and I levelled some very awful words at him he did leave. This time, though, he didn't.
I bet he considered it. I bet he turned it over in his head and thought about the possibility of going home to the rock, or of finding someone who was level and kind and an academic match for him and he'd have his happy cookie cutter life where they would say grace at the table and his wife would actually eat instead of pushing food around and maybe she'd even be plump and have no dark circles under her eyes and she'd never act less than perfect and she'd host garden parties and at night they would sit and rock in their chairs on the porch and we'd all die of boredom watching that take place but Jacob would be thrilled. Fucking thrilled.
Of course if he did that he's have to give up the emotion junkie, the sex maniac, and the most beautiful girl in the world, all names that have been thrown at me since breakfast.
And he can SIT IN THERE ON THE PHONE WITH LOCH OFFERING ME UP FOR GRABS IF LOCH THINKS HE CAN DO A BETTER JOB because hey, I can HEAR THAT, HONEY but in all honesty, I don't think he's going anywhere. I just think he's looking for reinforcement from people who know me well, and Cole is dead, so no one can ask Cole.
I don't think Jacob has a sweet clue what he should do.
That makes two of us.
I will however, give him about an hour before he gets scared and breaks this door. Because time is the key to unlock Bridget. Why can't he understand this?
