I walked up to the gate, showed them my lifer bracelet (unlimited rides, you know) and was summarily locked into my seat. The man took my green flip-flops and put them in a pile by the entrance and I let my bare toes relish the light summer breeze. I failed to notice the mechanism had begun to move and I was going up slowly. I ascended without caring, too busy finding shapes in the clouds, chasing the high that had long since deserted me in favor of luckier prospects or perhaps brightest shores. A jolt and a metallic clang disrupted that daydream and when it was gone...
...it was gone forever.
And then all my hair stood on end as the switch was thrown and the platform I was strapped to took 3 seconds to drop three hundred feet. I threw up. I wished I could die. I pushed Jacob out of my way and recoiled in a massive attempt to disappear to prevent any more of that kind of hideous, destructive fear.
Here it comes and there it goes
Another day of getting up to fight
In a world called catastrophe, my native tongue is blasphemy
So it's the one I'll write
And baby can you hear it?
Don't it make you want to wake up and open your eyes?
I woke up this morning screaming and drenched in sweat, every nerve ending in my entire body on edge, every joint and muscle tense and we didn't get very far before it was clear that this wasn't even my normal. While Jacob was calling for help before he felt the gravity coming I was pulling things off shelves in the bathroom looking for razor blades that would never be found in my house anyway. Jacob uses an electric razor and I use wax because of this. I had an epiphany-knives-and went tearing down the stairs toward the kitchen just as Jacob realized that's where I was headed. He grabbed me just inside the kitchen door, pulling my shoulders to him so hard my head snapped back and banged on the door.
Leave it.
I can't do this.
I know you feel that way but you can. We made it, you just need to get better. Baby. please.
It's too hard. I'm so scared, Jake, I don't want to feel like this.
I know, baby, so am I. We can do this. The kids are depending on you, they need you. Bridget, I need you. I want you here, with me. I've never wanted anything different.
They'll be fine. Everyone will be fine. Better even.
None of us will be better without you. We'll die without you.
We won't bother with creative therapies anymore. This time they'll opt for the hospital. Told you I wasn't dumb.
The worst thing is he didn't trust his instincts, even when I warned him that I knew he wasn't listening to himself. His infallible intuition, his perfect logic that has a hand up from higher places that can be uncanny in its perfection. He failed to believe himself when too late he realized I lied.
I have no intentions of keeping any promises I made to be here forever. What's sick is how much comfort I got from knowing that and I know it's wrong and I want it to stop.
Jacob kissed the top of my head and took me into his arms and he backed into a corner and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, holding both of us. Me and him, because he needs comfort too and he's terrified and was shaking like a leaf and I'm sorry honey. He left me there while he went and got the kids off to school and then he got them out the door with the neighbors and he started making those goddamed phonecalls because he knows people and now they're all going to work together to save my life once more.
I may be gone for a while. I really have no idea what they have planned but I don't care as long as it works this time. It has to work. I just have to go and get better and hope he will someday forgive me.
