Some lyrics, some metaphors, some predictions. Same old same old. Repetitive. Here's the contents of Bridget's head today. So much for living in the moment when all we do is lament the past to the point that we're denying ourselves a future.
Firstly, the ankle is better already, since it's a mild sprain, I think. I can walk on it. A little more slowly and it's still very swollen all the way to my toes. My cute little ballet flats that are going to permanently replace the heels? I can't get them on. I'm wearing my running shoes everywhere, which is ironic. I don't think I'll be running for a couple of weeks.
The world we knew
Won't come back
The time we've lost
Can't get back
The life we had
Won't be ours again
This world will never be
What I expected
And if I don't belong
Even if I say
It'll be alright
Still I hear you say
You want to end your life
Now and again we try
To just stay alive
Maybe we'll turn it all around
'Cause it's not too late
It's never too late
August left yesterday, to be home to his home-away-from-home in time for a rollicking fourth of July party he is planning on attending. I daresay I'm relieved he's going, not only because he and Jacob are so much alike except that August is More, Louder, Extreme-er, but because at the end of the day an extra full-sized adult in the house is a hazard, and I am sort of back to eggshells but not. It's funny how when you let me go off and run around and don't bring anything up that isn't right or isn't good, I can go for so much longer before I crack. Bring it up alot and I'll struggle so much it's a wonder I can brush my teeth without assistance.
He left my house chock full of organic delicacies. Wasabi peas, green tea, chocolate bunnies, miso by the truckload. Just as I was leaning Jacob back toward regular food.
One thing he did do was give Jacob a very private and sheltered arena in which to blow off steam of his own. Sometimes late at night I'd wake up and hear them talking quietly into the night. Probably sitting at the dining room table with tea, I could never make out the words but I know August came at a good time to help Jacob fortify his own strength, reminding him of who he is, of what he is. Of what he can do.
Jacob defuses bombs.
I'm well aware I am standing here watching the calendar inch closer to a whole year since Cole died and I'm not marking the day. Not that day. Any other day but that day because I was there and I lived it for him when he died because he couldn't. And knowing he was gone in the moment he left me for good even though he was still there, his warm hands, his warm cheek, his hair in his eyes, as if he would just wake up and life would go on and maybe I didn't hurt him and he didn't hurt me and we didn't make a mess of everything but I left that room alone. I walked out of our life together alone. I cannot get past the alone part and I never will.
It's stupid. Jacob is the angel. The savior. The protector. The man I always ran to for something. It was comfort, wasn't it? No, it wasn't. I don't know what it was. Attention, affection, reassurance but not the same kind of comfort.
Comfort is scattered all over the beach back home, so long gone now and mixed with the sand and the sea and the air.
August made it out of here just in time and I wonder if Jacob knows of the low to come. I think he does, I think he suspects but bless his heart, the magnitude always escapes him. He sees what he wants to see and waits out the rest now because he's running out of ideas and dips heavily into his perfectly and lovingly saved store of patience and understanding. He keeps the cognac full, the knife block empty and his ears open. He sleeps holding me not because I love the affection but because he is scared I'll get up in the middle of the night and try and become an angel too.
And yet comfort is still up there, somewhere in Jacob's unexplainable heaven, somewhere just beyond the reach of this small woman with a broken heart and no patience, no understanding and no way to crumble the final battlements that lie between us.
Because time doesn't move fast enough. Because we fight about such big things that no amount of comfort in each other, no amount of the hot calm of his hand sliding across my back under my shirt or on the back of my neck as we stand or sit together will manage to eradicate the lack of comfort from a history he was never a part of.
I realize it's foolish. I realize it will eventually go away. And while we wait we fight, softly, gently, bitterly.
Oh so bitterly.
I never once threw it in his face that he wasn't there, that time moves slowly, that he doesn't know me the way Cole knows me. Oh no, Jacob looks after that part all by himself. It's practically a one-sided debate as he paces up and down the room, gesturing, pleading, demanding, praying.
I just stand there and don't say a word. I look up at him when he passes me and I think to myself,
You know me in a completely different way and it's better, I promise you it's better.
It's better because he is an angel. And someday I'll find the comfort I seek. When our patience comes. In the meantime we fall back on our friends status. Friends who have sex a lot because they can now. Friends who have spent the past year cementing themselves together in life forever because it was meant to be. Only we never measured to be sure of the perfect fit.
We guessed.
We cut once.
We were off by a little. Not a whole lot, just enough to make it wonky and so we've shimmed it up as best we could and we'll probably have to plane a little off one side and then with a fresh coat of paint and some selective amnesia, eventually no one will ever know it wasn't like this the whole time.
No one.
So there you go. The barometer for today is a fair warning and a reminder that we are friends first and lovers second and that somehow helps because sometimes I can hate his guts and still love him a s my friend and sometimes he wishes he had never met me but can't imagine a life without me.
The one hard part about having married a minister, as laid-back, idealistic and casual a minister as Jacob is, he is the biggest spin doctor ever. He tells the children such wonderful things about Cole being in heaven, comforting things, things that let them fall into sleep easy, things that make them smile and feel better and less afraid, less alone.
Me? He tells me none of it. Cole is not in heaven, there is no comfort in his after life, and I don't sleep easy, I don't smile nor do I feel less afraid without him here. Jacob's comfort to his own wife comes from a selfish black heart in which he contends that Cole is no angel, never was and never will be. That there was a reason Jacob spent ten years working to be my own savior.
Yes, there was, and it has nothing to do with Cole.
We can explain it away. Jake is angry. He's angry at Cole for not stepping aside gracefully. He's angry at Cole for Cole's unprovoked violence. Unprovoked? No, only possibly misdirected, but barely. The routine violence he was ill aware of makes Jacob red with rage. Cole and I somehow wasted ten years of Jacob's life trying to work everything out, trying to coexist in a world of unchecked emotional timebombs and sordid lurid flaws, we fought so hard and it was for naught and Jacob resents that all to hell.
His obsession now extending to include time we can't go back and fix, my God, for someone who tells me every day to let it go, to just stop, he has a heck of a time taking his own advice. And why not? He can simply fall back on his faith and cry out that he is a wounded man, broken by life and failed and everything is gone so now he can begin anew. Oh, but he is so wise and sacrificing.
And very very good at what he does and oh it drives him up the wall that it took that long for his charm to work on little Bridget down the road to shore because she, oh, she's mine. I's needs that one, b'y. She's 'is forevs.
But I am the one holding all the cards. And every night when I fall asleep in the crook of Jacob's concrete arm that is safe but not the same comfortable, I understand that we haven't had enough time. Soon, but not yet.
Repetitive, aren't I?
