Envy gets the best of me this morning as I read through the blog updates that greet me each day over coffee after Jacob goes off to putter around and I dive alone into the remainder of the coffee pot to float for a bit.
Everyone's lives are so....perfect. They go about their perfect days with their perfect lives. They can hear every leaf rustle and take time to breathe and play and read and go to the movies and laugh and travel.
Never did I wish for such an existence like I did this morning. Never did I want so fitfully for that mediocrity as I do right now. This morning I'm in tears reading of happy bumps in the roads of the people I have become so attached to and I wonder why the planet spun to chaotic when I had my turn to pull the lever.
Drama. I could throw it all away. As much as I refused to cause even the smallest ripple before, it seems as if the past two years have been nothing but and I'm ready to throw up. Caleb was maybe the last straw. I can't take any more.
I had tea with Joel last night. The professionals among us tend to crowd back in a little more to make sure I stay where I am. And honestly the barometer is changing little. I seem able to roll with the punches and bounce back more easily now. I haven't woken up screaming in a while, Jacob can leave the house now without wondering what he'll come back to. I seem to be able to wind around the lows instead of falling into them. The medication has leveled out, we've worked with it and monitored it and I take it every single day and it seems like a better life than whoever that dark girl was who moped her way through this life before.
The drama queen.
Now it's a magnet.
Fuck me.
Joel says I gave up control of my life and that's why this is allowed to continue. He says the last time I exerted any sort of control was when I left Cole and then I promptly threw it into Jacob's lap and Jacob refuses to wield it.
He's right to an extent.
No one's manning the fort here.
I should have told Caleb he couldn't come into my home. That I didn't appreciate the bait and switch, that based on what happened in Toronto and here even, I should have been notified that he was around.
I should have let gently go of my friends before they let go of me.
I should have paid closer attention to Jacob's weaknesses and difficulties. He hides things well for a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. He'll insist everything is great right up until the moment he falls apart. He hates that about himself and therefore even as the closest person in the world to him it's all I can do to drop everything and try to hang on when he goes down.
We'd like the every day quiet happiness but it doesn't seem to be playing out.
Do we thrive on catastrophe? Have I become the reluctant energy vampire? Oh Christ, cast me off now, because that sucks.
I barely get two paragraphs into a happy little post about our dog and life loudly demands that I write the good stuff. Only it isn't good stuff and I wish it would stop. Maybe this is my price for my choices. Instead of normal girl friends or couple friends I wind up with a dozen big brothers who want to get into my pants. Instead of finding my equals, I find soulmates in controlling (yeah, even Jake) men with hair-trigger fists and injustices to be righted.
I somehow find painful sex and vicious arguments and drop dead romance all at once. Or maybe that was vicious sex, painful romance and drop dead arguments. I'm no longer sure.
My bad habits are going to be my downfall. I've begun to bite my nails again. I twist my hair until it breaks. I dig my fingers into Jacob's hand until he shakes me off and swears at me and then pulls me in close by my neck and kisses my temples.
I never relax. There's no such thing as taking the tea out in the backyard and spending the evening doing nothing. I'm wound up. Hopped up and messed up. And everyone has the cure. From losing the more toxic friends and setting limits to more drugs, different drugs, street drugs if I'd like (I wouldn't like). A drink, no drinking, smoke a cigarette, don't start smoking, sleep less and go do something, sleep more and rest your pretty head. Take a trip, no more changes. Don't run, find an escape.
I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do anymore.
The worst thing is that all of it is tied into Jacob. When I left my implied-perfect little life for him everything went straight to hell. Brewing for a long time, this storm, and he didn't cause it. He kept me alive and there's no way to spell that out for anyone sufficiently.
Cole was slowly killing me. My death was planned. I wasn't sure if he would kill me before I would kill me but I was slated to die. I was miserable and frightened and Jacob knew and he tried everything and finally the threat of him moving on, of permanently giving up on me was enough and now fixing the mess I made by staying so goddamned long puts an unreasonable blame on him for a mess he never caused. A mess he would dearly love to fix and tries so hard it's inhuman that he cracks less frequently than he does. This grief has a stranglehold on both of us in completely different ways.
Last night, today, he's full of remorse. Usually punching someone in the head is quickly forgiven and instantly resolved. These are physical guys, they do this alot, but today Jacob is ashamed of his instincts and his urges to hurt another human being to the point of requiring medical intervention. He never goes that far. Neither one of us ever for a moment thought he'd be capable of that. Which is stupid. He's capable of whatever he wants.
Today he's fed up with his own temper and poor decision-making skills. It doesn't matter how many times he's told he did what he had to do. It was too late to unallow Caleb into the house. Jacob had no choice but he still did something he doesn't condone and he curses his superhuman strength. He still sees nothing but me in an emergency.
Save the Bridget, save the world.
Groundhog day.
It never changes. I think it's always Friday, and something has always just happened or is about to.
He just came through the kitchen to get some juice and asked me how I was doing and if I'd like to come sit outside for a spell in the gathering light, for a breather. For a prayer and a little soft hand holding and some reassurance that I'm not going to go crazy because he's holding onto me so tight nothing bad will ever get me, though they try.
I'm going. I won't relax, but I'm going.
Maybe tomorrow will be perfect. This is what faith is to me now. Taking each day and hoping to make it better.
