Hi, go away. I fell out of the wrong side of the bed and you're going to pay for it. My pockets are empty.
Monday morning brings balled-up fists, bottom lips wedged between teeth and bitten raw, and love letters from Lochlan. Ben's beautiful face is still in my mind from video calls and subsequent brief dreams last night, a day hellbent on taking place in spite of four hours sleep. I have coffee and cinnamon-sugared hot cereal in front of me and I have already crossed off most of today's list, which means with any luck I can do taxes later.
See what I did there? Mentioned luck again. I've been fresh out for years but old habits die hard.
Think positive, princess.
About what, Jake? The house? That course of action will jinx me a little more. I'm superstitious. Assume, and you're be made an ass of. Predict and you will ensure failure. By not preparing for the worst you will embark on a Pandora's box of alternate endings and curse yourself for the rest of your breathing days.
I don't want to get my hopes up if there are no hopes to be had. Better to steel myself for the possibility that I may be here right through my birthday in May than to assume I won't and shoot karma in the head. Fucking bitch that she is to me, no matter how hard I try.
I'll walk the tracks in my proper black shoes, black tights and a black dress and I will sing sad songs under my breath as the dog walks along oblivious, sniffing at the thistles, head up into the wind. I'll let my hair blow around my face in a halo of tangles and I'll stop talking again.
I'm rather sure it's inevitable. This is the kind of luck I have.
Lochlan thinks life would be less difficult if I would simply step further from the musician and closer to the artist again. If I would pick a permanent Dr. Jekyll over the inevitable Mr. Hyde even though cold shoulders come in all heights in this universe and selfishness rules the day. He would be here. He would be here.
Sure he would.
Lochlan is the fair-weather boyfriend and I'm not as young and naive as I once was the day he told me I was so impossible it would never work.
He was right, but not for those reasons. He is the impossible one. The hot and cold, knows-better, doesn't have time for bullshit logical Lochical pretty boy, the man who carries around Pink Floyd lyrics on the tip of his tongue and playing on his mental radio because the second you turn it off he becomes someone who just won't listen to reason and I don't know exactly what kind of defect that is but I suspect it's not a whole lot different from my rather insane set of useless self-soothing attempts.
Everyone has their problems. I'm not going to become one of his.
I'm happy with Ben. Yeah, that guy. The one so underground these days it's as if he's vanished altogether. Home for five days and gone for five days again and it feels like a thousand years and I still cry myself to sleep with his last-worn t-shirt clutched in my hands.
Two of you guessed properly this morning and that freaks me out. The other twenty-three guesses were so far off base I found it highly amusing to consider those possibilities while I laced my boots for the near-dawn walk I take with the dog. As long as the odds still favor me I'll keep writing about him, about us. If they tip I am done.
I don't run anymore.
I don't write anymore.
I don't eat or sleep.
I don't relax and I stopped taking deep breaths after I did something weird to my back and suddenly all through January I couldn't breathe properly. It hurt. I walked a very fine line and thankfully it has gone away a little but I would keep the pain if it meant I could just calm down for five whole minutes instead of a white-knuckle trip through everyday pedestrian things that everyone else blindly conducts as though they were entitled to it and more.
You're not, I'm so sorry. And as usual I deleted the dozens of emails that arrived while I slept because I don't entertain guesses for Ben and I don't care what you think of my words, my life or my boys. Nor do I care to read your reviews of my skills as a mother, wife, homeowner or journalist. I just don't. Save your breath and do what you do best: keep reading.
Just shut the fuck up. I really can't take anymore. Lochlan, that goes for you too.
The party line for the afternoon will be Bridget's just angry that I can't make it back today.
Indeed. Whatever helps you sleep at night, baby. I'll be on the tracks if you need me. In this fucking endless wind.
