They make an invisible fence, the men in this house do. Their arms are the perimeter and each one of them represents my range. This range is not very big right now but as things go we will add on to it. When everything gets better. When I stop staring at my fingertips for so long they turn to golden grains of sand, pouring away in a river only to reveal darkened bone beneath. The saltwater runs from my eyes, courses through my veins and makes up my view this morning and forming a coherent thought is an effort, a battle, an achievement right now.
It's a new kind of mourning. Instead of clinging desperately to whatever I have left I am looking for a way to move ahead and let it all go while still retaining the memories and moments that Henry needs to navigate in order not to forget. Lochlan and Caleb work together to be Henry's father in Jacob's absence or removal, as it were since it's not as if he's coming back, is he? Henry made his peace with that. As I said, it hurts him to his very core but he's a pragmatist and a dreamer and he gets that life sometimes is so unfair but also so stunningly beautiful.
Like my sea.
This one isn't my sea, though. It's maybe someone else's. And this coming spring will mark eighteen years since I've lived in the place I want to live and done the things I want to do and thirteen years of white-knuckle hour-counting and wishing for the lobotomy that never came and here now this morning finds me completely without a brain. It doesn't feel good but at least nothing hurts and sometimes that's good enough because here I am now prepared to go to a better mindset but it doesn't show up on maps and no one knows the way. I can drag my fingers through the waves while the salt bleaches my bones but that won't help me either.
I can do what we did once, which was to pick a direction and just begin but I don't know if that's a good plan or a bad one. It's supposed to snow tonight and I am loathe to be too far from anything familiar and instead I think I'll just burrow down here and continue to wrap these hearts for safekeeping. This fence is safe. It holds. It's big enough that I didn't get cabin fever (yet) but small enough that they would miss me if I broke free within seconds so I will gather myself up and ride the tides back in when they come and hope that tomorrow brings some answers, and not more strings.