Ollie ollie oxen free.

(Because normal isn't good enough for this man.)

I was sitting at Jacob's desk writing yesterday morning, stealing his laptop. Sunglasses perched on top of my head because I always forget to leave them by the door, pencil clenched sideways in my teeth, hair on top of my head in an updo that was half undone by then, turtleneck, snowpants, sipping a cup of coffee and singing Beautiful Day as loud as I could while I wrote, because I write with very loud music playing.

    Touch me
    Take me to that other place
    Teach me
    I know I'm not a hopeless case

Jacob walked past the den and I waved and said Hey handsome without looking up while I typed and resumed singing. He smiled and then stopped and stepped back to look at me.

You look adorable and happy, Bridge.

A temporary affliction, I'm sure it'll be fixed by tomorrow.

You're too hard on yourself.

No, I'm being prepared.

Girl Guide?

Brownie, actually. I never made it up to Guides, was too busy figure skating.

Oh, you know what we need?

Brownies? I could go for something right now.

No, a vacation.

What did you say?

Your New Year's eve, princess.

My new...It's January 9th, Jacob. We'll get a date night soon.

How about this weekend?

Sure, I can call a sitter.

Already have Bailey.

What? What do you mean?

Bailey's coming out.

Isn't that a lot of effort for a date night? I'll call PJ.

PJ can't really swing two nights.
I stopped typing and stared at him. Pencil still there, eyebrows to the moon, which made him laugh.

Take that thing out of your face, Bridge.

What are you up to?

How does two nights in Whistler sound?

Oh my fucking god! Jake! Are you taking me snowboarding?

If you want to go.

Are you kidding me? Of course I want to go!

Pack your stuff, baby.

Oh, seriously. Are we?

Only if you can stand a few days of carving up the slopes and then afternoons at the spa and evenings by the fire with me.

I can stand that and the...Oh my God! Kidless trip! How in the world do you do this stuff?

I have connections.

You're in the mob, aren't you?

I can't tell you that.

Seriously, you're in the freaking Irish mob. You pull strings no one else can even reach.

No, I just know people who know people who like to help make you happy.

Jacob, I'm happy here with West Side Story on cable and the ghetto cake.

I know you are. Which is one of the reasons I want to make our life together memorable.

You already did. Seven times over, baby.

Well then let's make it eight. And then nine after that. We'll keep going til we reach twenty-nine hundred million, okay?

You don't need to do things like this to make me happy, Jacob. I'm happy. So happy.

I know that, princess. I don't ever want you to settle for happy when you could have breathtaking, because that's what you are to me.

You just never do anything halfway, do you?

Not when it comes to you, Bridget. And I think I'll keep it that way.

You do realize if I write about this no one is ever going to believe me.

Then stop writing about it on the computer.

No way! It's too good not to share.

I should check with my guys and see if we can whack the internet connection.

Oh, see, now, that's mob slang right there.

Just take the schwag, sweetheart, and don't ask questions.
He winked at me and left the room, and I couldn't write a freaking thing for the rest of the day.

Talking to herself.

Hey.

So tomorrow is Wednesday, girlie. Day of reckoning, if reckoning could be a weekly thing. If you're so inclined, maybe lend me a little strength and just a few extra good vibes so that I don't fall apart like I do every single time. I am working on it but it's slow going. It's hard to hold everything together when you get flayed wide open and picked apart until there is nothing remaining save for a pile of gristle left on the floor. A pathetic lump of former human bean.

Such is me.

The good news is that I have some good news, a wonderful, unexpected surprise, but in the event that tomorrow proves to be far too difficult to process, I'll leave it to tell you then.

Have a great night.

Layer cake.

    Privately divided by a world so undecided
    And there is nowhere to go

    In between the cover of another perfect wonder
    and it is so white as snow

    Running through the field where all my tracks will be concealed
    and there's nowhere to go


There's something to be said for waking up only to spend most of breakfast negotiating the quantity of clothes to be worn that day and a mini-lesson on temperatures. I feel like a hostage negotiator, keeping my kids' health as collateral against their imminent need to get outside to play more quickly at recess.

I win.

I always win.

I don't really have a choice. Someone has to be the bad guy.

And we lead by example. So today I'll give you a rundown of the average wardrobe today, because there will be no anthropologie swing dresses and stiletto heels on this day. Today is brought to you by Mountain Equipment Co-op. My second most exciting membership after Greenpeace, because I need to be warm while I help save the planet.

I'm sporting underwear, a camisole, two pairs of wool socks, silk longjohns, a thin t-shirt, a thick long-sleeved tshirt and a wool fairisle sweater. Flannel lined jeans. When I go outside I add a fleece shell, a windproof jacket, skipants, sorrels (my sorrels fit INSIDE Jacob's giant ones) and thin gloves inside line waterproof mitts, wool scarf and hat.

By the time I've got all this on, I can barely walk and you might not be able to tell if I'm a boy or a girl, it depends on if the braids wind up inside or outside of my coat.

This is why I run so goddamned fast. I can't wear all this stuff when I run and I freeze my ass off at first.

Yeah, living here is a just a riot.

The speed of sound.

It's a form of sensory deprivation.

Running for me is like being in a tunnel filled with water. I rarely look up, I hear nothing except for my songs, loud in my ears to feel them right through me and knock out everything else. I don't look around except to check for traffic. The city passes me by in a wet smear of urban grit. I count the intersections I cross, I don't make eye contact often and only when the pain starts do I look up at the moon that is still awake or the stars if it's clear and I beg for the release of endorphins, the inalienable runner's high, my rush, my prize for a grueling solitary marathon.

I am not allowed to run at night, for fear that I might be attacked. It's a big city.

I am not allowed to join a gym, because the fresh air is best. So sayeth those who know better than I.

When I get 45 minutes out in any direction, I must turn and come back, because sometimes I want to keep going and some day I might and so I turn.

When I'm out there, without rules to bind me and emotions to weigh me down, it's just me and my body (which responds nicely even when I take long breaks from running ) and the cold dark morning air, and I am free.

And I no longer think about anything when I run. Instead I tune into my senses. When you lack so much of one you want to overdevelop what you have. Sometimes it's a quiet obsession.

My nose begins. When I leave my neighborhood I inhale the woodsmoke from my own house and that of four nearby houses, rotten leaves, exposed once again by the melting snow. Newspaper, briefly and then my nose wrinkles up when confronted with fresh dogshit that someone failed to pick up. I smell my own patchouli oil, a gift from Jacob so I would stay out of his things, the warmer I get, the stronger it smells, beautiful stuff. And then cold snow, which stings my nasal passages with it's icy blandness. I run through hints of toxic clouds of gasoline and motor oil, the Ethiopian restaurant and their ever present lingering odor of cooking oil. Below my feet the wet asphalt smells like tar.

Taste. As I run the only tastes within my mouth are a film of toothpaste and the heady aftertaste of early-morning traffic. So instead I think about the tastes I like the most. Jacob's cognac kisses. Chocolate cake. Ruth's sour gummy worms and their skeptical assault on my tongue. The tart surprise from a plum or an orange, and the overwhelming sweetness of bananas and icing. The gooey bitterness of very good cheese mixed with the comfort dirt-taste of fresh mushrooms. Exquisite antipasto. Salty sweat from kissing Henry's forehead, hours after he has fallen asleep. Biting acrid champagne bubbles and not being able to describe the taste at all. Spicy cracked pepper chips and sharp rye bread.

Sight is easier. Kilometers of black and filthy grey wind an infinite ribbon beneath my sneakers. I see my socks bunched around my ankles but over my tights to keep blisters at bay. Trash, so much of it, discarded fast food wrappers and paper coffee cups and sale flyers that I wonder how anything ever makes it to the landfill. My reflection in glass windows, a blur of navy blue and blonde flies right by and I wonder if I really know her. Rocks of all sizes, sort of like people in their various shapes and colors. Dented traffic signs perched in the black snowbanks reflecting their warnings in headlights . My fists, balled into fury against my will, pumping in front of me like we are having a race. Shop owners, setting up their paper stands and changing their doorhangers from CLOSED to OPEN nodding to me as I pass, in a show of solidarity to a fellow early riser.

And then there is touch.

I have almost been run over turning this one over in my mind.

Jacob's hands sliding across my flesh underneath my clothes, a contradiction of gentle movements and calloused hands. Feeling his rough stubble on my lips, once past the initial barb of contact, a softness that belies the ruggedness of his demeanor. My fingertips fluttering a constant pulse on the car window as he drives and plays anything I want to hear on the truck stereo. Always fluttering, tactile thinking that I cannot seem to quit. Fierce battlehugs from my kids, who compete to see who can squeeze mommy until she squeals. Reaching under the deck for the shed key and brushing away months of long-abandoned cobwebs, now for rent if they survive the winter intact. Kissing Cole's warm cheek after he died, his face bloated from the efforts to keep him alive so that he would live to condemn me. The silken flax of my children's hair, precious gold spilling over their skulls to bring visual halos to their beautiful souls. The gritty paper of dollar bills. Jacob's skin, soft like a shell over granite. The feel of my own skin inside my running clothes, beginning to crawl ever so slightly as I begin to sweat. My bangs, grown down to the tip of my nose again, which stab my eyes whenever they get a chance and so I rake them out of my sight for the seven millionth time in a day. It isn't seven a.m. yet.

Of course the missing puzzle piece is the hearing. Eventually I will give away what I have left due to the constant assault of my headphones, because I want to feel those songs and the only way I can do that is to pull the volume as far as it will go. I miss the whispers and innuendo but I will anticipate your feelings because I study you even though you don't quite notice that I was. I will anticipate how you feel, what you need and why you need me and with few repetitions we will land on the same page and do what has to be done.

I have lived life in a gilded cage like a birdgirl, sheltered, protected. Everyone who heard my song was hypnotized and yet no one could set me free.

Until now.

Because I am not worldly does not mean that I am naive. When I was released from my subjugation I wasn't so sure and so I hung back when the world became too large and too loud, fishing for a way to balance that shelter and protection and attention with being free.

I stopped and I returned to the cage but I left the door open this time because I don't want to hear you and I don't want the fear of the unknown but it's certainly nice to step out and fly around for a bit and hone what senses I do possess.

And with that, I turn and run home.

Bridget emerged.

I was lying flat on my back on the hardwood floor in the front hallway.

(No, this isn't porn.)

Jacob walked by and stopped and we listened to the crackle of the fire from the living room. I can only hear it when I hold my breath.

What are you thinking, princess?

The usual existentialist thoughts.

I don't think you even know what that means.

It's one of my favorite words.

But can you define it? I have a hard time with it, which is why I'll never teach philosophy.

Mr. Kerouac, the point is not to define but to blow your mind.

You write just like him sometimes.

I come from a long line of hippies, gypsies, beatniks and freaks, preacher boy. It's expected. I'm just too cynical and jaded to admit it.

Right, and you're much easier to philosophize with over wine or hallucinogenics.

Since that day has long passed, let's mourn for it then, and find a new pastime.

Naked twister?

I was just going to say that.

Elevators.

Not such a good day here for Miss Bridget. I'm on an elevator that goes up and down and every time I try to get off someone tells me it's not my floor, or the doors simply close in my face. I could spend all my time sharing Jacob-stories but that doesn't get me anywhere, at least not anywhere else except here, clinging tenaciously to a beautiful and terrible past because I can't let it go because if I let go of all the bad things, then the good things might go with it and it's a risk I will not take.

Post traumatic phone disorder.

    Dear Jeff,

    How are you? I am fine. The next time you start a new job please don't give your workplace my cell phone number for your contact information, as I've spent most of the past few days fielding calls looking for you. They don't believe that you're not here and frankly if you've going to drag me into this then I suggest that you at least show up on your first day of work to make a good impression and not leave your coworkers high and dry. Because by now you're probably unemployed again, Jeff, and how are you going to get your own cell phone if you can't show up for work when you're supposed to?

    Yours truly,

    Bridget.

(I don't know anyone named Jeff.)

Say cheese.

I maintain there is absolutely nothing wrong with really really liking those $4 generic superstore pepperoni pizzas.

Zah is zah. But everyone else is having lamb. Which I don't like.

In other news, if you're going to have a Nirvana day, stupid girl, for gods sakes turn it off before you get to Lithium, because...damn.

    I like it
    I'm not gonna crack
    I miss you
    I'm not gonna crack
    I love you
    I'm not gonna crack
    I killed you
    I'm not gonna crack

Hollow.

  What else could I write
    I don't have the right
    What else should I be
    All apologies

I promised this memory to you a long time ago but life intervened and this morning I was reminded that people were still waiting. It's welcome now because I'm struggling today to find a bridge between my perfect morning mood and a draining week. Softer, sweeter we go now while I take you on the memory that was our first kiss. I very purposely left it out, you'll see why by the time you reach the end.

Jacob set the bar so very high with one kiss that I was never the same and he was never the same and it's one more piece to our puzzle that cemented us together forever as soulmates. I might still be where I was had it not been for the persistence and sheer tenacity of this guy and I tell him every day that I love him. When I describe our connection as lightning it's because our first kiss almost got us killed but I will never forget it even for a second.

One evening when Jake was free he took me down to the beach. He spread out my old quilt and we sat on the sand to watch the waves break. I was tired. I leaned against his shoulder and we talked about nothing, about his studies that he was looking forward to returning to, about life. We talked about how the air smelled like rain. The skies were overcast and there were no stars that night and he frowned and said we should go. I didn't want to go, I just knew this would be my last visit at the beach while it was still warm so I asked if he would get us some bottled water so we could stay just a little bit longer.

He walked down the beach to the canteen at the other end, strolling slowly, his feet in the water, his pant legs wet as usual. He turned a couple of times to check on me and smiled.

When he reached the canteen the heavens opened. I mean, it poured. One of those fast summer thunderstorms. The thunder rumbled right through me and I was completely deafened by the noise of the rain. Huge, driving drops were soaking everything. I forced myself to my feet and was trying to gather the quilt up without bringing so much sand with me and before I could make any progress at all Jacob was back beside me. The rain was coming down in sheets now. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his shirt soaked to his chest. I made a mental note to keep that picture in my head forever. He yelled that we needed to get out of the open and to leave the stuff. I said I wasn't leaving my things and that if he would just help instead of arguing with me, we'd be inside faster.

But I couldn't hear myself and it freaked me out and I grabbed at his sleeve.

That stopped him in his efforts and he just stared at me through the rain. Then he seized my face in his hands, pulling me into him, kissing me full-on, like a lover would, on the mouth. Hard. I kissed him back and when he stopped I didn't want him to stop and so I bit his bottom lip. He shook his head and then kissed me one more time, much more gently, one hand on the back of my neck and the other resting on my shoulder, with his thumb in the hollow at the base of my throat. When he pulled back the look in his eyes was despairing. He grabbed the quilt, took my hand and we hurried back to his truck. Once inside we slammed the doors just as a huge fork of lightning hit the beach. He looked at me and I looked at him.

This is the best night of my life.

Mine too.

And the worst, princess.

I know, Jake.

You can't tell Cole.

I wasn't going to.

Oh my God, this is wrong.

What's wrong is that the only thing keeping me from asking you to take me home is this baby.

Oh God, the baby.

I'm sorry, Jacob.

What are you sorry for? I did this.

We both did.

I'm supposed to be strong. I can't be strong around you.

No one asked you to.

Bridget, it doesn't matter. My God, I'm in love with you and you're pregnant and you've got a life already.

You're....you what?

I'm in love with you.

Oh, no. Jacob, no. Don't say it out loud.

You know this. You kissed me back, I know you feel the same thing I feel.

I know.

Then what?

You saying it out loud tears me apart.

Saying it, Bridge, saying it kills me. You should be with me.

Stop, Jake. Please!

Bridge, I would help you raise this baby.

I know you would.

So let me.

Take me home, please, Jacob.

You should be going home with me. Say you love me.

Stop it, Jake.

Say it!

I love you.

Can you hear yourself now, Bridget?

Yes.

Good. So there's no mistake then.

And with that he threw the truck into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot and drove me home. Eleven hours later I went into labor.

Ruth was born a day and a half later. Her first visitor was Jacob, dressed in a gown and mask that they make NICU visitors wear, proud to be a first-time godfather. He congratulated Cole and I and we stared at each other in agony over the tube and wires in Cole's presence and we kept our secret.

Until now.

Because that kiss Cole never knew about.

And now he never will because I have outlived him.

I still have that image of Jake, soaking wet to the skin, clothes plastered against his flesh, standing on the beach poised like he was about to grab my hand and run away with me forever. His thumbs tracing my cheekbones while I tried to breathe him in and my heart fluttered so hard I thought I might die. Every time I see him in the shower he looks at me with that same look and I'm transported back in time to that day.

Here's where I admit I didn't even bother trying to describe the emotion held in those moments. I couldn't if I tried. It wasn't all sneaking and trying to have my cake and eat it too, it was difficult and bitter and painful and emotionally draining. And at the same time it was euphoric, culminative, joyful and passionate in ways I will never share with another human being as long as I live, only Jacob. It held feelings I never felt with Cole in a million years and we were in love just as hard at one point. There's just no room for that experience more than once in this lifetime.

Most fairy tales don't end so happily. Happy being a relative term, we're working so hard at our happy ending, we will get there.

Cole and I took Ruthie home after a week spent in NICU and I tried to forget the image of Jacob in my head. I tried to forget the taste of his mouth, the way his beard felt against my cheek and his hands on my skin. I tried to forget the darkness and the rain. I tried to forget that night, instead concentrated on figuring out how to be a mom, how to exist on a few spare hours of sleep and how to somehow remember that I had a husband who needed me to focus on him and our new little family and not on his best friend.

I have had to live with my actions and even though it could have been much worse, I know damn well the only thing keeping me from sleeping with Jacob that rainy night was the fact that I was hugely pregnant. And that to me is way weirder than it might be to you. But it's there and it's how I feel.

Do I think Cole knew? Of course he did, maybe not times, places, details but he knew that I was torn, he knew that Jacob rocked me off my feet and he knew that he was loving me on borrowed time, right from the start.

Prophetic and spooky and sad. And incredibly telling, for after polling my male friends, they all proclaimed me to be akin to a glass weeble when I'm pregnant, irrefutably fragile but completely round, with rosy cheeks and tentative, difficult movement, usually very sick and very hungry and very demanding, cranky and stubborn and that they wouldn't have been attracted to any of it, and weren't and that Jacob is a singularly remarkable man.

Yes. He is.

Labelmaker.

Nonsensical rambling from a nonsensical girl. I apologize, this entry is poorly strung together. I just had to get it out.

Post-therapy thoughts are so difficult so please excuse me as I unload all over the place now that I have done all the things I'm supposed to do. It used to be just Wednesdays that were so bad, we're going to change it to Wednesdays and Fridays now. Oh, joy.

I've been trying to let it go but it won't let go of me. How much power did I claim for my own? Absolutely none if it wasn't sexual. I had no control, the submissive wife. How do I take power back that wasn't mine to begin with? How do I assert myself when I've been a puppet my whole life? A Barbie. Dress her up and watch her smile and she'll do anything you want but then expect her to make a decision from a choice of more than one and she freezes, numb in thoughts she isn't capable of processing.

My head doesn't seem to work in the right way anymore.

And now with Jacob, who has infinite patience to my face but none behind my back, who's heavy-handed approach to counseling and dry delivery of his comments and responses make it seem like I'll never make him happy. He's a tough nut to crack, easy to please but no nonsense too. Bridget is mostly all nonsense. He's my very own Brubaker and I'm the prison in need of reform.

Oops, ignore that, one more nickname will only confuse you, unless you've seen that movie and there you have Jacob in a nutshell. The warden of Bridget, and a dead ringer for the Robert Redford of the mid-seventies, but with a beard. And a much better wardrobe.

Oops, digression.

Jacob is all-encouragement but he wants it yesterday and then he refuses to let you turn the tables when you point out the...enabling. And god forbid he admit anymore how hard he struggles between trying to help me and wanting me to be the fun and unpredictably reckless girl that he knows so well.

We've been instructed to keep playing, keep expanding minds and boundaries, to find Bridget some more time by herself each day (I don't recall wanting that) and to structure said days rigidly, into blocks of time that won't get overwhelming, with routines. No more varying bedtimes, no sleeping in, meals at the same time each day which are to be eaten and not ignored and to talk as much as we can. Hobbies, chores, errands, my running, talk.

That's all we do.

Oh yes, and to have patience, because I may act in ways that aren't characteristic. I may stretch Jacob's understanding of me to the point of no return, I am getting a free pass on my behavior because that's what crazy people get. Bridget can't help herself, she's so messed up.

Oh and the whole wanting a baby thing?

He doesn't trust me. It's a desperate attempt to hold on to me because I'm less likely to leap off the gingerbread if someone needs me and also if I do make the leap, why, he'd have a piece of me left here on earth after I'm long cold.

Nice. Sweet even. Way to go, Jake, on the trust issues. If I say I'm not going to do anything drastic then I won't. Even if I said I might. Of course it makes no sense. I wouldn't trust me either.

But on the other hand, the wild girl stopped and stared at Jake for a few minutes, completely and utterly dumbstruck because that was the most touching and totally fucked up thing he has ever come out with.

I'm still....wow.

Oh, and then they turned the screws and changed everything and maybe made it worse. I was dismissed like a broken toy. Right in front of me, they didn't have the decency to let me leave the room while they discussed me and I am forever branded in his eyes.

God, which one would you like first? The mentally ill one, or perhaps the one that hurt more, the depersonalization designation, that when Jacob heard that one he stopped talking and did a double take at my psychiatrist and it took him way too long to finish his thought. All along he had been just fine with my atrocious disregard for my chemical imbalances, my freaky depression that would come and go out of the blue. For the first time he saw what he's going to have to live with forever and I don't even know what his reaction is. I got stuck on the mentally ill part, too.

And to think all this time I thought I might be okay.

So just add delusional to the list, please.

I have a way of pretending I'm normal without really doing it at all. Which I knew..I'm not that fucked up that I don't see it.

We were both rather stunned. Apparently we've been speeding along at a rate that isn't productive, it's counterproductive, and Jacob's new duties mean that right off the bat we'll be fighting a chaotic schedule that isn't very routine. He gets calls at strange hours, but I am to forge ahead, eat when I'm supposed to, sleep when I should and keep going. I knew damn well I was sabotaging myself all along, which is part of the whole illness. That pesky mental one.

Oh and Jacob pulled another fast one on me that I've been waiting for for years and was almost bound to the conclusion that maybe he really didn't want to know. He does, he wants to know everything. Not to be content with knowing what Cole didn't do, he wants everything out there and there are few ways I can do that short of storytelling here. If I just say it all out loud I might disintegrate into little pieces that never fit back together ever again. If I have to tell him looking into his eyes I'll take so much away from him, things I don't want to ever lose.

Of course the team agrees. So either they're all perverts or they're all better than I thought they were and I will get away with nothing. I'm going to be drawn and quartered psychologically and they're going to dump me upside down and pound on my feet until I'm completely empty.

And I looked at Jacob and ignored them all and I whispered to him that I didn't think I would survive that. He smiled gently at me and told me I already did.

He only thinks I did.

I asked them if I was normal at all. If I would ever be less flinchy, less startling, less messed up, less depraved and less able to turn on and off different areas of my personality because Jake doesn't really know what the hell he's going to wake up with each morning.

Mentally ill.

They assured us once again in their soothing tones that time and hard work will fix me.

I asked if time alone will do it and they said no. Because I think I would rather die now than tell him things that Cole did. Or Caleb for that matter.

Dammit.

I didn't want to be humiliated or ashamed anymore. I don't want him to have that information in his head, I don't want him to picture those things. If I quit now I look like I'm not trying to get better. My hands are tied.

Bridget gets backed into a corner and then scooped into a box for safekeeping. Until she's retrained to be released into the wild. I'm my own monkey on my back now, look at that.

The only way out is through and that's not an option because I went through all of it for one single reason and then I got caught up and couldn't do it and then I couldn't do anything and now..well...now I don't even know what to do.

I believe I've been just about finished off here. I'm not really sure what the fuck end is up or how I went from trying to hold on to a destructive marriage with a violent man that I was completely in love with and possibly brainwashed to ending that life and beginning a new one that was supposed to be full of happiness and love and romance to winding up dismissed as mentally ill while they sat there and talked about my options to learn how to live with this and not wind up worse, further incapacitated. I was sitting there saying, I'm not incapacitated! Fuck, just help me deal with all this shit, and then help me deal with the shit that comes from nowhere!

It's really fucking unbelievable. It explains a lot and it ruins more.

I've been assured I most definitely can come home and continue to write my sweet little stories and continue to spin wool and read to my kids and make lunch and dust the musical instruments and do bookkeeping for the church and drive my friends up the wall because hey, life has to go on.

Just take the pills and continue the therapy forever.

Incredible.

I said very little after that, and mostly tried to pretend I didn't exist.

At the end of the afternoon yesterday when it started to get dark I went into the den to draw the curtains and Jacob was sitting at the desk, no lights on. Just sitting in his chair staring out the window into the snow.

Why are you in the dark, Jake?

I'm thinking, princess.

About how quickly you'd like to run away?

No, about vacations and revelations and second opinions and a lot more sleep.

Heavy stuff.

Oh, it's very serious stuff.

Do you regret marrying me?

Please don't tell me you think I'm that kind of guy.

Hey, at this point I would say you've had more than your fair share of this bullshit and no one would blame you if you bailed.

Then you don't know me very well, princess.

Boy, am I happy to hear that.

I aim to please.

Ah. Charity for the mentally ill.

You're really stuck on that, aren't you? It only means you're depressed. Christ, Bridge, I see twenty people a week who fall into that category too. They're teachers and representatives and cops and some of your friends, even.

I know. I was just hoping we could build a rubber room.

So you can thrash around and go apeshit in one?

No, so we can play naked twister and not get hurt. Silly man.

Why did I know you'd find a way to pervert that?

Because I have to laugh about it or I'll lose what's left of myself.

Then naked twister it is.

For the record, we've never played naked twister. Somewhere along the way it became a running joke that never stops. There are lots of those. Happy memories.

So there you have it. Pretty, loves to write, loves to tell you stories about Jacob and how romantic he is, but mentally ill. Way to go, Fragile Miss B.