This is why I love you, Bridget.
Moments after I froze, blushing madly, because he caught me dancing in the kitchen last night, by myself, which would have looked like a cross between someone caught in the twitches of a very slow and sensual torture and a spiritual revival as experienced by a hippie lovechild.
It's hidden far away
But someday I may tell
The tale of metal tangle
When into your world I fell
Without you now I wander soaking
Secretly afraid
'Cause in your grasp the fears don't last
And some of them have stayed
Sample in a Jar was on, and everyone knows I can't sit still during that song. It has to get out, whatever it is. My very own revival.
He laughed. He was still laughing this morning as he headed off the ghost of 5:17 and offered to run with me, which we did and he talked about a concrete trust in us that he didn't recognize before, which is what led him to not stop me when I took off in the first place because he knows he's better than anyone (the return of the rarely seen ego) and if I'm off trying to conjure up ghosts then he knows that I'm going to be unsuccessful at it. My time with Cole is over now. He's not coming back. He isn't Caleb.
Jacob thinks Caleb is a jerk, a creep and an idiot and hopefully not willing to be the victim of any more of Jacob's haymakers, and probably only sent the email to passively stir up some extra trouble and nurse his wounded ego. Jacob was incredibly sympathetic to his plight, pointing out that if I had written something about Jacob not being able to work his penis properly with all the readers I have, he'd dig a hole in the ground and then hit himself in the head with a shovel until he fell in it.
Then he laughed again, because he really doesn't care about Caleb and Caleb isn't Cole and so I'm going to stuff this subject into a rowboat and push it off mightily from shore and it can beach somewhere else. I'm done with it.
You tricked me like the others
And now I don't belong
The simple smiles and good times seem all wrong
Jacob ran slower today and waited for responses and he got to indulge himself in the contents of my silly head quite thoroughly while we splashed through mudpuddles and squinted every time we headed east, since the sun slept in again and came up low over the city.
His official comment is that I'm doing well and I'm still on track to possibly resembling a human bean someday. Not his words, mine, since his were longer and so darned clinical. We'll see what tomorrow brings because I haven't been to therapy in two weeks. I hope Claus has a fresh notepad. In any case, there's a rather optimistic outlook to me and I'm intrigued by that. Since I have no reputation as an optimist, I'm just going to try it out like a six year old on a two-wheeler and strike off shakily down the sidewalk with my helmet askew and see what happens.
Tuesday 13 March 2007
Monday 12 March 2007
Miss trusted.
Honey why you calling me so late?
It's kinda hard to talk right now.
Honey why are you crying? Is everything okay?
I gotta whisper 'cause I can't be too loud
Well, my girl's in the next room
Sometimes I wish she was you
I guess we never really moved on
It's really good to hear your voice say my name
It sounds so sweet
Coming from the lips of an angel
Hearing those words it makes me weak
I humiliated Caleb and to retaliate he's written Jacob a character-obliterating email about me. One riddled with just enough truth and just enough lies to make it hard to discern which is which. He played on Jacob's weaknesses and on my own admissions and my past with Jacob to cast just enough of a shadow of a doubt over last weekend and life in general to set us right back where we were when he called and it's the last thing we need right now.
He can be very eloquent, very convincing, and very much a game-player. He's intriguing, even when he's an asshole about things. Exactly like Cole used to be. Some days I can't even believe Cole and Jacob could ever be so close but then I remember Jacob used Cole as a means to an end and Jacob has me now and I just wish Caleb would leave me alone. It was wrong of me to seek him out for comfort and I will never be more sorry than I am right now, after reading what he wrote about me.
His account of what happened that night are vastly, vastly different from mine and it isn't fair. He's playing cards I forgot he was holding.
It's kinda hard to talk right now.
Honey why are you crying? Is everything okay?
I gotta whisper 'cause I can't be too loud
Well, my girl's in the next room
Sometimes I wish she was you
I guess we never really moved on
It's really good to hear your voice say my name
It sounds so sweet
Coming from the lips of an angel
Hearing those words it makes me weak
I humiliated Caleb and to retaliate he's written Jacob a character-obliterating email about me. One riddled with just enough truth and just enough lies to make it hard to discern which is which. He played on Jacob's weaknesses and on my own admissions and my past with Jacob to cast just enough of a shadow of a doubt over last weekend and life in general to set us right back where we were when he called and it's the last thing we need right now.
He can be very eloquent, very convincing, and very much a game-player. He's intriguing, even when he's an asshole about things. Exactly like Cole used to be. Some days I can't even believe Cole and Jacob could ever be so close but then I remember Jacob used Cole as a means to an end and Jacob has me now and I just wish Caleb would leave me alone. It was wrong of me to seek him out for comfort and I will never be more sorry than I am right now, after reading what he wrote about me.
His account of what happened that night are vastly, vastly different from mine and it isn't fair. He's playing cards I forgot he was holding.
Coffee in bed.
Underneath a layer of snow turned hard as glass from months of frozen temperatures, under the ice and the filth from a full winter's duration my heart is still beating, thawing, patiently waiting to feel the sun.
It rained last night. Outside our bedroom window I could hear the pitter-pat of the drops as they fell, washing away the light grime from the house in the early morning darkness and Jacob stirred restlessly and I put my hand up and stroked my fingers through his hair while I listened and my ears were grateful for a sound I haven't heard in a long time.
He turned over, his arm coming down around me and I was rolled into his sleep reluctantly, wide awake in a city of sleepers. His other hand came up under my ear and pulled my face into his, an exhausted kiss left on my lips, abandoned halfway done in his slip back into whatever blissful dream he was having.
His unconscious comfort is welcome but sometimes ineffectual, as is Cole's ghost that stands like a sentry in the corner, always watching and waiting for me in my dreams.
I really wish Cole would go away now.
It rained last night. Outside our bedroom window I could hear the pitter-pat of the drops as they fell, washing away the light grime from the house in the early morning darkness and Jacob stirred restlessly and I put my hand up and stroked my fingers through his hair while I listened and my ears were grateful for a sound I haven't heard in a long time.
He turned over, his arm coming down around me and I was rolled into his sleep reluctantly, wide awake in a city of sleepers. His other hand came up under my ear and pulled my face into his, an exhausted kiss left on my lips, abandoned halfway done in his slip back into whatever blissful dream he was having.
His unconscious comfort is welcome but sometimes ineffectual, as is Cole's ghost that stands like a sentry in the corner, always watching and waiting for me in my dreams.
I really wish Cole would go away now.
Sunday 11 March 2007
Sunday comics.
In the end Betty married Moose and then they turned Riverdale upside down.
Probably the funniest description I have ever heard of life in our neck of the woods. Credit goes to Duncan (fool on the hill, who never wants me to write anything about him) as told on a three-way call with Jacob to Andrew, expert out-of-looper and one of our longtime friends. In his defense, Andrew has been away for almost a year and has missed everything because he only called once during his travels and that was last night.
Probably the funniest description I have ever heard of life in our neck of the woods. Credit goes to Duncan (fool on the hill, who never wants me to write anything about him) as told on a three-way call with Jacob to Andrew, expert out-of-looper and one of our longtime friends. In his defense, Andrew has been away for almost a year and has missed everything because he only called once during his travels and that was last night.
Saturday 10 March 2007
Unconditional.
So...Alice in Chains again. What a week.
No, actually this time I put it on the stereo on purpose because it was midnight and I wanted him to stop writing and quit reading and come to bed with me and the very last thing I do is nag people and so I turned on Grind and Oh my god. Surprise! Yes, it was a drive-by fully unsolicited lapdance.
Jacob likes those.
He gets a look on his face which I can only equate with showing a hungry caveman a butcher shop and a flaming barbecue.
Yes, it's an expression of total wonderment but it doesn't make me laugh like you're laughing now, it just makes me want to skip the teasing part altogether and go straight to trying to unbutton his shirt because hello, get these things off just a bit quicker, baby, please.
Someday he'll make my life easy and wear just t-shirts or something with fewer buttons. Button-fly jeans. Christ.
But he loves it to bits and he loves me to bits and most people would fault him for his weakness in me but I don't. And he doesn't. He loves me even when I need to try to control him in the only way I know how and I love him unconditionally even when he is ashamed to say he really loves it when I wind out and I can't get in control because I'm too far out of it.
It's a match made in heaven.
No, actually this time I put it on the stereo on purpose because it was midnight and I wanted him to stop writing and quit reading and come to bed with me and the very last thing I do is nag people and so I turned on Grind and Oh my god. Surprise! Yes, it was a drive-by fully unsolicited lapdance.
Jacob likes those.
He gets a look on his face which I can only equate with showing a hungry caveman a butcher shop and a flaming barbecue.
Yes, it's an expression of total wonderment but it doesn't make me laugh like you're laughing now, it just makes me want to skip the teasing part altogether and go straight to trying to unbutton his shirt because hello, get these things off just a bit quicker, baby, please.
Someday he'll make my life easy and wear just t-shirts or something with fewer buttons. Button-fly jeans. Christ.
But he loves it to bits and he loves me to bits and most people would fault him for his weakness in me but I don't. And he doesn't. He loves me even when I need to try to control him in the only way I know how and I love him unconditionally even when he is ashamed to say he really loves it when I wind out and I can't get in control because I'm too far out of it.
It's a match made in heaven.
Friday 9 March 2007
Shorn lamb.
You're a head case with a smile
Can't stop to make up your mind
Education is so lame
When you bitch and you moan
You're a loose girl, I'm a guy
You're a truth freak with a lie
The situation is so strange
It's a tv show*
Oh wow.
My seventies guitar hero preacher is no more.
Well, he is still somewhere around here, hidden inside the handsome man who walked into the house fully cleanshaven, with hair that's about two inches long if it's a millimeter. Looking like he joined the military to the point where I actually thought to ask if he had, since he never mentioned he was going to the barbershop, I wondered what else he had kept from me, perhaps enlisting?
Instead of his shaggy curtain of bangs and flippy curls around his collar and the awesomest beard this side of Woodstock, he now has a Major Haircut with a barely-there fringe now across his forehead that sweeps to one side and a completely bare face like a baby's ass.
The good news is he's still got a ton of hair. All the men in his family keep all of their hair to the grave.
Actually now that I've had a little time to adjust, he's a very very good looking man when he's clean cut. In a totally different way than the sexy rugged hippie looks that I adore so much.
And ears. Did you know Jacob had ears? Because I didn't.
*(Mark saw my 'lamb' title and started in with his Queens of the Stone Age Leg of Lamb rendition on the phone.)
Can't stop to make up your mind
Education is so lame
When you bitch and you moan
You're a loose girl, I'm a guy
You're a truth freak with a lie
The situation is so strange
It's a tv show*
Oh wow.
My seventies guitar hero preacher is no more.
Well, he is still somewhere around here, hidden inside the handsome man who walked into the house fully cleanshaven, with hair that's about two inches long if it's a millimeter. Looking like he joined the military to the point where I actually thought to ask if he had, since he never mentioned he was going to the barbershop, I wondered what else he had kept from me, perhaps enlisting?
Instead of his shaggy curtain of bangs and flippy curls around his collar and the awesomest beard this side of Woodstock, he now has a Major Haircut with a barely-there fringe now across his forehead that sweeps to one side and a completely bare face like a baby's ass.
The good news is he's still got a ton of hair. All the men in his family keep all of their hair to the grave.
Actually now that I've had a little time to adjust, he's a very very good looking man when he's clean cut. In a totally different way than the sexy rugged hippie looks that I adore so much.
And ears. Did you know Jacob had ears? Because I didn't.
*(Mark saw my 'lamb' title and started in with his Queens of the Stone Age Leg of Lamb rendition on the phone.)
Thursday 8 March 2007
Left unfinished, by request.
(I've had many requests for the Coast Diaries blog content that was posted before I was yanked unceremoniously off my storytelling high by Caleb's threats and since these entries were already posted, here you go. You're all perverts and I love you for that.
If you have absolutely no idea what in the heck I'm talking about just enjoy some early true fairytales. And one horror story, because good things don't come cheap and all words come covered with cheese.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Seven
It was a night that began on an emotional high. A night where he took her from her lover in a defiant display of wrath, his envy for what his enemy held evident in his eyes. And so he took what he wanted, again and again.
The air was heavy with the cloying smell of sweat and incense, the sultry heat of the summer night invasive, welcome. Her skin glistened with moisture, her waves recoiling into wild curls in defense of the suffocating warmth.
He tangled his fingers into her hair and pulled her head back gently until she was at his mercy. She smiled up at him willingly, breathing quietly, waiting for him to express his admiration for her body, which she had given him moments before, a tangle of sins fulfilled, lust, avarice and gluttony all brawling for first place in a night that saw a three way tie and plans for a rematch after some rest, after the heat relinquished it's grasp and invited a cool morning.
You are infinitely fuckable.
With one compliment he edified her the reverence with which he held for her form, his insatiability for her and thus introduced yet another deadly sin into their room that night. Pride. The one iniquity that would serve to wage a never-ending war against grace for the rest of their lives.
But not tonight.
The remainder of tonight would see sloth fulfilled as they slept deeply, the heat releasing them at long last, the oppressive tentacles retreating under the promise of a cloud-filled day.
~~~~~~~~~~
Warmth
He pulled the blanket around them both, and kissed her bare shoulder. She watched his expression as his eyes rose to meet her own. He traced her collarbone. She waited for him to speak, not daring to break the spell of the moment.
Stay with me.
~~~~~~~~~~
Muse
One finger slid from her hairline on the back of her neck slowly down, gliding over silken, alabaster skin until it met the tiny indentation at the base of her spine. She shivered with delight. Her head reeled with the effects of the wine they had shared, in a single glass.
She was sitting in the center of his bed wrapped in baby blue cotton sheets and smiling down at her hands as he whispered to her. She couldn't make out his words and so she tried to turn to face him but he stopped her, taking her shoulders in his hands and holding her still. He resumed his solitary exploration of her flesh and she imagined what it would feel like if he simply enveloped her into his arms, the chemistry between them so intense that she had become obsessed with him. As he had with her.
When he asked her if he could paint her she agreed, having played the muse once before, knowing her role well, noting humorously that they were both aware that his colorful Hofmann-inspired dabblings had nothing to do with the human form. She agreed simply to be with him. To breathe his air and coexist in his headspace. And when he laughed and suggested on a whim that she should be nude for the piece she turned herself inside out, taking her clothes off as of they were aflame. He passed the sheet to her and looked around for a chair but he didn't like the coldness of it and so he suggested she find a comfortable seat on the bed.
This exercise served not in order to produce a work of art but to solidify his promise to her that she could trust him and she was demonstrating that she did.
His fingers left her skin hesitantly and he stood with effort, tearing his eyes from her curves and storming back to his blank canvas, which rested on the floor, mocking him. Three square feet of rough white textures that implored him to create.
She asked him if he was inspired by her.
He said yes, but not to paint.
And she smiled again.
~~~~~~~~~~
Cold Comfort
She sat on the tailgate, sipping hot chocolate from a thermos, snowboard propped up against the bank, boots dangling a foot off the ground. She had removed her jacket and left her elfish hat and bibfront snowpants on, preparing to finish her quick break and head back up the hill for more punishment.
Just then he walked around the side of the truck and grinned from ear to ear.
You having fun?
It's a blast. You?
Best day of the season. You the only one here?
Yup. I can see most of them waiting at the lift.
Oh yeah, okay, I see them.
We're just fast.
Or very very slow.
They laughed together and he sat down beside her. She offered him a sip of her chocolate but he refused, pressing his forehead to hers instead. She could feel his cool breath on her mouth, minty from gum, slightly sour from physical exertion. His hair was damp, his eyes sparkled, set off by the snow, a blue she could drown in.
He leaned in and kissed her softly.
She pulled away, standing up, looking around for her gloves and jacket. He stood up and closed the distance between them, taking her face into his hands and holding it firmly as he kissed her a second time, letting his bottom lip slip over hers slowly.
Her knees were so weak she started to drop and he grabbed her arms to steady them both. She started to speak and he smiled.
I know.
Oh god.
Next year we're going out west and we're going to have our own room and I'm going to make love to you the whole trip and we won't even board.
Oh god.
Yes, it will be like that, I think.
I think if they saw us I'm dead.
No one saw us. No one is watching us.
God watches us.
God has bigger fish to fry.
Then kiss me again so I have something to keep.
He pulled us in close again and she could feel the stubble of his beard scraping against her nose, the woolly softness warming her face as he opened his mouth and put the gentlest of kisses on her lips. He pulled back with a smile that did little to cover the quiet discord in his expression.
They returned to the lift with our gear and got a chair to the top once again, talking about everything save for stolen kisses and future plans. They lived from one heartache to the next. Cold, to match the day.
~~~~~~~~~~
Blinded
No!
Shh, just let me.
I don't....
Shhhh, baby. Trust me.
With that exchange he covered my eyes. And then I was functionally blind and deaf, resorting to a darkened world of taste, smell and touch. I could feel his thigh muscles as they contracted, regular, flexing at exactly half the beats of my heart as it pounded, my knees buckled onto the floor as my body failed to maintain enough strength under his assault to even stay upright. He ignored it and kept going and I searched around inside my brain for a way to somehow partner the way in which the sensory isolation brought forth the remaining senses in a remarkable way with the uncomfortable unfamiliarity of his actions.
I let go of my hesitation and as my reward he bit through the skin on my shoulder as he came in a violent explosion of sweat and strength.
But the blindfold remained. He shifted his hand enough so that when he flipped me onto my back again I was still in a black room, and he fought his way back in while I pushed against him and tried to block his approach with what little strength remained in my limbs, which were twisted and pulled and exhausted from a night of experimenting with new and old.
He began a fresh onslaught and I tasted blood. In my efforts to internalize his touch I had bitten my cheek and not noticed. I asked him to stop and he refused. My shoulder was now bleeding as well, I could feel it and smell the iron-heaviness in the air and I begged him to let me up.
He refused.
When he finally fell asleep I extricated myself from his arms and went to do a damage report. Two puncture wounds which stood out from my pale flesh like marks from the impaler. I was victim to a vampire, a monster that should only be found in storybooks and scary movies, not in your own room.
I squeezed my eyes and returned to bed, once again blind, not to the moment but to the knowledge, the confirmation that he was my own monster and that he was real.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dunes
He pressed her against the weathered grey wood of the fence, wishing away their visibility to the outside world until they were hidden, far away from anyone who might happen to stray away from the boardwalk. Hidden in the dunes he had the perfect place in which to steal a kiss, and to make his need for her known only to her, the way it should be.
The way it was every Thursday afternoon when she would shyly wait for him there.
She smiled up at him, squinting through the sun, the glare off the white sand and his throat was full with his heart. Her hair whipped around her face in a golden halo and her eyes were full of mirth. He took her face in his hands and kissed her softly once, then harder, leaving her throat and lips streaked with a path of glittering sand from his swim. She could feel the cool ocean brought to her as a gift from him on his cold lips, a salty, gritty taste infused with his love for her.
Her favorite taste in the world.
She put her arms around him, sharing the remaining seawater that rolled off his broad shoulders in constant rivulets. He slid his hands down her back and into her bikini bottoms and pushed her into him so that she would know she was wanted, that he could have her at that moment if he wanted. She replied in kind by moving away slightly and touching him through his swim trunks. Her expression turned to frustration and he refused to acknowledge that life existed outside their hidden meeting place, instead sliding his thumbs once again into the sides of her bottoms, and he pulled them down just a little. She cried out for him to stop because they might be seen. He ignored her.
He fell to his knees and kissed down her belly, browned by the sun, and stopped where it met the white of skin that must be covered in public. Her tan lines made him crazy for her. She was covered with sand, damp and refreshed by the swim he had brought with him out of the ocean. She was dizzy with her own desire for him and weighed down with a guilt she didn't want to think of right now.
He inched the bottoms down a little more and she pushed his head away, modest in their sudden risks. So he changed direction because he wasn't ready to let go of her, not just yet and so he stood and instead wrapped his arms around her, kissing her deeply, reaching his tongue down her throat briefly in an effort to taste her soul. She pressed her body against him hoping that he would find her soul inside and take it with him when he left. He ended with a gentle kiss and then he turned and walked away, head down, not looking back as she watched him go, the wind enveloping him in a relentless voyage, drying the salt into his skin in a film that he would wear for the remainder of that day.
And she put her fingers up to her lips to shelter them from the ocean breezes, so that the heartless wind could never take his kiss away again.
~~~~~~~~~~
If you have absolutely no idea what in the heck I'm talking about just enjoy some early true fairytales. And one horror story, because good things don't come cheap and all words come covered with cheese.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Seven
It was a night that began on an emotional high. A night where he took her from her lover in a defiant display of wrath, his envy for what his enemy held evident in his eyes. And so he took what he wanted, again and again.
The air was heavy with the cloying smell of sweat and incense, the sultry heat of the summer night invasive, welcome. Her skin glistened with moisture, her waves recoiling into wild curls in defense of the suffocating warmth.
He tangled his fingers into her hair and pulled her head back gently until she was at his mercy. She smiled up at him willingly, breathing quietly, waiting for him to express his admiration for her body, which she had given him moments before, a tangle of sins fulfilled, lust, avarice and gluttony all brawling for first place in a night that saw a three way tie and plans for a rematch after some rest, after the heat relinquished it's grasp and invited a cool morning.
You are infinitely fuckable.
With one compliment he edified her the reverence with which he held for her form, his insatiability for her and thus introduced yet another deadly sin into their room that night. Pride. The one iniquity that would serve to wage a never-ending war against grace for the rest of their lives.
But not tonight.
The remainder of tonight would see sloth fulfilled as they slept deeply, the heat releasing them at long last, the oppressive tentacles retreating under the promise of a cloud-filled day.
~~~~~~~~~~
Warmth
He pulled the blanket around them both, and kissed her bare shoulder. She watched his expression as his eyes rose to meet her own. He traced her collarbone. She waited for him to speak, not daring to break the spell of the moment.
Stay with me.
~~~~~~~~~~
Muse
One finger slid from her hairline on the back of her neck slowly down, gliding over silken, alabaster skin until it met the tiny indentation at the base of her spine. She shivered with delight. Her head reeled with the effects of the wine they had shared, in a single glass.
She was sitting in the center of his bed wrapped in baby blue cotton sheets and smiling down at her hands as he whispered to her. She couldn't make out his words and so she tried to turn to face him but he stopped her, taking her shoulders in his hands and holding her still. He resumed his solitary exploration of her flesh and she imagined what it would feel like if he simply enveloped her into his arms, the chemistry between them so intense that she had become obsessed with him. As he had with her.
When he asked her if he could paint her she agreed, having played the muse once before, knowing her role well, noting humorously that they were both aware that his colorful Hofmann-inspired dabblings had nothing to do with the human form. She agreed simply to be with him. To breathe his air and coexist in his headspace. And when he laughed and suggested on a whim that she should be nude for the piece she turned herself inside out, taking her clothes off as of they were aflame. He passed the sheet to her and looked around for a chair but he didn't like the coldness of it and so he suggested she find a comfortable seat on the bed.
This exercise served not in order to produce a work of art but to solidify his promise to her that she could trust him and she was demonstrating that she did.
His fingers left her skin hesitantly and he stood with effort, tearing his eyes from her curves and storming back to his blank canvas, which rested on the floor, mocking him. Three square feet of rough white textures that implored him to create.
She asked him if he was inspired by her.
He said yes, but not to paint.
And she smiled again.
~~~~~~~~~~
Cold Comfort
She sat on the tailgate, sipping hot chocolate from a thermos, snowboard propped up against the bank, boots dangling a foot off the ground. She had removed her jacket and left her elfish hat and bibfront snowpants on, preparing to finish her quick break and head back up the hill for more punishment.
Just then he walked around the side of the truck and grinned from ear to ear.
You having fun?
It's a blast. You?
Best day of the season. You the only one here?
Yup. I can see most of them waiting at the lift.
Oh yeah, okay, I see them.
We're just fast.
Or very very slow.
They laughed together and he sat down beside her. She offered him a sip of her chocolate but he refused, pressing his forehead to hers instead. She could feel his cool breath on her mouth, minty from gum, slightly sour from physical exertion. His hair was damp, his eyes sparkled, set off by the snow, a blue she could drown in.
He leaned in and kissed her softly.
She pulled away, standing up, looking around for her gloves and jacket. He stood up and closed the distance between them, taking her face into his hands and holding it firmly as he kissed her a second time, letting his bottom lip slip over hers slowly.
Her knees were so weak she started to drop and he grabbed her arms to steady them both. She started to speak and he smiled.
I know.
Oh god.
Next year we're going out west and we're going to have our own room and I'm going to make love to you the whole trip and we won't even board.
Oh god.
Yes, it will be like that, I think.
I think if they saw us I'm dead.
No one saw us. No one is watching us.
God watches us.
God has bigger fish to fry.
Then kiss me again so I have something to keep.
He pulled us in close again and she could feel the stubble of his beard scraping against her nose, the woolly softness warming her face as he opened his mouth and put the gentlest of kisses on her lips. He pulled back with a smile that did little to cover the quiet discord in his expression.
They returned to the lift with our gear and got a chair to the top once again, talking about everything save for stolen kisses and future plans. They lived from one heartache to the next. Cold, to match the day.
~~~~~~~~~~
Blinded
No!
Shh, just let me.
I don't....
Shhhh, baby. Trust me.
With that exchange he covered my eyes. And then I was functionally blind and deaf, resorting to a darkened world of taste, smell and touch. I could feel his thigh muscles as they contracted, regular, flexing at exactly half the beats of my heart as it pounded, my knees buckled onto the floor as my body failed to maintain enough strength under his assault to even stay upright. He ignored it and kept going and I searched around inside my brain for a way to somehow partner the way in which the sensory isolation brought forth the remaining senses in a remarkable way with the uncomfortable unfamiliarity of his actions.
I let go of my hesitation and as my reward he bit through the skin on my shoulder as he came in a violent explosion of sweat and strength.
But the blindfold remained. He shifted his hand enough so that when he flipped me onto my back again I was still in a black room, and he fought his way back in while I pushed against him and tried to block his approach with what little strength remained in my limbs, which were twisted and pulled and exhausted from a night of experimenting with new and old.
He began a fresh onslaught and I tasted blood. In my efforts to internalize his touch I had bitten my cheek and not noticed. I asked him to stop and he refused. My shoulder was now bleeding as well, I could feel it and smell the iron-heaviness in the air and I begged him to let me up.
He refused.
When he finally fell asleep I extricated myself from his arms and went to do a damage report. Two puncture wounds which stood out from my pale flesh like marks from the impaler. I was victim to a vampire, a monster that should only be found in storybooks and scary movies, not in your own room.
I squeezed my eyes and returned to bed, once again blind, not to the moment but to the knowledge, the confirmation that he was my own monster and that he was real.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dunes
He pressed her against the weathered grey wood of the fence, wishing away their visibility to the outside world until they were hidden, far away from anyone who might happen to stray away from the boardwalk. Hidden in the dunes he had the perfect place in which to steal a kiss, and to make his need for her known only to her, the way it should be.
The way it was every Thursday afternoon when she would shyly wait for him there.
She smiled up at him, squinting through the sun, the glare off the white sand and his throat was full with his heart. Her hair whipped around her face in a golden halo and her eyes were full of mirth. He took her face in his hands and kissed her softly once, then harder, leaving her throat and lips streaked with a path of glittering sand from his swim. She could feel the cool ocean brought to her as a gift from him on his cold lips, a salty, gritty taste infused with his love for her.
Her favorite taste in the world.
She put her arms around him, sharing the remaining seawater that rolled off his broad shoulders in constant rivulets. He slid his hands down her back and into her bikini bottoms and pushed her into him so that she would know she was wanted, that he could have her at that moment if he wanted. She replied in kind by moving away slightly and touching him through his swim trunks. Her expression turned to frustration and he refused to acknowledge that life existed outside their hidden meeting place, instead sliding his thumbs once again into the sides of her bottoms, and he pulled them down just a little. She cried out for him to stop because they might be seen. He ignored her.
He fell to his knees and kissed down her belly, browned by the sun, and stopped where it met the white of skin that must be covered in public. Her tan lines made him crazy for her. She was covered with sand, damp and refreshed by the swim he had brought with him out of the ocean. She was dizzy with her own desire for him and weighed down with a guilt she didn't want to think of right now.
He inched the bottoms down a little more and she pushed his head away, modest in their sudden risks. So he changed direction because he wasn't ready to let go of her, not just yet and so he stood and instead wrapped his arms around her, kissing her deeply, reaching his tongue down her throat briefly in an effort to taste her soul. She pressed her body against him hoping that he would find her soul inside and take it with him when he left. He ended with a gentle kiss and then he turned and walked away, head down, not looking back as she watched him go, the wind enveloping him in a relentless voyage, drying the salt into his skin in a film that he would wear for the remainder of that day.
And she put her fingers up to her lips to shelter them from the ocean breezes, so that the heartless wind could never take his kiss away again.
~~~~~~~~~~
Spinning unbalanced.
Do I make a clunking sound like the washing machine?
The request for weekly written barometers has become standing (weekly? Try daily). A lovely little way for everyone to see inside Bridget's head so she doesn't run off with any sharp implements and dangerous epiphanies. Or any really really sad songs and a bottle of...oh, geez, I'll stop right there.
I'm like my very own three-minute tornado warning. A first for humankind. I'll be the test subject, God knows they couldn't have picked a fiercer, tinier tornado. I'm almost handleable. The post-apocalyptic cyclone girl, now with qualified supervision!
Firstly, I'm proud to say the kids are all registered for the fall at school. Still in elementary school, but Henry will be trading in his half days for a full day and I really won't know what to do with myself. I've had two extra little shadows for the past seven and a half years and really I'm finding now I can crawl so far inside myself when I'm alone that it's hard to crawl out when the kids get home. I'm going to get a lot done, but the kids are thriving and happy and this is very good for them. They continue to adjust amazingly well and I wish I could take cues from them in how to feel, sometimes.
On singing. Yes, every time I walk past Jacob he pulls me into his lap and sings come waste your time with me, he's possibly more happy to be enjoying our full spectrum of music than I am, though I wind up getting nothing done at all when he does that, instead I get done.
Snort.
That is not a complaint, by the way.
He also confided to me during one of our silly 3 am conversations last night that he absolutely loves the way I call his name when he's out of the room.
Jaaaaaay cub!
Aw. I'm the only person who doesn't shorten his name very often when I say it out loud. Everyone calls him Jake. I tend not to shorten people's names. It's one of my more uptight quirks.
In other also unrelated things, I'm very relieved to be out of the beginning rock climbing torture class. I got a refund with a doctor's note, because heavily medicated people with stress issues shouldn't climb. Maybe next year. Jacob loves his extra-super adrenaline junkie ice climb class. They're going on a field trip in a week and he's like Henry was when they went to the train station. Excited! Five years old! Maybe I should pack him a lunch.
Also unrelated-I have a new cellphone. A Motorola one. It's going to take me forever to figure it out because I'm not great with new interfaces, but my Samsung was not repairable. Probably because in my fog of grief and shock I sat at the table one night and fed the pieces to a full vase of green water and dead roses that I forgot about after Valentine's week.
And lastly, Cole's letters. Did I appear to be stalling?
Heavens, yes.
The damn unread letters. Jacob played bad guy and asked me what I would do if I had been able to read them and if they had been awful, mean, hurtful words.
I said I would be sad but I would expect no less, really.
Then he asked me what I would do if they had contained apologies and reminders that some of our time together was good, that I mattered.
I said I would be vindicated and that I would know for sure that he didn't hate me and that he wasn't a monster, that he was still the Cole I fell in love with on the inside.
Then Jacob looked at me pointedly and in his dry, impatient manner said,
Well, then what in the hell would you do different as a result, Bridge?
I didn't have an answer for that, and this issue was resolved. He's right. In the grand scheme that is my life it wouldn't change a thing now. Cole is ashes and dust and the 7200 days and nights I spent with him are a memory that is unique to me. No one shares them because the only other person who spent them is gone.
Sometimes Jacob knows exactly how to retrain my brain in the logic required to make a little progress. By the time he and I will have spent 7200 days and nights together we'll be in our mid-fifties and kids will be grown and hopefully have families of their own and we'll be on our own together.
I'm hoping that we'll downsize a lot, minimize most of our belongings and that he will take me to see the world he knows outside of here, the world he was exploring while I was spending the final 3500 days I had remaining with Cole.
I feel like I'm in an okay place. My sanity has covered the price for my heart and I still have a shred to hold on to. Bridget's a safe kind of crazy, content to take her pills as required, charm people to bits and chase a little drama here and there and I've found I talk to Cole just a little too much as if he's some sort of demon angel watching over me, warring for my heart against the guardian angel Jacob, but not in a negative way. As I talk to him now it's almost a quiet boastfulness, a gentle thumbing of my nose at him for the way it all turned out. Possibly the very same way God speaks to me, I bet. I wouldn't doubt it for a moment.
Shout your name into the wind
And sometimes I will think of you
Shout your name into the wind
And if you ever think of me
Kneel down and kiss the earth
And show me what this thought is worth
I'll never hear your voice again
So the forecast is clear, no tornadoes in my immediate future, just a hell of a lot of ground and time to make up, because life is now and I missed the first tornado forecast but now I've built the cellar and it's fully stocked for emergencies and we're down to just trying to stay calm in hopes that Bridget isn't simply winding herself up into a funnel once again.
It'll blow over. It always does.
Right before the sun comes out.
The request for weekly written barometers has become standing (weekly? Try daily). A lovely little way for everyone to see inside Bridget's head so she doesn't run off with any sharp implements and dangerous epiphanies. Or any really really sad songs and a bottle of...oh, geez, I'll stop right there.
I'm like my very own three-minute tornado warning. A first for humankind. I'll be the test subject, God knows they couldn't have picked a fiercer, tinier tornado. I'm almost handleable. The post-apocalyptic cyclone girl, now with qualified supervision!
Firstly, I'm proud to say the kids are all registered for the fall at school. Still in elementary school, but Henry will be trading in his half days for a full day and I really won't know what to do with myself. I've had two extra little shadows for the past seven and a half years and really I'm finding now I can crawl so far inside myself when I'm alone that it's hard to crawl out when the kids get home. I'm going to get a lot done, but the kids are thriving and happy and this is very good for them. They continue to adjust amazingly well and I wish I could take cues from them in how to feel, sometimes.
On singing. Yes, every time I walk past Jacob he pulls me into his lap and sings come waste your time with me, he's possibly more happy to be enjoying our full spectrum of music than I am, though I wind up getting nothing done at all when he does that, instead I get done.
Snort.
That is not a complaint, by the way.
He also confided to me during one of our silly 3 am conversations last night that he absolutely loves the way I call his name when he's out of the room.
Jaaaaaay cub!
Aw. I'm the only person who doesn't shorten his name very often when I say it out loud. Everyone calls him Jake. I tend not to shorten people's names. It's one of my more uptight quirks.
In other also unrelated things, I'm very relieved to be out of the beginning rock climbing torture class. I got a refund with a doctor's note, because heavily medicated people with stress issues shouldn't climb. Maybe next year. Jacob loves his extra-super adrenaline junkie ice climb class. They're going on a field trip in a week and he's like Henry was when they went to the train station. Excited! Five years old! Maybe I should pack him a lunch.
Also unrelated-I have a new cellphone. A Motorola one. It's going to take me forever to figure it out because I'm not great with new interfaces, but my Samsung was not repairable. Probably because in my fog of grief and shock I sat at the table one night and fed the pieces to a full vase of green water and dead roses that I forgot about after Valentine's week.
And lastly, Cole's letters. Did I appear to be stalling?
Heavens, yes.
The damn unread letters. Jacob played bad guy and asked me what I would do if I had been able to read them and if they had been awful, mean, hurtful words.
I said I would be sad but I would expect no less, really.
Then he asked me what I would do if they had contained apologies and reminders that some of our time together was good, that I mattered.
I said I would be vindicated and that I would know for sure that he didn't hate me and that he wasn't a monster, that he was still the Cole I fell in love with on the inside.
Then Jacob looked at me pointedly and in his dry, impatient manner said,
Well, then what in the hell would you do different as a result, Bridge?
I didn't have an answer for that, and this issue was resolved. He's right. In the grand scheme that is my life it wouldn't change a thing now. Cole is ashes and dust and the 7200 days and nights I spent with him are a memory that is unique to me. No one shares them because the only other person who spent them is gone.
Sometimes Jacob knows exactly how to retrain my brain in the logic required to make a little progress. By the time he and I will have spent 7200 days and nights together we'll be in our mid-fifties and kids will be grown and hopefully have families of their own and we'll be on our own together.
I'm hoping that we'll downsize a lot, minimize most of our belongings and that he will take me to see the world he knows outside of here, the world he was exploring while I was spending the final 3500 days I had remaining with Cole.
I feel like I'm in an okay place. My sanity has covered the price for my heart and I still have a shred to hold on to. Bridget's a safe kind of crazy, content to take her pills as required, charm people to bits and chase a little drama here and there and I've found I talk to Cole just a little too much as if he's some sort of demon angel watching over me, warring for my heart against the guardian angel Jacob, but not in a negative way. As I talk to him now it's almost a quiet boastfulness, a gentle thumbing of my nose at him for the way it all turned out. Possibly the very same way God speaks to me, I bet. I wouldn't doubt it for a moment.
Shout your name into the wind
And sometimes I will think of you
Shout your name into the wind
And if you ever think of me
Kneel down and kiss the earth
And show me what this thought is worth
I'll never hear your voice again
So the forecast is clear, no tornadoes in my immediate future, just a hell of a lot of ground and time to make up, because life is now and I missed the first tornado forecast but now I've built the cellar and it's fully stocked for emergencies and we're down to just trying to stay calm in hopes that Bridget isn't simply winding herself up into a funnel once again.
It'll blow over. It always does.
Right before the sun comes out.
Wednesday 7 March 2007
The contents of Bridget's little head.
Jacob's making me a Reuben sandwich for lunch. I love Reubens. And ice-cream floats because I was making jokes about living in a country made of ice cream last night. Bonus points if you know what movie that's from.
Do I have to fall asleep with roses in my, roses in my hands?
Would you get them if I did?
No, you won't
Cause you're gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part.
Today's musical accompaniment will be provided by John Mayer, who sang this to us from the stereo as we slow-danced our way to bedtime last night, and I noticed how black Jacob's knuckles are on his right hand as he held my fingertips to his lips and kissed them and he smiled at me. I was thrilled to notice that my heart flip-flops when he looks at me. Still. Forever.
This morning was a deviation from the norm by far. Claus had an emergency and so my session was cancelled for the week, he is secure in the knowledge that I have my own handy live-in counselor and so I thought I'd grab my run, since I usually have to skip Wednesdays now.
Jacob invited himself to go running with me, which is a rare event. He runs twice as far and twice as fast as I usually do. Oh, and he likes to run and talk. Am I the only person in the world who can't carry on a conversation while running? Please, I prefer to put all my capacity into breathing. The ragged raspy panting kind, which Jacob so lovingly pointed out that I sound like I do when we're making love, only without his favorite little noises and hums and lyrical quirks I express erstwhile.
Oh, now you like those? What happened to the mogwai references? I love it when the singer changes his tune.
Right. There's the difference between pain and pleasure, buddy. And I don't get any pleasure from running until I hit the rush somewhere between the last mailbox and the sidewalk that leads to our front steps.
Which are wet today. Melting ice.
Clearing roads. I spy pavement.
Clocks springing (wintering) forward in four days. Which means more sunlight. A weekend with almost double-digit temperatures forecast for five days straight ahead, a sun so bright I had black spots in front of my eyes for an hour when I came inside and so I couldn't write.
A curse from me, who wants to make this the final season in a year of discontent. We're very quickly approaching a year since Jacob picked up my snowglobe and shook it so incredibly violently that when the glitter settled everything was rearranged and looked brand new.
A year. Almost. Almost there guys.
Four seasons of bitterness piled on top of difficulties on top of baggage and yet, yes we're still going. Right down the road in front of you in our winter running gear yelling insults to each other like the most loving disfunctional human beans in the world. It's glorious, it is.
And it's going to be a better spring.
Oh yum. My sandwich is ready. See you tomorrow.
Do I have to fall asleep with roses in my, roses in my hands?
Would you get them if I did?
No, you won't
Cause you're gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part.
Today's musical accompaniment will be provided by John Mayer, who sang this to us from the stereo as we slow-danced our way to bedtime last night, and I noticed how black Jacob's knuckles are on his right hand as he held my fingertips to his lips and kissed them and he smiled at me. I was thrilled to notice that my heart flip-flops when he looks at me. Still. Forever.
This morning was a deviation from the norm by far. Claus had an emergency and so my session was cancelled for the week, he is secure in the knowledge that I have my own handy live-in counselor and so I thought I'd grab my run, since I usually have to skip Wednesdays now.
Jacob invited himself to go running with me, which is a rare event. He runs twice as far and twice as fast as I usually do. Oh, and he likes to run and talk. Am I the only person in the world who can't carry on a conversation while running? Please, I prefer to put all my capacity into breathing. The ragged raspy panting kind, which Jacob so lovingly pointed out that I sound like I do when we're making love, only without his favorite little noises and hums and lyrical quirks I express erstwhile.
Oh, now you like those? What happened to the mogwai references? I love it when the singer changes his tune.
Right. There's the difference between pain and pleasure, buddy. And I don't get any pleasure from running until I hit the rush somewhere between the last mailbox and the sidewalk that leads to our front steps.
Which are wet today. Melting ice.
Clearing roads. I spy pavement.
Clocks springing (wintering) forward in four days. Which means more sunlight. A weekend with almost double-digit temperatures forecast for five days straight ahead, a sun so bright I had black spots in front of my eyes for an hour when I came inside and so I couldn't write.
A curse from me, who wants to make this the final season in a year of discontent. We're very quickly approaching a year since Jacob picked up my snowglobe and shook it so incredibly violently that when the glitter settled everything was rearranged and looked brand new.
A year. Almost. Almost there guys.
Four seasons of bitterness piled on top of difficulties on top of baggage and yet, yes we're still going. Right down the road in front of you in our winter running gear yelling insults to each other like the most loving disfunctional human beans in the world. It's glorious, it is.
And it's going to be a better spring.
Oh yum. My sandwich is ready. See you tomorrow.
Tuesday 6 March 2007
Mail call.
I'm just...floored here.
The longer I post, the more familiar/comfortable I get with sharing things with you, the more I feel open to public judgement, ridicule, scorn.
And the more I am surprised by you.
What I thought would be the nail in my coffin here over the past few days, expecting a flood of hate email or inbox viruses or whatever it is people do when they don't like you on the internet, and instead I got something else entirely.
A lot of cheering, a lot of support, so many virtual hugs I feel sheepishly like a teddy bear in a nursery school.
I love you all.
People were happy we fought our way out of the place we wound up in, people were happy to see that we've made repairs (both to the poor doors in this house and to our relationship), that we're continuing on without letting stress break us down and you all seemed to be overwhelmingly thrilled that Jacob finally threw a punch (or two) at Caleb.
I knew you liked Jacob better than me, anyway.
And that's okay.
I do too.
The longer I post, the more familiar/comfortable I get with sharing things with you, the more I feel open to public judgement, ridicule, scorn.
And the more I am surprised by you.
What I thought would be the nail in my coffin here over the past few days, expecting a flood of hate email or inbox viruses or whatever it is people do when they don't like you on the internet, and instead I got something else entirely.
A lot of cheering, a lot of support, so many virtual hugs I feel sheepishly like a teddy bear in a nursery school.
I love you all.
People were happy we fought our way out of the place we wound up in, people were happy to see that we've made repairs (both to the poor doors in this house and to our relationship), that we're continuing on without letting stress break us down and you all seemed to be overwhelmingly thrilled that Jacob finally threw a punch (or two) at Caleb.
I knew you liked Jacob better than me, anyway.
And that's okay.
I do too.
Losing cool.
Well I'd rather start off slow
This whole thing's like
Some sort of race
Instead of winning what I want
I'm sitting here in second place
Because somewhere
The one I wanna be with's
with somebody else
Oh god, I wanna be that
Someone that you're with
We're a perfect match. I specialize in emotional damage and Jacob will now specialize in physical.
Would you mess with him?
Caleb didn't fly home, like he was supposed to. Like he should have. He really should have. Instead he was dumb enough to come here. To my house. Figuring that since I told Jacob what happened that Jacob would do what most guys would do, break something and walk out. Except that we did it in reverse, he broke something, walked out and then I went and fucked up royally.
So Jacob, who had been going over paperwork yesterday with his friend and fellow minister Sam, after they put a new door on the den, (say hi to Sam, guys, he'll be around a lot, he's taking over Jake's congregation and hey! Marriage counseling on the fly, boys) answered the door.
And pulled Caleb in by the collar and knocked him out with one punch.
Great.
Really fucking great.
Half of me was staring at the violence in my front hall and wondering how fast I could clean up the mess before the kids came home for lunch and the other half was cheering Jacob on.
Apparently Caleb is much more like Cole than I ever realized, since Cole was also dumb enough to repeatedly show up here despite a judge telling him he would go to jail if he did.
But Jacob wasn't done yet. He straddled Caleb, and pulled him up by his collar again and shook him awake. Caleb came around and Jacob told him if he came here again or touched me he'd snap Caleb in half. Jacob asked for a verbal affirmation so that he was sure Caleb understood his rules.
And then he hit him again.
They asked me to call his driver and I found the number in Caleb's blackberry and then the driver arrived in minutes and carried him out.
Jacob told the driver rather innocently that Caleb must have fallen.
Lucky for us Caleb's people are discreet. Caleb is no fucking saint, nothing will come from this except for hopefully Jacob's point getting across.
After the car pulled away, Jacob just looked down at me with that strange expression of half-wonderment and half-understanding, like the look you get when you ask a question you already have the answer to.
What in the hell do you do to people, Bridget?
This whole thing's like
Some sort of race
Instead of winning what I want
I'm sitting here in second place
Because somewhere
The one I wanna be with's
with somebody else
Oh god, I wanna be that
Someone that you're with
We're a perfect match. I specialize in emotional damage and Jacob will now specialize in physical.
Would you mess with him?
Caleb didn't fly home, like he was supposed to. Like he should have. He really should have. Instead he was dumb enough to come here. To my house. Figuring that since I told Jacob what happened that Jacob would do what most guys would do, break something and walk out. Except that we did it in reverse, he broke something, walked out and then I went and fucked up royally.
So Jacob, who had been going over paperwork yesterday with his friend and fellow minister Sam, after they put a new door on the den, (say hi to Sam, guys, he'll be around a lot, he's taking over Jake's congregation and hey! Marriage counseling on the fly, boys) answered the door.
And pulled Caleb in by the collar and knocked him out with one punch.
Great.
Really fucking great.
Half of me was staring at the violence in my front hall and wondering how fast I could clean up the mess before the kids came home for lunch and the other half was cheering Jacob on.
Apparently Caleb is much more like Cole than I ever realized, since Cole was also dumb enough to repeatedly show up here despite a judge telling him he would go to jail if he did.
But Jacob wasn't done yet. He straddled Caleb, and pulled him up by his collar again and shook him awake. Caleb came around and Jacob told him if he came here again or touched me he'd snap Caleb in half. Jacob asked for a verbal affirmation so that he was sure Caleb understood his rules.
And then he hit him again.
They asked me to call his driver and I found the number in Caleb's blackberry and then the driver arrived in minutes and carried him out.
Jacob told the driver rather innocently that Caleb must have fallen.
Lucky for us Caleb's people are discreet. Caleb is no fucking saint, nothing will come from this except for hopefully Jacob's point getting across.
After the car pulled away, Jacob just looked down at me with that strange expression of half-wonderment and half-understanding, like the look you get when you ask a question you already have the answer to.
What in the hell do you do to people, Bridget?
Monday 5 March 2007
Two syllables and one saint.
(Here, have at it, Sunday's entry, out of order, unedited, unfuckingbelievable. I am a lunatic.)
Snapping into fragments under stress has become a recipe for disaster, one we cook often, with miserable results that leaves everyone hungry and foraging for comfort. And hey! There are always seconds, and leftovers. Our appetites are insatiable..and yes, what the fuck am I spending time on this simile for?
Jacob's friend Sam has a fabulously stinging theory about how and why I came to be so fragile and self-destructive like this, after the fact. He also thinks I'm addicted to sex. He can be positively engaging when I'm speaking to him at all, which is something he would take as a come-on, so nevermind.
Bridget would never act out if she were in pain, would she? No more than people cut. Or take drugs or drink or..oh wait.
Go away.
Blowed right off, the steam it did.
And I'm not leaving the flannel today. No sir.
Neverafuckinggain, okay, Jakey? I'm sorry, baby. We fucked up so bad. I know I should listen to you but you scared me so I ran and hid. And if it hadn't been for that he would probably have left me this weekend. But he won't because he loves me and I made him prove it.
Sullen girl. He can't forgive himself for scaring me. It was bad. He blames me for so little and I doubt it's fair but we're still working it out. We hurt each other magnificently and neither of us know how it even started. Maybe it was building for a while, for our life together is a mess of unresolved issues and sure, we've found a comfort level but everything is still...there.
I left Saturday evening without touching the mess in the hallway-the explosion of broken glass and splintered wood from where he broke down the door with his bare hands, I'll let him fix it.
(Just a door, Bridget.)
I stood on the steps for mere seconds before that sleek evil-looking black car came gliding silently down the snowy road. The driver exited and came around, opening the rear door for me. Deja fucking vu for the fragile Miss Bridget, naturally.
When I entered the car, the devil kissed the palm of my hand (too intimately) and complimented me and it sounded so fucking fake I swore at him and told him I had had a long day and when he was finished threatening me with his lawyers and knocking me down with Cole's ghost (all around me) he could just leave me alone already. He pointed out my beautiful diamond necklace and my long eyelashes then remarked that I was very good at fooling men into falling in love with me because so many have.
I had a drink in the car. No, I had two. Which makes three if you count the one I finished before I left the house.
I wasn't drunk enough not to notice that Caleb hadn't brought the letter with him when he came to the house. I was drunk enough to be the bad Bridget.
He smelled like cigars and he was half-cocked himself on something flammable and on being very close to me again. It turns out he's been a proud member of the Saturday Night Cigar club here for a few months now, meeting the boys (my boys) once a month downtown to indulge in expensive stogies and even more expensive single malts at a men-only club. Jacob has attended a few times but has no interest in cigars and less in the alcohol habit and yet one of my favorite smells in the world is lingering cigar smoke, probably because it's one of the things that reminds me of Cole. Everything reminds me of Cole, especially Caleb, who also surprised me by showing up with the beginnings of a beard and dressed almost casually. Which just made him look a little more Cole-ish and put me a little further on edge for the night.
He said we would swing by the hotel to get the letter. So I was angry but I agreed, and when we arrived and went upstairs he even went so far as to pretend that I planned to stay in the hallway, knowing full well I wouldn't.
At this point I'm not sure if I did it 1) to prove to Caleb that I wasn't afraid, 2) to prove to Jacob that I could be trusted, or 3) to prove to all three of us that yes, I am really that foolish after all.
Let's go with number three. Bad things happen in threes.
I went inside his suite, and Caleb closed the door behind me.
Why did you come in, Bridget?
I want the letter.
I could have brought it back down to the car.
You could have mailed it, but you want to use it as an excuse to see me again, alone. I'm not dumb, Caleb.
Maybe you are, Bridget. You're alone with me and your giant husband, I'm willing to bet, is having apoplexy right now. Why did he let you come tonight?
This isn't about Jacob. Just give me the letter.
You left my brother to be with Jake. Why does this letter mean anything to you now?
It's addressed to me and so it was meant for me, so if you want to just hand it over, I can leave.
Maybe there's a price for it.
Tell me you really didn't just go there again, Caleb.
He didn't respond, instead he pressed me up against the door, pinning my hands down exactly as I like it and he leaned down to kiss my mouth and I bit him. I swore at him and then I held my breath because I wasn't sure I knew Caleb well enough to guess his moves. Unless he's more like Cole than I hoped.
You know you want to go there.
I'm not going anywhere with you. Don't you get it? I don't want you.
This isn't about wanting me, this is about experiences I can give you that you still clearly miss.
Too late.
He won't.
Oh, he does. (I was lying.)
You're lying to save your sweet little ass.
I don't have to. I've already been saved.
Then I saw the letter on the table and I went over and picked it up. Caleb followed me and trailed his hand down my neck and whispered to me, his breath so hot on my head as he captured my hands again. My sound was fading out, I was drowning all of the sudden.
He won't ever know, Bridget. No man can be one hundred percent of everything you need, you've proven that to yourself already.
He is.
Then why are you here?
I was underwater again as he pulled my hands behind my back. He kissed a line from my neck down between my shoulder blades and then turned me around and pinned my hands up over my head with one hand against the wall while the other found my throat. His lips crushed into my mouth and I could taste his drink, and more importantly his cigar.
(The fucking cigar. The whiskers, his hands, oh God so close Cole I'm so close to you right now.)
Cole used to love a cigar after dinner once or twice a month, it was familiar and I let go just enough to forget that Caleb wasn't Cole.
I returned his kiss with tears running down my face and he let go of my hands and put both hands on my neck and he wouldn't let me breathe anymore and then he let go and I had an outlet for my fucked up misery. I found myself trying to untie his tie while he kissed me and he ran his hands all over me, all over my dress looking for a way to get it off. He forced my hands down again and then let go again while he struggled with his shirt, still with the cigar-soaked kisses, desperate, fucked-up.
He was driving me crazy. Oh God justleavemyhandsandmyheadaloneplease.
You won't regret this, princess.
I surfaced. Like a fucking rocket. More sober than I have ever been.
Get OFF! Get off me! Oh, Jesus, Caleb, GET OFF!
He froze with me locked in his arms.
Oh, I get it, no one else can use your nickname.
Caleb, just let go of me!
I whacked him in the side of the head and he let go but he kept my wrist in his hand so I couldn't go anywhere. Just like old times.
Oh, not now. I've waited for this night for a long time, and you can't come in here and then stop short. It doesn't work that way.
I promised you nothing.
So we'll call it a favor. Your own dirty little secret.
I'm leaving, Caleb. So let go. Do you want me to scream?
Scream and I'll knock you out. And then you won't even get to enjoy your fetishes while I fuck you.
I thought you were civilized.
I thought you would be more fun, like you used to be.
I have made a terrible, horrible, awful mistake.
I have to go home, Caleb. I'm expected soon.
Then you'd better get started. He dropped my hand. You don't leave until I get what I want.
You can't be serious.
I told you I was.
Oh my God. Why are you doing this?
You picked the wrong guy to play games with.
I didn't come here for games, Caleb.
Of course you did. You knew we'd be alone. Why else did you kiss me?
I felt upset and reckless and I fucked up. I've been drinking-
Oh stop hiding behind your lost-little-girl charade and tell me what you're going to do now that Jacob isn't around to rescue you?
I want to go.
Then let me make love to you and you can go.
No, Caleb, don't do this. He'll kill you and I hurt him enough tonight by coming here.
I'll worry about Jacob. You worry about you, princess.
You're a monster, just like your brother was.
Oh, don't play coy now, little Bridget. Have some fun, kick back and enjoy it. You never know, you might want to come back for more next time I'm here.
I stood there shaking uncontrollably and wishing I hadn't ever tried to come alone to get the letter. He stood expectantly while I plotted an escape.
And so I used what I had. Our own history and the knowledge that they're a lot alike.
I took off my coat and let it fall to the floor. My dress followed and I stood there in my slip. Caleb whistled and stared and I closed my eyes. He stood up and took off his shirt and took me in his arms. I ached where his skin touched mine and I had to force myself not to recoil. He steered me over to the bed again and pushed me down on it, kissing me while he fumbled for his belt. I was shivering and sniveling and miserable and unresponsive and he looked at me with disgust and then he backhanded me across the face.
Oh God, it hurt like all hell and it didn't hurt at all compared the risk I had just taken with my marriage.
You've supposed to be enjoying this.
I shook my head and turned my head to the wall, lifeless, my cheek burning. He let go of me and he turned away for a minute. When he turned back he was agitated, yelling at me suddenly.
Don't you know what you do to me? How do you expect me to have any self control when you're tempting me all the time? I wanted to give you everything and you're ruining it! It's been five years, Bridge!
And then I saw what had upset him so much. His inability to get, or stay excited. Because Bridget the fantasy was dead. A doll. Inanimate. Who didn't speak or move.
He got up and dressed quickly. Buttoning his shirt with one hand he reached over with the other and hauled me right off the bed by my arm and pushed me toward the door. He tossed my dress and coat at me.
Get dressed, you little fucking whore, and get out of here.
I pulled my things on and he threw the letter at me and then he went into the bathroom and slammed the door.
And I ran without looking back. It worked. Same way it worked with Cole-in order to be left alone all I had to do was pretend I wasn't there.
They don't get what Jacob gets, they never did and they never will.
When I exited the front door of the hotel, Caleb's driver was there waiting to take me home and home I went. The house was quiet. I went in and Jacob met me inside the porch, his arms wide open for me. I told him he was right, I am dumb. He just shook his head, defeated. Worried. But no longer angry (at me). Ashamed, relieved, curious. Scared to death. Every emotion I could check off a list in his eyes. And this night was deja vu. He'd have an outlet for all of that unspent rage soon enough. When I told him what I almost did. But first the letter.
He had to finish cleaning up the mess from the door, too.
I flew upstairs with my coat still on and ran a hot bath. I was still shivering, I just wanted to get warm and get the smell of cigars off me.
I wanted to be with Cole in private.
I stepped into the tub and sat down and I opened up Cole's envelope and with shaking fingers I unfolded the page within and I couldn't hold on to it with the violent wracking sobs my body was sending out in relief from the fear of Caleb and I dropped the letter into the bathwater.
Dropped it.
Strike three. Or is that five? Eight?
(Bridget's lost count, the stupid whore.)
When I picked it up the words had bled across the page in a blur of ink like midnight infringing on a ray of sunlight and all I could make out was,
My Beautiful Bri
I know you don
ny things w
I broke. In the dark and the cold I broke all into tiny little fucking pieces.
When Jacob came up to the bathroom at last I was still there, sitting in a now-cold tub full of water, still holding the ruined letter and crying so hard I had begun to hyperventilate. He got me out, got me wrapped in my robe and then he went and found me a glass of brandy (fourJakeyIcan'thavefour) from somewhere and I told him what had happened. All of it. I didn't blame anyone but myself this time because I put myself there, with Caleb, on purpose.
Hysterical. Not in the funny way but in that frightening Ican'tbreatheJakehelpme way.
I was allowed to drink all of it. I did. Rather quickly and boom! So fucked up and so relieved that he wasn't screaming at me anymore because he was so relieved.
He put the letter up to dry in hopes that it might be legible in the morning. Hope against hope. And I fully expect him to fly out shortly and murder Caleb, who has already flown back to Toronto, coward that he is. He's not that stupid that he would stick around and wait for Jacob to kill him. Little does he know Loch will probably kill him when he arrives. And he won't ever come back. I told you Bridget had an army. Too bad half of them are traitors and the other half who are so loyal it burns me are too busy looking after me to actually fight this fight.
But can I blame them for me?
(It's all your fault, Bridget.)
Drunk. Clean.
Safe.
And at this point I'm thinking of writing my autobiography, or maybe I already am, but instead of calling it Saltwater Princess I'll call it, How To Do Everything Wrong and it can be the story of a girl writer who had demons longs before they morphed into flesh and blood and somehow that made her just crazy enough. Just enough for her very own take on madness/genius, Cole.
Are you listening anymore when I talk in my head? Huh, Baby? Can you still listen in on my thoughts?
Because wrong. All of it, it was just wrong.
The letter was still illegible when it dried. Jake sat on the bed while I sipped from his coffee cup this morning and tears poured down my face and then his too and I realized I wasn't even able to pretend I was fine anymore, after acting it out for so long, I suddenly forgot my lines. He can't fix me now, in spite of his relief that our marriage is intact, that Caleb didn't get what he wanted.
I didn't get what I came for, either.
Redemption, absolution, forgiveness and grace. Something, anything. Acknowledgment that I mattered to Cole in this lifetime. Tell me I fucking mattered to him. Someone, please.
The amazing thing here is that I could have lied. I could have not said anything to Jake, Caleb certainly wouldn't have, or I could have downplayed it, and hell, I would love to protect him from this kind of betrayal but I didn't, I was brave. I was strong. I took responsibility for fucking up on purpose and I risked it all for that closure because if you don't have truth then there's nothing. Trust doesn't come from gloss, it doesn't come from sparing pain and it doesn't come promises you break. Jacob taught me that much. And it seems sad that the person responsible for every happiness and ounce of spontaneous joy is the one you run from and then the one upon which you exact your misguided revenge.
When we fell asleep he shook so hard. He held me in his arms and I could feel them tremble as he fought within himself to find some self-control, to rake in the emotions that were bubbling up again, to put his impulses aside. Which is kind of hard when someone you know threatens, molests and then strikes your wife. Very hard. I don't think he's going to be able to pull it off. It's worse when your wife very openly wanted one last chance with someone who hurt her every single day even though he wasn't even in that room. He might as well have been.
It's hard to live with the fucked up princess and Jacob says that last night made him feel like he felt for the many years straight that he knew I was somewhere in a place I shouldn't be, being hurt and being threatened and half liking it too and he doesn't know what to do anymore but that he understands that he drove me out when he scared me so bad, I very briefly lost my knight and so I went looking for something, anything, that would bring a familiar feeling, even if it wasn't a good or healthy or a safe familiar.
He understands me when I don't understand me. I don't understand why I have so much anxiety, why I can act out sexually, why I can take risks and land on my feet without being in charge of fuck-all and then I can turn around and efficiently do my work and run this household just well enough to stay out of the radar of the men in the white coats.
It's one hell of a talent. I wonder how long it'll hold, guys.
And now you can hate me if you want but you can't judge me until you've been chased, screaming in fear around the furniture by someone as big as Jacob when he's angry at you when he's never acted like that before since you married him. I think we both cracked up and it was a long time coming for him. For me it's been a daily battle that I'll probably wage for the rest of my life. I never think I miss Cole as much as I do until I let myself wish he was still here. And maybe this is why Jacob was so upset, he feels as if he's always going to come in second. Even though he won so long ago I don't know why this even happened.
Last night I asked Jacob what he would have done had he caught me and he said he didn't know.
That's why I did it.
This morning I asked him again, and he said he would have held on very very tight.
Cue broken girl part two, the return. Oh, wait, no she was still here, in a newly made vision of a fresh hell.
I'm glad he figured it out. Now someone please help me tie him down so that he doesn't go after Caleb, because my flimsy argument that I caused this isn't holding up very well and I don't think Jacob is thinking through the possibilities quite thoroughly enough as he plots murder.
Like we haven't been here before.
Forgiven too easily by the one that I love.
(So he forgave me, but I'm guessing no one else will, and it's fine, because you don't know Bridget the way Jacob does.)
Snapping into fragments under stress has become a recipe for disaster, one we cook often, with miserable results that leaves everyone hungry and foraging for comfort. And hey! There are always seconds, and leftovers. Our appetites are insatiable..and yes, what the fuck am I spending time on this simile for?
Jacob's friend Sam has a fabulously stinging theory about how and why I came to be so fragile and self-destructive like this, after the fact. He also thinks I'm addicted to sex. He can be positively engaging when I'm speaking to him at all, which is something he would take as a come-on, so nevermind.
Bridget would never act out if she were in pain, would she? No more than people cut. Or take drugs or drink or..oh wait.
Go away.
Blowed right off, the steam it did.
And I'm not leaving the flannel today. No sir.
Neverafuckinggain, okay, Jakey? I'm sorry, baby. We fucked up so bad. I know I should listen to you but you scared me so I ran and hid. And if it hadn't been for that he would probably have left me this weekend. But he won't because he loves me and I made him prove it.
Sullen girl. He can't forgive himself for scaring me. It was bad. He blames me for so little and I doubt it's fair but we're still working it out. We hurt each other magnificently and neither of us know how it even started. Maybe it was building for a while, for our life together is a mess of unresolved issues and sure, we've found a comfort level but everything is still...there.
I left Saturday evening without touching the mess in the hallway-the explosion of broken glass and splintered wood from where he broke down the door with his bare hands, I'll let him fix it.
(Just a door, Bridget.)
I stood on the steps for mere seconds before that sleek evil-looking black car came gliding silently down the snowy road. The driver exited and came around, opening the rear door for me. Deja fucking vu for the fragile Miss Bridget, naturally.
When I entered the car, the devil kissed the palm of my hand (too intimately) and complimented me and it sounded so fucking fake I swore at him and told him I had had a long day and when he was finished threatening me with his lawyers and knocking me down with Cole's ghost (all around me) he could just leave me alone already. He pointed out my beautiful diamond necklace and my long eyelashes then remarked that I was very good at fooling men into falling in love with me because so many have.
I had a drink in the car. No, I had two. Which makes three if you count the one I finished before I left the house.
I wasn't drunk enough not to notice that Caleb hadn't brought the letter with him when he came to the house. I was drunk enough to be the bad Bridget.
He smelled like cigars and he was half-cocked himself on something flammable and on being very close to me again. It turns out he's been a proud member of the Saturday Night Cigar club here for a few months now, meeting the boys (my boys) once a month downtown to indulge in expensive stogies and even more expensive single malts at a men-only club. Jacob has attended a few times but has no interest in cigars and less in the alcohol habit and yet one of my favorite smells in the world is lingering cigar smoke, probably because it's one of the things that reminds me of Cole. Everything reminds me of Cole, especially Caleb, who also surprised me by showing up with the beginnings of a beard and dressed almost casually. Which just made him look a little more Cole-ish and put me a little further on edge for the night.
He said we would swing by the hotel to get the letter. So I was angry but I agreed, and when we arrived and went upstairs he even went so far as to pretend that I planned to stay in the hallway, knowing full well I wouldn't.
At this point I'm not sure if I did it 1) to prove to Caleb that I wasn't afraid, 2) to prove to Jacob that I could be trusted, or 3) to prove to all three of us that yes, I am really that foolish after all.
Let's go with number three. Bad things happen in threes.
I went inside his suite, and Caleb closed the door behind me.
Why did you come in, Bridget?
I want the letter.
I could have brought it back down to the car.
You could have mailed it, but you want to use it as an excuse to see me again, alone. I'm not dumb, Caleb.
Maybe you are, Bridget. You're alone with me and your giant husband, I'm willing to bet, is having apoplexy right now. Why did he let you come tonight?
This isn't about Jacob. Just give me the letter.
You left my brother to be with Jake. Why does this letter mean anything to you now?
It's addressed to me and so it was meant for me, so if you want to just hand it over, I can leave.
Maybe there's a price for it.
Tell me you really didn't just go there again, Caleb.
He didn't respond, instead he pressed me up against the door, pinning my hands down exactly as I like it and he leaned down to kiss my mouth and I bit him. I swore at him and then I held my breath because I wasn't sure I knew Caleb well enough to guess his moves. Unless he's more like Cole than I hoped.
You know you want to go there.
I'm not going anywhere with you. Don't you get it? I don't want you.
This isn't about wanting me, this is about experiences I can give you that you still clearly miss.
Too late.
He won't.
Oh, he does. (I was lying.)
You're lying to save your sweet little ass.
I don't have to. I've already been saved.
Then I saw the letter on the table and I went over and picked it up. Caleb followed me and trailed his hand down my neck and whispered to me, his breath so hot on my head as he captured my hands again. My sound was fading out, I was drowning all of the sudden.
He won't ever know, Bridget. No man can be one hundred percent of everything you need, you've proven that to yourself already.
He is.
Then why are you here?
I was underwater again as he pulled my hands behind my back. He kissed a line from my neck down between my shoulder blades and then turned me around and pinned my hands up over my head with one hand against the wall while the other found my throat. His lips crushed into my mouth and I could taste his drink, and more importantly his cigar.
(The fucking cigar. The whiskers, his hands, oh God so close Cole I'm so close to you right now.)
Cole used to love a cigar after dinner once or twice a month, it was familiar and I let go just enough to forget that Caleb wasn't Cole.
I returned his kiss with tears running down my face and he let go of my hands and put both hands on my neck and he wouldn't let me breathe anymore and then he let go and I had an outlet for my fucked up misery. I found myself trying to untie his tie while he kissed me and he ran his hands all over me, all over my dress looking for a way to get it off. He forced my hands down again and then let go again while he struggled with his shirt, still with the cigar-soaked kisses, desperate, fucked-up.
He was driving me crazy. Oh God justleavemyhandsandmyheadaloneplease.
You won't regret this, princess.
I surfaced. Like a fucking rocket. More sober than I have ever been.
Get OFF! Get off me! Oh, Jesus, Caleb, GET OFF!
He froze with me locked in his arms.
Oh, I get it, no one else can use your nickname.
Caleb, just let go of me!
I whacked him in the side of the head and he let go but he kept my wrist in his hand so I couldn't go anywhere. Just like old times.
Oh, not now. I've waited for this night for a long time, and you can't come in here and then stop short. It doesn't work that way.
I promised you nothing.
So we'll call it a favor. Your own dirty little secret.
I'm leaving, Caleb. So let go. Do you want me to scream?
Scream and I'll knock you out. And then you won't even get to enjoy your fetishes while I fuck you.
I thought you were civilized.
I thought you would be more fun, like you used to be.
I have made a terrible, horrible, awful mistake.
I have to go home, Caleb. I'm expected soon.
Then you'd better get started. He dropped my hand. You don't leave until I get what I want.
You can't be serious.
I told you I was.
Oh my God. Why are you doing this?
You picked the wrong guy to play games with.
I didn't come here for games, Caleb.
Of course you did. You knew we'd be alone. Why else did you kiss me?
I felt upset and reckless and I fucked up. I've been drinking-
Oh stop hiding behind your lost-little-girl charade and tell me what you're going to do now that Jacob isn't around to rescue you?
I want to go.
Then let me make love to you and you can go.
No, Caleb, don't do this. He'll kill you and I hurt him enough tonight by coming here.
I'll worry about Jacob. You worry about you, princess.
You're a monster, just like your brother was.
Oh, don't play coy now, little Bridget. Have some fun, kick back and enjoy it. You never know, you might want to come back for more next time I'm here.
I stood there shaking uncontrollably and wishing I hadn't ever tried to come alone to get the letter. He stood expectantly while I plotted an escape.
And so I used what I had. Our own history and the knowledge that they're a lot alike.
I took off my coat and let it fall to the floor. My dress followed and I stood there in my slip. Caleb whistled and stared and I closed my eyes. He stood up and took off his shirt and took me in his arms. I ached where his skin touched mine and I had to force myself not to recoil. He steered me over to the bed again and pushed me down on it, kissing me while he fumbled for his belt. I was shivering and sniveling and miserable and unresponsive and he looked at me with disgust and then he backhanded me across the face.
Oh God, it hurt like all hell and it didn't hurt at all compared the risk I had just taken with my marriage.
You've supposed to be enjoying this.
I shook my head and turned my head to the wall, lifeless, my cheek burning. He let go of me and he turned away for a minute. When he turned back he was agitated, yelling at me suddenly.
Don't you know what you do to me? How do you expect me to have any self control when you're tempting me all the time? I wanted to give you everything and you're ruining it! It's been five years, Bridge!
And then I saw what had upset him so much. His inability to get, or stay excited. Because Bridget the fantasy was dead. A doll. Inanimate. Who didn't speak or move.
He got up and dressed quickly. Buttoning his shirt with one hand he reached over with the other and hauled me right off the bed by my arm and pushed me toward the door. He tossed my dress and coat at me.
Get dressed, you little fucking whore, and get out of here.
I pulled my things on and he threw the letter at me and then he went into the bathroom and slammed the door.
And I ran without looking back. It worked. Same way it worked with Cole-in order to be left alone all I had to do was pretend I wasn't there.
They don't get what Jacob gets, they never did and they never will.
When I exited the front door of the hotel, Caleb's driver was there waiting to take me home and home I went. The house was quiet. I went in and Jacob met me inside the porch, his arms wide open for me. I told him he was right, I am dumb. He just shook his head, defeated. Worried. But no longer angry (at me). Ashamed, relieved, curious. Scared to death. Every emotion I could check off a list in his eyes. And this night was deja vu. He'd have an outlet for all of that unspent rage soon enough. When I told him what I almost did. But first the letter.
He had to finish cleaning up the mess from the door, too.
I flew upstairs with my coat still on and ran a hot bath. I was still shivering, I just wanted to get warm and get the smell of cigars off me.
I wanted to be with Cole in private.
I stepped into the tub and sat down and I opened up Cole's envelope and with shaking fingers I unfolded the page within and I couldn't hold on to it with the violent wracking sobs my body was sending out in relief from the fear of Caleb and I dropped the letter into the bathwater.
Dropped it.
Strike three. Or is that five? Eight?
(Bridget's lost count, the stupid whore.)
When I picked it up the words had bled across the page in a blur of ink like midnight infringing on a ray of sunlight and all I could make out was,
My Beautiful Bri
I know you don
ny things w
I broke. In the dark and the cold I broke all into tiny little fucking pieces.
When Jacob came up to the bathroom at last I was still there, sitting in a now-cold tub full of water, still holding the ruined letter and crying so hard I had begun to hyperventilate. He got me out, got me wrapped in my robe and then he went and found me a glass of brandy (fourJakeyIcan'thavefour) from somewhere and I told him what had happened. All of it. I didn't blame anyone but myself this time because I put myself there, with Caleb, on purpose.
Hysterical. Not in the funny way but in that frightening Ican'tbreatheJakehelpme way.
I was allowed to drink all of it. I did. Rather quickly and boom! So fucked up and so relieved that he wasn't screaming at me anymore because he was so relieved.
He put the letter up to dry in hopes that it might be legible in the morning. Hope against hope. And I fully expect him to fly out shortly and murder Caleb, who has already flown back to Toronto, coward that he is. He's not that stupid that he would stick around and wait for Jacob to kill him. Little does he know Loch will probably kill him when he arrives. And he won't ever come back. I told you Bridget had an army. Too bad half of them are traitors and the other half who are so loyal it burns me are too busy looking after me to actually fight this fight.
But can I blame them for me?
(It's all your fault, Bridget.)
Drunk. Clean.
Safe.
And at this point I'm thinking of writing my autobiography, or maybe I already am, but instead of calling it Saltwater Princess I'll call it, How To Do Everything Wrong and it can be the story of a girl writer who had demons longs before they morphed into flesh and blood and somehow that made her just crazy enough. Just enough for her very own take on madness/genius, Cole.
Are you listening anymore when I talk in my head? Huh, Baby? Can you still listen in on my thoughts?
Because wrong. All of it, it was just wrong.
The letter was still illegible when it dried. Jake sat on the bed while I sipped from his coffee cup this morning and tears poured down my face and then his too and I realized I wasn't even able to pretend I was fine anymore, after acting it out for so long, I suddenly forgot my lines. He can't fix me now, in spite of his relief that our marriage is intact, that Caleb didn't get what he wanted.
I didn't get what I came for, either.
Redemption, absolution, forgiveness and grace. Something, anything. Acknowledgment that I mattered to Cole in this lifetime. Tell me I fucking mattered to him. Someone, please.
The amazing thing here is that I could have lied. I could have not said anything to Jake, Caleb certainly wouldn't have, or I could have downplayed it, and hell, I would love to protect him from this kind of betrayal but I didn't, I was brave. I was strong. I took responsibility for fucking up on purpose and I risked it all for that closure because if you don't have truth then there's nothing. Trust doesn't come from gloss, it doesn't come from sparing pain and it doesn't come promises you break. Jacob taught me that much. And it seems sad that the person responsible for every happiness and ounce of spontaneous joy is the one you run from and then the one upon which you exact your misguided revenge.
When we fell asleep he shook so hard. He held me in his arms and I could feel them tremble as he fought within himself to find some self-control, to rake in the emotions that were bubbling up again, to put his impulses aside. Which is kind of hard when someone you know threatens, molests and then strikes your wife. Very hard. I don't think he's going to be able to pull it off. It's worse when your wife very openly wanted one last chance with someone who hurt her every single day even though he wasn't even in that room. He might as well have been.
It's hard to live with the fucked up princess and Jacob says that last night made him feel like he felt for the many years straight that he knew I was somewhere in a place I shouldn't be, being hurt and being threatened and half liking it too and he doesn't know what to do anymore but that he understands that he drove me out when he scared me so bad, I very briefly lost my knight and so I went looking for something, anything, that would bring a familiar feeling, even if it wasn't a good or healthy or a safe familiar.
He understands me when I don't understand me. I don't understand why I have so much anxiety, why I can act out sexually, why I can take risks and land on my feet without being in charge of fuck-all and then I can turn around and efficiently do my work and run this household just well enough to stay out of the radar of the men in the white coats.
It's one hell of a talent. I wonder how long it'll hold, guys.
And now you can hate me if you want but you can't judge me until you've been chased, screaming in fear around the furniture by someone as big as Jacob when he's angry at you when he's never acted like that before since you married him. I think we both cracked up and it was a long time coming for him. For me it's been a daily battle that I'll probably wage for the rest of my life. I never think I miss Cole as much as I do until I let myself wish he was still here. And maybe this is why Jacob was so upset, he feels as if he's always going to come in second. Even though he won so long ago I don't know why this even happened.
Last night I asked Jacob what he would have done had he caught me and he said he didn't know.
That's why I did it.
This morning I asked him again, and he said he would have held on very very tight.
Cue broken girl part two, the return. Oh, wait, no she was still here, in a newly made vision of a fresh hell.
I'm glad he figured it out. Now someone please help me tie him down so that he doesn't go after Caleb, because my flimsy argument that I caused this isn't holding up very well and I don't think Jacob is thinking through the possibilities quite thoroughly enough as he plots murder.
Like we haven't been here before.
Forgiven too easily by the one that I love.
(So he forgave me, but I'm guessing no one else will, and it's fine, because you don't know Bridget the way Jacob does.)
Boo.
I'm here and I don't feel like writing. Watch as this becomes a page and a half.
A lot of people were scared for me, needlessly. Never once did I say Jacob didn't have a temper and a bit of a streak of passionate...er..opinion on things. He does, but very rarely do I ever see it. He prefers to indulge in very quiet, smoldering anger with me that involves less talking and a lot of glaring. Or a lot of he-knows-better talking.
And then once every couple of years we have a knock-down dragged-out chase-Bridget-around-a-table-while-she-screams-and-he-hollers type of argument in which yes, we get remarkably out of control. Over nothing we can later identify intelligently. Sometimes we just do and then we're fine for a few more years. He would never ever hurt me. We both know that and at no time was I in any danger.
What made this argument so bad is that the space we would seek or pretend to seek from each other afterward has vanished, he knew I was on...argh..shaky psychological ground, and well, Caleb's presence.
Lord. Maybe the dumbest thing ever. And I wrote about it on Sunday at 6 am when I was still drunk and really freaked out still and you should read it.
In fact, I think I'll post it, maybe in a bit or tomorrow after I get some work done. I haven't done any since I proudly brought something to Jacob and he chucked it at me. It's a fascinating entry in that I sound like a positive fucking lunatic in it. You'll love it. You can laugh at me as I continue to make life-altering and infinitely poor choices.
And why in the hell am I trying to justify this to you? Fuck it, I'm not.
Stop tell me where you going
Maybe the one you love isn't there
You're going under
But you're over it all so you don't care about all that I had to see
Watch you wait until you come around
A lot of people were scared for me, needlessly. Never once did I say Jacob didn't have a temper and a bit of a streak of passionate...er..opinion on things. He does, but very rarely do I ever see it. He prefers to indulge in very quiet, smoldering anger with me that involves less talking and a lot of glaring. Or a lot of he-knows-better talking.
And then once every couple of years we have a knock-down dragged-out chase-Bridget-around-a-table-while-she-screams-and-he-hollers type of argument in which yes, we get remarkably out of control. Over nothing we can later identify intelligently. Sometimes we just do and then we're fine for a few more years. He would never ever hurt me. We both know that and at no time was I in any danger.
What made this argument so bad is that the space we would seek or pretend to seek from each other afterward has vanished, he knew I was on...argh..shaky psychological ground, and well, Caleb's presence.
Lord. Maybe the dumbest thing ever. And I wrote about it on Sunday at 6 am when I was still drunk and really freaked out still and you should read it.
In fact, I think I'll post it, maybe in a bit or tomorrow after I get some work done. I haven't done any since I proudly brought something to Jacob and he chucked it at me. It's a fascinating entry in that I sound like a positive fucking lunatic in it. You'll love it. You can laugh at me as I continue to make life-altering and infinitely poor choices.
And why in the hell am I trying to justify this to you? Fuck it, I'm not.
Stop tell me where you going
Maybe the one you love isn't there
You're going under
But you're over it all so you don't care about all that I had to see
Watch you wait until you come around
Sunday 4 March 2007
Proof.
So...hey.
We're still here. That would be we, plural. No one's jumping the ship even thought the past two days there was a spectacular attempt launched in order to see who could hurt each other most. Who could dent the most fundamental of promises, and leave the other in more agony.
We've called a draw, both of us stopping short of the point of no return. We're okay. Stop worrying. The handsome albeit self-serving protector/rescuer reverend and his completely unstable adorable nymphomaniacal tortured writer-girl wife have called a fucking draw, a mutual surprise at a collective unwillingness to make it to the point where you can no longer take it back.
A bigger sigh of relief that there are still things worth fighting for in this world, namely each other. Testing a theory that held. Thank fucking God. It held.
We haven't laughed, yet, but we're doing a hell of a lot better than we were yesterday. And tomorrow I'll share it because I'm headed back to my wall of flannel now.
We're still here. That would be we, plural. No one's jumping the ship even thought the past two days there was a spectacular attempt launched in order to see who could hurt each other most. Who could dent the most fundamental of promises, and leave the other in more agony.
We've called a draw, both of us stopping short of the point of no return. We're okay. Stop worrying. The handsome albeit self-serving protector/rescuer reverend and his completely unstable adorable nymphomaniacal tortured writer-girl wife have called a fucking draw, a mutual surprise at a collective unwillingness to make it to the point where you can no longer take it back.
A bigger sigh of relief that there are still things worth fighting for in this world, namely each other. Testing a theory that held. Thank fucking God. It held.
We haven't laughed, yet, but we're doing a hell of a lot better than we were yesterday. And tomorrow I'll share it because I'm headed back to my wall of flannel now.
Saturday 3 March 2007
Reckless Enbridgetment.
Hi, stupid little me here.
Still so angry.
I'm not alone though. I thought I'd share the wealth and so I made sure that my fear and feelings of betrayal were contagious.
I made a date for tonight. Because I'm impulsive and petulant and dumb and about fifty other names that I have been called since yesterday afternoon.
A date with Caleb.
Who'll be here in half an hour. He was calling yesterday because he's only here two nights and he has a letter for me. I shipped him a few more books from cleaning out Cole's work stuff and apparently Cole wrote another letter and had been using it as a bookmark in something he was reading.
A letter that has July 1st written on the envelope, says Caleb. Which means Cole would have written it less than two weeks before his death.
I could care less about Caleb. I want that letter so badly I'm in tears just thinking about it. It's a second chance at the closure I never got. I sit here and say that I have closure, that it's done, and really it never goes anywhere past remembering that my fights with Cole are one-sided and rather skewed these days, but they still go on.
Oh and don't worry, Jacob deserves it. He came back and broke the rest of my beautiful french door into matchsticks and he came charging into the room in a rage at how I was wallowing and I needed to snap out of it and I actually jumped over the loveseat and I ran out the back door into the snow without shoes on. He stopped moving and told me to come inside and I screamed at him to get away from me. He triggered some sort of hysteria.
I don't even know. I can't think.
He didn't stay here last night but I imagine he slept in the garage or in the truck so that he wouldn't be far, unless he walked down to his old office. I gave him back his phone so I could reach him but I never called him, he called me this morning and we fought just a little more and I told him to go fuck himself and that I had a sitter and a date and that if he thought I was going to behave exactly as he wanted me to for the rest of his life well, oh, boy, someone is terribly, horribly, awfully mistaken.
See, Bridget isn't well.
No, she really isn't and I'm so very fucking sorry. I need help, not more control. Please, God, Jake isn't listening to me.
And I'm not even half drunk yet, since I've still got half a drink here to finish before Caleb arrives. Because as mad as I am, I've always been more afraid of Caleb than I ever will be of Jake.
And I wish he would go with me tonight. I'm really fucking scared and not nearly as brave as my anger would lie and tell you I was.
Still so angry.
I'm not alone though. I thought I'd share the wealth and so I made sure that my fear and feelings of betrayal were contagious.
I made a date for tonight. Because I'm impulsive and petulant and dumb and about fifty other names that I have been called since yesterday afternoon.
A date with Caleb.
Who'll be here in half an hour. He was calling yesterday because he's only here two nights and he has a letter for me. I shipped him a few more books from cleaning out Cole's work stuff and apparently Cole wrote another letter and had been using it as a bookmark in something he was reading.
A letter that has July 1st written on the envelope, says Caleb. Which means Cole would have written it less than two weeks before his death.
I could care less about Caleb. I want that letter so badly I'm in tears just thinking about it. It's a second chance at the closure I never got. I sit here and say that I have closure, that it's done, and really it never goes anywhere past remembering that my fights with Cole are one-sided and rather skewed these days, but they still go on.
Oh and don't worry, Jacob deserves it. He came back and broke the rest of my beautiful french door into matchsticks and he came charging into the room in a rage at how I was wallowing and I needed to snap out of it and I actually jumped over the loveseat and I ran out the back door into the snow without shoes on. He stopped moving and told me to come inside and I screamed at him to get away from me. He triggered some sort of hysteria.
I don't even know. I can't think.
He didn't stay here last night but I imagine he slept in the garage or in the truck so that he wouldn't be far, unless he walked down to his old office. I gave him back his phone so I could reach him but I never called him, he called me this morning and we fought just a little more and I told him to go fuck himself and that I had a sitter and a date and that if he thought I was going to behave exactly as he wanted me to for the rest of his life well, oh, boy, someone is terribly, horribly, awfully mistaken.
See, Bridget isn't well.
No, she really isn't and I'm so very fucking sorry. I need help, not more control. Please, God, Jake isn't listening to me.
And I'm not even half drunk yet, since I've still got half a drink here to finish before Caleb arrives. Because as mad as I am, I've always been more afraid of Caleb than I ever will be of Jake.
And I wish he would go with me tonight. I'm really fucking scared and not nearly as brave as my anger would lie and tell you I was.
Friday 2 March 2007
In threes, Princess. In threes.
Blink and you would have missed it. I wrote a brief rant about public school and then opted to call the school and work it out, thus removing the need for the post in the first place. My apologies.
I have to write about other things anyway.
You're coming back down
You say you feel lost can I help you find it
When you come around
From time to time we all are blinded
You're coming back down
You don't have to tell me what you're feeling
I know what you're going through
I won't be the one that lets go of you
I think it's time to just move on
When you come back down
If you land on your feet
I hope you find a way to make it back to me
When you come around
I'll be there for you
Don't have to be alone with what you're going through
I don't like to talk so much about work, I try to just tick through my list and do it and it isn't a very hard job, really because I can wax and ramble and rock and roll on and on and only have to go back and flick out the nonsense later and it all falls into place after a few tweaks and a little polish.
A short while ago I actually had to duck as a roughly bound copy of something new I have been working on was thrown at me. Though of course now the story has changed and it was thrown at the wall and his strength was as usual misjudged (because he has no idea how strong he really is) and yet anger and frustration and sadness overtook him and he didn't bother trying to maintain his self-control just like he doesn't maintain it in other areas anymore, as a perk of comfort in one's own environment.
Was thrown.
Paper cutting through the air and the binding exploding which meant my eighty pages or so are now out of order and all over this room. Everywhere.
A work that has nothing to do with him but he saw too much of me in my central character and he didn't appreciate the context and I have never apologized for anything I've written professionally and I don't plan to start because I don't use our lives as fodder in my work. No matter how hard it is to explain how parts of you wind up diluted in your stories, others will simply see through your intentions and put you there, willing or not. And with the kinds of things I usually write, it's not a place he wanted to visualize me any more than he has in awful situations as it is.
Which makes the whole chucking a book at your harmless and nonthreatening spouse a most harmful and completely threatening gesture. This is the physical equivalent of me throwing a book at Ruth. Which I would never do.
I may have been too surprised to react properly.I withered a gaze at him and burst into tears and walked the fuck out on him. I went to the den and locked the door because as much as he likes to remove doors from their frames, this door is very large, very solid and very pretty and I knew he wouldn't want to break it.
He knocked on it for almost half an hour while I tried to gather up and sort through my papers with my shaking hands and I was doing great at ignoring his pleas until I looked to the table by the window and saw my once-intact cellphone lying there in about 4 pieces.
What happened to my phone, Jacob?
Caleb has been calling you.
What happened to my phone, Jacob?
He left eight text messages and around 6 voice mails.
Jacob, just answer my question, please.
Why is he calling you, Bridget? Why now?
Jake! You're scaring me!
I threw it.
What are you, the hulk now? Am I going to come out there and see you in ripped-up purple pants with green skin? What in the fuck is wrong with you?
I'm sorry, Bridge, just open the door.
Fine.
I crossed the room and opened the door and stood there.
I need your phone then, Jake.
Here.
He passed it to me and I stepped back and shut the door on him again.
And I unfairly leveraged my entire history against and I told him he was acting like Cole.
He hit the door once so hard and I knew it broke but he was smart enough to walk away. That or he figured out he was being scary and he stopped. Maybe he scared himself because scaring me wasn't enough to stop him?
And I'm still in here, aren't I?
And it's great that this room has it's own entrance from the outside and all because Jacob used to do his counseling from here and so I could run from this bullshit but frankly, my coat and car keys are somewhere else and I really don't feel like I should be afraid enough to want to leave my own house.
However, I am.
Wow.
I have to write about other things anyway.
You're coming back down
You say you feel lost can I help you find it
When you come around
From time to time we all are blinded
You're coming back down
You don't have to tell me what you're feeling
I know what you're going through
I won't be the one that lets go of you
I think it's time to just move on
When you come back down
If you land on your feet
I hope you find a way to make it back to me
When you come around
I'll be there for you
Don't have to be alone with what you're going through
I don't like to talk so much about work, I try to just tick through my list and do it and it isn't a very hard job, really because I can wax and ramble and rock and roll on and on and only have to go back and flick out the nonsense later and it all falls into place after a few tweaks and a little polish.
A short while ago I actually had to duck as a roughly bound copy of something new I have been working on was thrown at me. Though of course now the story has changed and it was thrown at the wall and his strength was as usual misjudged (because he has no idea how strong he really is) and yet anger and frustration and sadness overtook him and he didn't bother trying to maintain his self-control just like he doesn't maintain it in other areas anymore, as a perk of comfort in one's own environment.
Was thrown.
Paper cutting through the air and the binding exploding which meant my eighty pages or so are now out of order and all over this room. Everywhere.
A work that has nothing to do with him but he saw too much of me in my central character and he didn't appreciate the context and I have never apologized for anything I've written professionally and I don't plan to start because I don't use our lives as fodder in my work. No matter how hard it is to explain how parts of you wind up diluted in your stories, others will simply see through your intentions and put you there, willing or not. And with the kinds of things I usually write, it's not a place he wanted to visualize me any more than he has in awful situations as it is.
Which makes the whole chucking a book at your harmless and nonthreatening spouse a most harmful and completely threatening gesture. This is the physical equivalent of me throwing a book at Ruth. Which I would never do.
I may have been too surprised to react properly.I withered a gaze at him and burst into tears and walked the fuck out on him. I went to the den and locked the door because as much as he likes to remove doors from their frames, this door is very large, very solid and very pretty and I knew he wouldn't want to break it.
He knocked on it for almost half an hour while I tried to gather up and sort through my papers with my shaking hands and I was doing great at ignoring his pleas until I looked to the table by the window and saw my once-intact cellphone lying there in about 4 pieces.
What happened to my phone, Jacob?
Caleb has been calling you.
What happened to my phone, Jacob?
He left eight text messages and around 6 voice mails.
Jacob, just answer my question, please.
Why is he calling you, Bridget? Why now?
Jake! You're scaring me!
I threw it.
What are you, the hulk now? Am I going to come out there and see you in ripped-up purple pants with green skin? What in the fuck is wrong with you?
I'm sorry, Bridge, just open the door.
Fine.
I crossed the room and opened the door and stood there.
I need your phone then, Jake.
Here.
He passed it to me and I stepped back and shut the door on him again.
And I unfairly leveraged my entire history against and I told him he was acting like Cole.
He hit the door once so hard and I knew it broke but he was smart enough to walk away. That or he figured out he was being scary and he stopped. Maybe he scared himself because scaring me wasn't enough to stop him?
And I'm still in here, aren't I?
And it's great that this room has it's own entrance from the outside and all because Jacob used to do his counseling from here and so I could run from this bullshit but frankly, my coat and car keys are somewhere else and I really don't feel like I should be afraid enough to want to leave my own house.
However, I am.
Wow.
The Gingerbread Man.
Yesterday afternoon I heard my name being called from outside Ruth's window and so I went over and stuck my head out, expecting to see Jacob on the roof of the porch. He wanted to poke around up there, a few of our neighbors are having issues with the snow melting and coming inside their homes and let's face it, any excuse to be up high somewhere death-defying and Jacob will be first in line.
He didn't seem to still be up there. I pulled back in and heard my name again. Out I peeked once more.
Look up, princess.
I craned my head around and was met with Jacob's face grinning at me over the edge of the roof. On top of the house. Our 3 story Victorian house that towers over the neighborhood like the Gothic mansion that it is. He was framed in gingerbread.
Are you tethered, Jacob?
Of course not. Now go down to the street so you can see.
I ran downstairs. Fuck! My heart was in my mouth. I was scared. It's winter. It's icy. Dangerous. He's insane. I'm going to watch him fall. He's going to die in front of me and I'll be two for two. Lord help us all.
I ran right out into the street and turned and he was standing there on the peak waving to me. His splayed-finger friendly How you doing? wave.
Jacob! Come down from there, you fool!
In a moment, princess. I just have to do one thing.
What is it? We don't have any water coming in.
Not worried about leaks.
What, then?
I LOVE YOU BRIDGET!
He yelled it so loud it reverberated off every building on our block and echoed in my ears, a sweet experience that I rode like a rollercoaster as his voice faded away.
Then he started to make his way back down, his mission accomplished. Me, I was still standing in the road with tears running down my face remembering something he said to me a few years ago on a night after Cole had snubbed spending time with me in favor of a better offer of a night out without me. Jake had said,
If you were mine, I would shout my love for you from the rooftops.
Jacob is leafing through our history with his phonographic memory and fixing it, fulfilling each wish and moment, the promises and-
No idea what I was about to think next, for my neighbor's car horn jolted me back into the present and I realized I was still standing in the middle of the street. And then Jacob was there, safely back on earth and he grabbed my hand and pulled me back onto the sidewalk into his arms. He was grinning, still in that completely foolish way, nodding while he used the end of his scarf to dry my face.
You remember.
I do.
So?
I love you, Jacob.
And I love you, Bridge. And I want everyone to hear it when I say it.
and then from next door,
Don't worry, Jake! We heard you! Congratulations!
And a new talent was born, tandem blushing. So now we can both run away together and join the freak circus I left so long ago. Come one, come all, see the blushing blondes!
And Jacob is no longer allowed on the roof.
He didn't seem to still be up there. I pulled back in and heard my name again. Out I peeked once more.
Look up, princess.
I craned my head around and was met with Jacob's face grinning at me over the edge of the roof. On top of the house. Our 3 story Victorian house that towers over the neighborhood like the Gothic mansion that it is. He was framed in gingerbread.
Are you tethered, Jacob?
Of course not. Now go down to the street so you can see.
I ran downstairs. Fuck! My heart was in my mouth. I was scared. It's winter. It's icy. Dangerous. He's insane. I'm going to watch him fall. He's going to die in front of me and I'll be two for two. Lord help us all.
I ran right out into the street and turned and he was standing there on the peak waving to me. His splayed-finger friendly How you doing? wave.
Jacob! Come down from there, you fool!
In a moment, princess. I just have to do one thing.
What is it? We don't have any water coming in.
Not worried about leaks.
What, then?
I LOVE YOU BRIDGET!
He yelled it so loud it reverberated off every building on our block and echoed in my ears, a sweet experience that I rode like a rollercoaster as his voice faded away.
Then he started to make his way back down, his mission accomplished. Me, I was still standing in the road with tears running down my face remembering something he said to me a few years ago on a night after Cole had snubbed spending time with me in favor of a better offer of a night out without me. Jake had said,
If you were mine, I would shout my love for you from the rooftops.
Jacob is leafing through our history with his phonographic memory and fixing it, fulfilling each wish and moment, the promises and-
No idea what I was about to think next, for my neighbor's car horn jolted me back into the present and I realized I was still standing in the middle of the street. And then Jacob was there, safely back on earth and he grabbed my hand and pulled me back onto the sidewalk into his arms. He was grinning, still in that completely foolish way, nodding while he used the end of his scarf to dry my face.
You remember.
I do.
So?
I love you, Jacob.
And I love you, Bridge. And I want everyone to hear it when I say it.
and then from next door,
Don't worry, Jake! We heard you! Congratulations!
And a new talent was born, tandem blushing. So now we can both run away together and join the freak circus I left so long ago. Come one, come all, see the blushing blondes!
And Jacob is no longer allowed on the roof.
Thursday 1 March 2007
Inspired by God (and the relentless communicator).
Oh shit, she's rambling again.
In all seriousness, I try not to phone it in. So now that things are re-buttoned and turned back rightside-out here and I can try and fix my hair that Jacob managed to pull out, let's continue. Because I have work to do and he's already left because absolutely no one expected him to stop working and of course he hasn't, really. Today he's going to help clean two shelters and then he has fundraising meetings this afternoon. Bless his heart, I encouraged him to keep doing the things he loves to do because he wouldn't be Jacob if he didn't.
Now...have you noticed anything? Different? Like things are better lately? More better than not? Different things that we have changed and done and hardcore therapy attendance, perfect medicating and a whole lot of love and things appear to be looking up.
Up, guys. Up. Like a hot air balloon in Bridget's beautiful blue skies.
Things like not babying me, he's treating me with all the confidence in the world, a hopeful optimism and respect that I've been drawing strength from, instead of watching him conduct life strung tight as a drum and knowing he's so goddamned worried, well that only made things harder. Now it seems like he's breathing for both of us and that power and faith that I get from him is growing, spreading. Also the talking, he's talking to me again instead of being afraid to step on toes or undo any progress I may have made under the direction of my psychiatrist. He's waded back in, with his jeans rolled up and has refused to let me drown. And that has helped more than anything.
My music is back. Phish. The dozens of traded shows and the collection I built during my life with Cole that reminded me of him so awfully much that I asked my friends to take it away and when Jacob pulled it all out I didn't die when I listened. I've had a few rough spots but otherwise I realized it was my music, not Cole's, not ours collectively, but mine. It feels good. My warm bath.
And sleep. I can sleep, sometimes. Not one hundred percent, but sometimes I do and it's a start.
And hey, no one said it would be easy. I've still got a million miles to go but I've got a map and a companion or three and some tunes to take me home and we'll get there. Every day is a little bit better and sometimes I drop a bowl and it shatters and I jump and then I laugh because it wasn't thrown and the ghosts are fading and Bridget is getting there. Every day, just a little bit better.
Welcome this is a Farmhouse
we have cluster flies alas
And this time of year is bad
We are so very sorry,
There is little we can do
But swat them
She didn't beg oh, not enough
She didn't stay when things got tough
I told a lie and she got mad
She wasn't there when things got bad
I never ever saw the northern lights
I never really heard of cluster flies
Never ever saw the stars so bright
In the farmhouse things will be alright
Woke this morning to the stinging lash
Every man rise from the ash
Each betrayal begins with trust
Every man returns to dust
Or maybe this is phoning it in, for you just read a list of my transcribed renumerations and a chronic peptalk from inside my head.
Have a good day, in any case.
In all seriousness, I try not to phone it in. So now that things are re-buttoned and turned back rightside-out here and I can try and fix my hair that Jacob managed to pull out, let's continue. Because I have work to do and he's already left because absolutely no one expected him to stop working and of course he hasn't, really. Today he's going to help clean two shelters and then he has fundraising meetings this afternoon. Bless his heart, I encouraged him to keep doing the things he loves to do because he wouldn't be Jacob if he didn't.
Now...have you noticed anything? Different? Like things are better lately? More better than not? Different things that we have changed and done and hardcore therapy attendance, perfect medicating and a whole lot of love and things appear to be looking up.
Up, guys. Up. Like a hot air balloon in Bridget's beautiful blue skies.
Things like not babying me, he's treating me with all the confidence in the world, a hopeful optimism and respect that I've been drawing strength from, instead of watching him conduct life strung tight as a drum and knowing he's so goddamned worried, well that only made things harder. Now it seems like he's breathing for both of us and that power and faith that I get from him is growing, spreading. Also the talking, he's talking to me again instead of being afraid to step on toes or undo any progress I may have made under the direction of my psychiatrist. He's waded back in, with his jeans rolled up and has refused to let me drown. And that has helped more than anything.
My music is back. Phish. The dozens of traded shows and the collection I built during my life with Cole that reminded me of him so awfully much that I asked my friends to take it away and when Jacob pulled it all out I didn't die when I listened. I've had a few rough spots but otherwise I realized it was my music, not Cole's, not ours collectively, but mine. It feels good. My warm bath.
And sleep. I can sleep, sometimes. Not one hundred percent, but sometimes I do and it's a start.
And hey, no one said it would be easy. I've still got a million miles to go but I've got a map and a companion or three and some tunes to take me home and we'll get there. Every day is a little bit better and sometimes I drop a bowl and it shatters and I jump and then I laugh because it wasn't thrown and the ghosts are fading and Bridget is getting there. Every day, just a little bit better.
Welcome this is a Farmhouse
we have cluster flies alas
And this time of year is bad
We are so very sorry,
There is little we can do
But swat them
She didn't beg oh, not enough
She didn't stay when things got tough
I told a lie and she got mad
She wasn't there when things got bad
I never ever saw the northern lights
I never really heard of cluster flies
Never ever saw the stars so bright
In the farmhouse things will be alright
Woke this morning to the stinging lash
Every man rise from the ash
Each betrayal begins with trust
Every man returns to dust
Or maybe this is phoning it in, for you just read a list of my transcribed renumerations and a chronic peptalk from inside my head.
Have a good day, in any case.
Thursday.
It's a test, isn't it?
Hmm?
This. You. Us. You're testing me to see if I'll stay.
Yes. That's exactly what I'm doing here, Jacob.
I knew it.
So get the fuck out.
I'm not going anywhere, princess.
Okay, then you passed.
Yay. What do I get?
What would you like?
(silence and a huge grin)
Oh, it figures. I knew you were here for the sex.
Right. You're not that good.
Take that back.
Yeah, actually maybe I should.
Smart thing.
Does that mean I can get some?
Sure. What are you doing after breakfast?
A princess! Am I a lucky guy or what?
Hmm?
This. You. Us. You're testing me to see if I'll stay.
Yes. That's exactly what I'm doing here, Jacob.
I knew it.
So get the fuck out.
I'm not going anywhere, princess.
Okay, then you passed.
Yay. What do I get?
What would you like?
(silence and a huge grin)
Oh, it figures. I knew you were here for the sex.
Right. You're not that good.
Take that back.
Yeah, actually maybe I should.
Smart thing.
Does that mean I can get some?
Sure. What are you doing after breakfast?
A princess! Am I a lucky guy or what?
Wednesday 28 February 2007
Free birds, blackbirds, magpies and an owl.
(Oh hello, you've walked in on a random stream of consciousness.)
Birds seem to be some sort of metaphor in our lives. Before I could safely identify Jacob here I referred to him as J and called him my friend, my free bird, who I had set free and he came back anyway. Blackbird for a treasured song, magpie because I like the word though if I do recall without searching too far there is something sinister about magpies. Owls because of the owl jokes, appropriate for all ages when so much of this world is not, an innocent nod to a haven in the little tiny cabin that we can escape to every so often when it's warm enough and sometimes even when it's not. Feeling safe.
Magnets and copper and reiki and the power of positive thinking and lovebeads and peace vibes, holistic mindfucks aren't going to do this. Eating a raw diet and living a world devoid of negativity isn't going to do it. Immersing myself in some songs and a red hot bath aren't going to do anything at all.
All of it an up and a down on a long and hilly Sunday drive, where when the sun dips low and a rumble ripples through our stomach while we stop for a picnic by the river and look at each other in surprise, as if we were so grateful for the company, it being the one person we would have most wished to be with right then.
And later when you awaken from a dream that wasn't good, covered with sweat and gasping for breath you rise into the protective arms of that person you wished for once again and you forget the details and the feelings and the fears and he tells you of the river. And the bird that he saw while you ignored nature within reach and licked blackberry jam off the tips of your fingers.
You hear the birds outside your window in a grayscale morning, the cold icicles of winter's final push clearing a path around your warmth and the chirps remind you of March which is about to step into your life for the first time all year.
You wind a scarf around your neck like a European fashion doll and someone offers you a cup of tea and it warms you right out to the edges of your bones like that warm bath and you wish you had a switch for these sensations...and others.
And a vintage pattern triggers a memory from dozens of years ago in which you snuck a gingerbread cookie into your room where there was a little Christmas tree decorated with red balls and glitzy tinsel and your turtleneck was three sizes too big but not for long because you just noticed you can see over the top of your bureau and in the mirror your little cherub face is covered with crumbs, crumbs laced through your curly blonde pigtails and crumbs all over your chubby little hands but you don't care.
Because there are birds outside your window and a brownie owl on your wall.
And a man singing Blackbird in your future, but you don't know about him yet.
Birds seem to be some sort of metaphor in our lives. Before I could safely identify Jacob here I referred to him as J and called him my friend, my free bird, who I had set free and he came back anyway. Blackbird for a treasured song, magpie because I like the word though if I do recall without searching too far there is something sinister about magpies. Owls because of the owl jokes, appropriate for all ages when so much of this world is not, an innocent nod to a haven in the little tiny cabin that we can escape to every so often when it's warm enough and sometimes even when it's not. Feeling safe.
Magnets and copper and reiki and the power of positive thinking and lovebeads and peace vibes, holistic mindfucks aren't going to do this. Eating a raw diet and living a world devoid of negativity isn't going to do it. Immersing myself in some songs and a red hot bath aren't going to do anything at all.
All of it an up and a down on a long and hilly Sunday drive, where when the sun dips low and a rumble ripples through our stomach while we stop for a picnic by the river and look at each other in surprise, as if we were so grateful for the company, it being the one person we would have most wished to be with right then.
And later when you awaken from a dream that wasn't good, covered with sweat and gasping for breath you rise into the protective arms of that person you wished for once again and you forget the details and the feelings and the fears and he tells you of the river. And the bird that he saw while you ignored nature within reach and licked blackberry jam off the tips of your fingers.
You hear the birds outside your window in a grayscale morning, the cold icicles of winter's final push clearing a path around your warmth and the chirps remind you of March which is about to step into your life for the first time all year.
You wind a scarf around your neck like a European fashion doll and someone offers you a cup of tea and it warms you right out to the edges of your bones like that warm bath and you wish you had a switch for these sensations...and others.
And a vintage pattern triggers a memory from dozens of years ago in which you snuck a gingerbread cookie into your room where there was a little Christmas tree decorated with red balls and glitzy tinsel and your turtleneck was three sizes too big but not for long because you just noticed you can see over the top of your bureau and in the mirror your little cherub face is covered with crumbs, crumbs laced through your curly blonde pigtails and crumbs all over your chubby little hands but you don't care.
Because there are birds outside your window and a brownie owl on your wall.
And a man singing Blackbird in your future, but you don't know about him yet.
Tuesday 27 February 2007
Poor heart.
I think I've reached the absolute definition of bitter/sweet today. Not sure whether I should kiss or throttle my husband.
What in the hell is this called, Jacob? Jam band therapy?
Can you still play Pebbles and Marbles?
No.
Is that a no meaning you can't or a no meaning you won't?
Both, neither. I don't know, really.
I'm singing it.
I hear you, Jacob.
Then I'll do another.
You're trying to break me, aren't you?
No, I'm going to desensitize you. If there's anything I'm sure of about you, princess, it's that you live by your music and maybe that is part of the problem.
What do you mean by that? I shouldn't enjoy my music?
No, you lost half your soundtrack with him and those were your songs too.
I know.
And you miss them.
Badly.
So take them back and make them yours.
Sounds easier than it seems.
Like everything you've ever done.
Desensitized.
Right. You can do this, Bridge.
I really missed Free.
There's my girl.
Fuck me. This is yet another goddamned found fragment of the map that will take me home. Go Bridget.
Go spin.
What in the hell is this called, Jacob? Jam band therapy?
Can you still play Pebbles and Marbles?
No.
Is that a no meaning you can't or a no meaning you won't?
Both, neither. I don't know, really.
I'm singing it.
I hear you, Jacob.
Then I'll do another.
You're trying to break me, aren't you?
No, I'm going to desensitize you. If there's anything I'm sure of about you, princess, it's that you live by your music and maybe that is part of the problem.
What do you mean by that? I shouldn't enjoy my music?
No, you lost half your soundtrack with him and those were your songs too.
I know.
And you miss them.
Badly.
So take them back and make them yours.
Sounds easier than it seems.
Like everything you've ever done.
Desensitized.
Right. You can do this, Bridge.
I really missed Free.
There's my girl.
Fuck me. This is yet another goddamned found fragment of the map that will take me home. Go Bridget.
Go spin.
Fast enough for me.
Hey.
Musical entries for a musical week.
It's a sick day, collectively, though Jacob has one meeting this afternoon. I'm spending my day in wool tights and a skirt and one of Jacob's giant sweaters and a bun that isn't going to last long because wisps are escaping all over the place like rats jumping from a sinking ship.
I hate to get dressed some days but I never know half the time who will show up on my doorstep so I'll never be the kind of girl who hangs out in yoga pants and a dirty shirt. Though I would love too, some days.
Today I'm working on a story for children. One about princesses and dreams. Oh, the ironies. For inspiration I was gazing at pictures of Kylemore Abbey, Lichtenstein, Burg Eltz and Neuschwanstein. All of my favorite castles from when I was growing up and I dreamed of places I had never been in this life and so my father took me to the library where I would spend hours pouring over books about Castles, traveling in Europe and medieval history until I had tracked down everything I may have seen in my sleep.
Princesses aren't made, they are born. Sometimes in the wrong lifetimes, perhaps. Sometimes in many lifetimes in a row. Sometimes they don't even know.
And sometimes they know all along.
This morning Jacob picked up his guitar and sang while the kids finished their toast. He played three notes and I recognized them instantly and I looked at him curiously and he stopped and put the guitar down again. Then he said the hell with it and he took it back up and played the whole damned thing and sang the words and I actually didn't implode or anything remotely frightening.
It's time I sling the baskets off this overburdened horse
Sink my toes into the ground and set a different course
Cause if I were here and you were there
I'd meet you in between
And not until my dying day, confess what I have seen.
He was playing Horse. Then he played four other songs off Rift and very slowly the pain crept in around the edges of my heart and ached like a dull knife lodged in bone. Then very quietly he said one thing, and then went out and slammed the door and lifted it right off the hinges in the process, once again. He was back five minutes later with the box of CDs that he had put away last May.
My entire Phish collection, bless his heart.
Curse his fair and good intentions.
(Shhh. Not out loud.)
Dead people aren't going to decide what I want to hear, Bridget.
Musical entries for a musical week.
It's a sick day, collectively, though Jacob has one meeting this afternoon. I'm spending my day in wool tights and a skirt and one of Jacob's giant sweaters and a bun that isn't going to last long because wisps are escaping all over the place like rats jumping from a sinking ship.
I hate to get dressed some days but I never know half the time who will show up on my doorstep so I'll never be the kind of girl who hangs out in yoga pants and a dirty shirt. Though I would love too, some days.
Today I'm working on a story for children. One about princesses and dreams. Oh, the ironies. For inspiration I was gazing at pictures of Kylemore Abbey, Lichtenstein, Burg Eltz and Neuschwanstein. All of my favorite castles from when I was growing up and I dreamed of places I had never been in this life and so my father took me to the library where I would spend hours pouring over books about Castles, traveling in Europe and medieval history until I had tracked down everything I may have seen in my sleep.
Princesses aren't made, they are born. Sometimes in the wrong lifetimes, perhaps. Sometimes in many lifetimes in a row. Sometimes they don't even know.
And sometimes they know all along.
This morning Jacob picked up his guitar and sang while the kids finished their toast. He played three notes and I recognized them instantly and I looked at him curiously and he stopped and put the guitar down again. Then he said the hell with it and he took it back up and played the whole damned thing and sang the words and I actually didn't implode or anything remotely frightening.
It's time I sling the baskets off this overburdened horse
Sink my toes into the ground and set a different course
Cause if I were here and you were there
I'd meet you in between
And not until my dying day, confess what I have seen.
He was playing Horse. Then he played four other songs off Rift and very slowly the pain crept in around the edges of my heart and ached like a dull knife lodged in bone. Then very quietly he said one thing, and then went out and slammed the door and lifted it right off the hinges in the process, once again. He was back five minutes later with the box of CDs that he had put away last May.
My entire Phish collection, bless his heart.
Curse his fair and good intentions.
(Shhh. Not out loud.)
Dead people aren't going to decide what I want to hear, Bridget.
Monday 26 February 2007
Switchfoot goodness for a Monday morning.
Hi. Good morning, I have the flu.
And Jacob will be just about nowhere in this post, for we're going to briefly switch (thanks Loch for pointing out the pun) to fangirl mode. Just for a day, I've earned this.
I have pictures because I made a last minute early morning run to the store and bought a Canon Elph to take to the show. Because Cole's giant Rebel does me no good most of the time.
I'm still tired from the legendary Switchfoot hangover I have read so much about. I'm sad that it's over and yet thrilled and relieved that I finally saw one of their epic live shows, having followed the trail of tour news, photos, daily foot entries and fan accounts. I crossed sides. I have arrived after loving this band for years and years from afar.
I might be changed forever. Okay, shut up, Bridget, no one cares for your drama.
We lined up two hours before showtime (seeing Jon and Andy separately outside!) and so we secured a front row position just to the left of the microphone, which I could reach out and touch, it was so close. Cooooool.
Jacob who may or may not have given me the flu reluctantly opted out earlier that day because he was too miserable to go so I took Christian with us. He was extremely thrilled to go, he is as crazy as I am.
Copeland came out first and played for 45 minutes, 9 songs. They were really good, very tight, nice songs. I can only describe them as a darker version of the early Switchfoot. I loved their song Sleep. I have to pick up the album. Then the lights went out and the fastest set up/breakdown ever took place as they got ready for Switchfoot.
Someone came over to the edge of the stage and gave Ruth and Henry guitar picks that say Switchfoot on them.
Holy freaking cow holy freaking cow.
Everything I ever wanted to see, I saw. I was dripped on, sweat on, I made eye contact, I got to grab hands and sing along. Jon jumped off the piano, he sang into the guitar, he ran up to the balcony and sang two whole songs from back there. He chatted with a group from the US who drove up to see their sixth show and they requested and received a quick rendition of Chem 6A. A kid was pulled up to play cowbell. It was terrific.
Here's the setlist:
Stars, Oh Gravity, Canadian Dream, Gone, 4:12, The Blues (which won the voting contest online), This is your Life, Happy is a Yuppie Word, Shadow Proves the Sunshine, Awakening, Dirty Second Hands, Amateur Lovers, We are One Tonight, Faust, Midas and Myself, Easier than Love, Meant to Live and the encore was Let Your Love Be Strong and Dare You to Move.
Sigh.
They played Happy is a Yuppie Word. My all-time favorite song of theirs, and the song that contains the line that I took for one of my tattoos, that matches the tagline of my journal here.
Nothing in the world could fail me now.
Jerome came down and gave the children two more guitar picks right at the end of Gone, and we thanked him. Drew played endlessly right above us and Jon watched Ruthie jump up and down while he sang. They probably thought we were nuts for having two little kids in the front but there was no crowd surfing and no one was rough. It was perfect. The music was loud, the band was so tight, and so friendly and just plan talented beyond belief. I was surprised at how quiet Tim and Chad were, overall, though there was a crazy percussion, dance-party going on onstage during Shadow and then again during Faust.
They invited the crowd to go to the waterslides in the adjoining hotel after the show. They were terrific. Let your Love be Strong was a silent room and a watchful moment of beauty. Dare you to Move made me cry. But in a good way.
After the show the lights came up and the same man who brought over the guitar picks during setup handed me a coveted setlist. I was stunned. I gave one of the picks to a girl from North Dakota who I had befriended by the stage to share the joy. We went out into the lobby and snagged a few of the limited edition Gravity, eh? Oh Canada Switchfoot Tour 2007 t-shirts and then we went home. Because hello, little kids, midnight. Oh Lord.
Where I lay awake with my ears ringing and my heart racing for the remainder of the night. Because it was that much fun.
Thank you Switchfoot. You totally rock my world.
Oh, and video! I have video but the compression is so amazing I can't figure out where to put it online. When I figure it out I'll update. I got Happy is a Yuppie Word and Let Your Love be Strong in their entirety as well as the bridges of Dirty Second Hands and We are One Tonight plus the cool Chad/Jerome percussion dance from Faust. Working on putting them somewhere. If I can ever accomplish this, I'll let you know.
And Jacob will be just about nowhere in this post, for we're going to briefly switch (thanks Loch for pointing out the pun) to fangirl mode. Just for a day, I've earned this.
I have pictures because I made a last minute early morning run to the store and bought a Canon Elph to take to the show. Because Cole's giant Rebel does me no good most of the time.
I'm still tired from the legendary Switchfoot hangover I have read so much about. I'm sad that it's over and yet thrilled and relieved that I finally saw one of their epic live shows, having followed the trail of tour news, photos, daily foot entries and fan accounts. I crossed sides. I have arrived after loving this band for years and years from afar.
I might be changed forever. Okay, shut up, Bridget, no one cares for your drama.
We lined up two hours before showtime (seeing Jon and Andy separately outside!) and so we secured a front row position just to the left of the microphone, which I could reach out and touch, it was so close. Cooooool.
Jacob who may or may not have given me the flu reluctantly opted out earlier that day because he was too miserable to go so I took Christian with us. He was extremely thrilled to go, he is as crazy as I am.
Copeland came out first and played for 45 minutes, 9 songs. They were really good, very tight, nice songs. I can only describe them as a darker version of the early Switchfoot. I loved their song Sleep. I have to pick up the album. Then the lights went out and the fastest set up/breakdown ever took place as they got ready for Switchfoot.
Someone came over to the edge of the stage and gave Ruth and Henry guitar picks that say Switchfoot on them.
Holy freaking cow holy freaking cow.
Everything I ever wanted to see, I saw. I was dripped on, sweat on, I made eye contact, I got to grab hands and sing along. Jon jumped off the piano, he sang into the guitar, he ran up to the balcony and sang two whole songs from back there. He chatted with a group from the US who drove up to see their sixth show and they requested and received a quick rendition of Chem 6A. A kid was pulled up to play cowbell. It was terrific.
Here's the setlist:
Stars, Oh Gravity, Canadian Dream, Gone, 4:12, The Blues (which won the voting contest online), This is your Life, Happy is a Yuppie Word, Shadow Proves the Sunshine, Awakening, Dirty Second Hands, Amateur Lovers, We are One Tonight, Faust, Midas and Myself, Easier than Love, Meant to Live and the encore was Let Your Love Be Strong and Dare You to Move.
Sigh.
They played Happy is a Yuppie Word. My all-time favorite song of theirs, and the song that contains the line that I took for one of my tattoos, that matches the tagline of my journal here.
Nothing in the world could fail me now.
Jerome came down and gave the children two more guitar picks right at the end of Gone, and we thanked him. Drew played endlessly right above us and Jon watched Ruthie jump up and down while he sang. They probably thought we were nuts for having two little kids in the front but there was no crowd surfing and no one was rough. It was perfect. The music was loud, the band was so tight, and so friendly and just plan talented beyond belief. I was surprised at how quiet Tim and Chad were, overall, though there was a crazy percussion, dance-party going on onstage during Shadow and then again during Faust.
They invited the crowd to go to the waterslides in the adjoining hotel after the show. They were terrific. Let your Love be Strong was a silent room and a watchful moment of beauty. Dare you to Move made me cry. But in a good way.
After the show the lights came up and the same man who brought over the guitar picks during setup handed me a coveted setlist. I was stunned. I gave one of the picks to a girl from North Dakota who I had befriended by the stage to share the joy. We went out into the lobby and snagged a few of the limited edition Gravity, eh? Oh Canada Switchfoot Tour 2007 t-shirts and then we went home. Because hello, little kids, midnight. Oh Lord.
Where I lay awake with my ears ringing and my heart racing for the remainder of the night. Because it was that much fun.
Thank you Switchfoot. You totally rock my world.
Oh, and video! I have video but the compression is so amazing I can't figure out where to put it online. When I figure it out I'll update. I got Happy is a Yuppie Word and Let Your Love be Strong in their entirety as well as the bridges of Dirty Second Hands and We are One Tonight plus the cool Chad/Jerome percussion dance from Faust. Working on putting them somewhere. If I can ever accomplish this, I'll let you know.
Saturday 24 February 2007
Slow motions.
Okay, now that's a porn title. But this isn't porn unless you count library books among your fetishes.
I said library books, not librarians.
Naughty.
Yesterday we swung by the city library on the way home from an appointment, Jake wanted to find some woodworking plans and I am trying to learn to cook properly studying quantum physics and so we both went down to the nonfiction/reference areas and started off in different aisles.
Libraries for me are a time-space rift. I am in sensory overload the moment I walk in, so many words, so many endless possibilities, the smell of the pages, the choice. I was sitting on the floor gathering up my finds and was headed to track down Jacob when a book fell off the shelf behind me. I must have bumped it out so I leaned back to pick it up to return it when another one fell down. So I stacked both and stood up and put them back. I turned to gather up my books and another book fell down.
I must be slow. I just kept picking them up and putting them back.
When I returned the fifth book to the shelf another popped out right in front of me and in the space where it had been rested the blue eyes I love so much, crinkled up with mischievousness. Then he laughed, pushing the whole row of books down on me and I sat there and smiled at him, and he hunched down and smiled at me through the hole that he made in the wall while other people watched us with amusement and a solitary older gentleman scowled at hearing laughter in amongst the silent, dusty tomes.
Jacob then impulsively stuck his whole head right through the shelf for a kiss and got stuck.
A series of fortunate events followed as tools were sent for and a heck of a lot more laughter began to rise up from the 600 section. Even from the gentleman who had turned his scowl into a mighty guffaw as he regarded the impromptu rescue mission.
Eventually Jacob was pulled out almost completely unscathed if not just a tiny bit embarrassed and has a torn shirt and a two inch gouge on his shoulder from where the metal shelf bracket carved out a defensive battle wound. Those things are sharp, I expected him to emerge much worse than he did.
We were then instructed in future visits to carry out that sort of activity upstairs in adult fiction or that the very least over in self-help. We nodded soberly, deciding now was probably not the best moment to point out at least we were in the cooking section.
The next time we go I hope I find a book about learning how not to laugh when it's inappropriate to do so.
I said library books, not librarians.
Naughty.
Yesterday we swung by the city library on the way home from an appointment, Jake wanted to find some woodworking plans and I am trying to learn to cook properly studying quantum physics and so we both went down to the nonfiction/reference areas and started off in different aisles.
Libraries for me are a time-space rift. I am in sensory overload the moment I walk in, so many words, so many endless possibilities, the smell of the pages, the choice. I was sitting on the floor gathering up my finds and was headed to track down Jacob when a book fell off the shelf behind me. I must have bumped it out so I leaned back to pick it up to return it when another one fell down. So I stacked both and stood up and put them back. I turned to gather up my books and another book fell down.
I must be slow. I just kept picking them up and putting them back.
When I returned the fifth book to the shelf another popped out right in front of me and in the space where it had been rested the blue eyes I love so much, crinkled up with mischievousness. Then he laughed, pushing the whole row of books down on me and I sat there and smiled at him, and he hunched down and smiled at me through the hole that he made in the wall while other people watched us with amusement and a solitary older gentleman scowled at hearing laughter in amongst the silent, dusty tomes.
Jacob then impulsively stuck his whole head right through the shelf for a kiss and got stuck.
A series of fortunate events followed as tools were sent for and a heck of a lot more laughter began to rise up from the 600 section. Even from the gentleman who had turned his scowl into a mighty guffaw as he regarded the impromptu rescue mission.
Eventually Jacob was pulled out almost completely unscathed if not just a tiny bit embarrassed and has a torn shirt and a two inch gouge on his shoulder from where the metal shelf bracket carved out a defensive battle wound. Those things are sharp, I expected him to emerge much worse than he did.
We were then instructed in future visits to carry out that sort of activity upstairs in adult fiction or that the very least over in self-help. We nodded soberly, deciding now was probably not the best moment to point out at least we were in the cooking section.
The next time we go I hope I find a book about learning how not to laugh when it's inappropriate to do so.
Friday 23 February 2007
When she laughs it goes on forever, guys.
Waking up hearing this coming from the shower has got to be the happiest thing ever.
Hey, I ain't never coming home
Hey, I'll just wander my own road
Hey, I cant meet you here tomorrow
Say goodbye, don't follow
Misery so hollow
Hey you, you're living life full throttle
Hey you, pass me down that bottle, yeah
Hey you, you cant shake me round now
I get so lost and don't know how
And it hurts to care, I'm going down
Forgot my woman, lost my friends
Things I've done and where I've been
Sleep in sweat the mirrors cold
See my face it's growing old
Scared to death no reason why
Do whatever to get me by
Think about the things I said
Read the page its cold and dead
Take me home
Redeemed with a rare and wonderful old favorite of mine for if I am as sweet as cake Jacob will sing whatever I want to hear and I love this song. He does the first part so well I swoon right off my feet and ooze all over the floor in a puddle of Bridget-goo. I love to be sung to, it's been done by famous men and completely unknown men alike (stories, seriously, I have stories) I love all of it. I hope he adds the guitar later.
And I'm guessing Bridget-goo will be blue and sparkly, like the waves just before the sun dips low into to the sea, wouldn't you think? Okay yes, blue. Turquoise blue.
He's also very good at making me laugh. You know how couples have secret languages and inside jokes? If I shared them you'd think we were both crazy but one morning in church just before he started announcements he came down to where I was sitting and whispered in my ear,
Just call me Lupe Fiasco.
And I swear I tried so hard not to bust out laughing because it was so random and I had no idea what he was talking about which made me laugh harder and I was beet red and shaking and trying not to lose it and I almost had my face in my purse because he was giving the schedules for upcoming memorials, of course with a stonefaced delivery and it made it worse. I have been calling him Lupe ever since. I have since learned Lupe Fiasco is a rap artist. Or hip hop maybe? I'm too busy over here listening to my beloved Tool. And Alice in Chains and Switchfoot and almost pretty much everything but rap.
And on with the ever-present euphemism of solid fats (the butter bent, I love that word. I'm like butter, Nosebutter, hell, Last tango & butter), well there's a new one.
Leopold Butter Stotch. Butters! The cutest Southpark character ever. He's just like me, tiny, blonde, even the stuttering. Professor Chaos is his alter-ego, sort of like mine is that wild, x-rated lapdancing cowgirl. Why I was gifted a set of Southpark DVDs I will never know because I'm not much of a TV girl but they're hilarious.
Princess Butters?
Oh noes!
Seriously, no, Jacob. Just noes.
But you're laughing so that means yeses. Which makes us PB and J, baby girl.
Hey, I ain't never coming home
Hey, I'll just wander my own road
Hey, I cant meet you here tomorrow
Say goodbye, don't follow
Misery so hollow
Hey you, you're living life full throttle
Hey you, pass me down that bottle, yeah
Hey you, you cant shake me round now
I get so lost and don't know how
And it hurts to care, I'm going down
Forgot my woman, lost my friends
Things I've done and where I've been
Sleep in sweat the mirrors cold
See my face it's growing old
Scared to death no reason why
Do whatever to get me by
Think about the things I said
Read the page its cold and dead
Take me home
Redeemed with a rare and wonderful old favorite of mine for if I am as sweet as cake Jacob will sing whatever I want to hear and I love this song. He does the first part so well I swoon right off my feet and ooze all over the floor in a puddle of Bridget-goo. I love to be sung to, it's been done by famous men and completely unknown men alike (stories, seriously, I have stories) I love all of it. I hope he adds the guitar later.
And I'm guessing Bridget-goo will be blue and sparkly, like the waves just before the sun dips low into to the sea, wouldn't you think? Okay yes, blue. Turquoise blue.
He's also very good at making me laugh. You know how couples have secret languages and inside jokes? If I shared them you'd think we were both crazy but one morning in church just before he started announcements he came down to where I was sitting and whispered in my ear,
Just call me Lupe Fiasco.
And I swear I tried so hard not to bust out laughing because it was so random and I had no idea what he was talking about which made me laugh harder and I was beet red and shaking and trying not to lose it and I almost had my face in my purse because he was giving the schedules for upcoming memorials, of course with a stonefaced delivery and it made it worse. I have been calling him Lupe ever since. I have since learned Lupe Fiasco is a rap artist. Or hip hop maybe? I'm too busy over here listening to my beloved Tool. And Alice in Chains and Switchfoot and almost pretty much everything but rap.
And on with the ever-present euphemism of solid fats (the butter bent, I love that word. I'm like butter, Nosebutter, hell, Last tango & butter), well there's a new one.
Leopold Butter Stotch. Butters! The cutest Southpark character ever. He's just like me, tiny, blonde, even the stuttering. Professor Chaos is his alter-ego, sort of like mine is that wild, x-rated lapdancing cowgirl. Why I was gifted a set of Southpark DVDs I will never know because I'm not much of a TV girl but they're hilarious.
Princess Butters?
Oh noes!
Seriously, no, Jacob. Just noes.
But you're laughing so that means yeses. Which makes us PB and J, baby girl.
Thursday 22 February 2007
Bridget has a rattle (and a hum).
(Hi, mindless rattling today. Roll with it, my peoples, while I get better.)
Bridget's learning to hum. I can hear it. I used to sing alot under my breath but humming seemed pointless.
Jacob is singing so loud today and it's contagious and I'm embarrassed for both of us. Make it stop. What a funny song. It strikes me as very...eighties, for some reason. Jacob won't quit singing it and I'm about to shove fingers nine and ten up his nose to shut him up.
Well I'm not paralyzed
But I seem to be struck by you
I want to make you move
Because you're standing still
If your body matches
What your eyes can do
You'll probably move right through
Me on my way to you
He has infinite patience to torture me with songs he likes that I don't. Feel free to tease him, his musical tangents are really weird considering this is the same man who had a shouting match in an elevator shortly before Christmas with my psychiatrist over who knew The White Album better. Because what is life if you don't know the basis for Savoy Truffle?
I pointed out he's going to lose his hippie seventies vibe-thing if he keeps this up and he just gazed at me steadily and smiled.
No worries, princess.
Now that Jacob is home, he has relaxed to an amazing extent. Like nothing I have seen before, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. He may be the strongest person I know but even the toughest nails eventually bend. He was bending.
My friends are pointing out that I have spun myself here to sound like a wholly unhinged princess, and I apologize if anyone is worried. Please, don't be. I didn't overdose-overdose, I simply goofed and took two pills at the same time, being the responsible idiot that I am (because I didn't complain even once this time around) when I realized late last week that I had missed a breakfast pill in the morning rush. Then I was understandably confused and I continued to take two pills twice a day after that, effectively getting double what I was supposed to be taking. It wasn't until I told Claus my proud routine that he stopped me and confirmed that I was telling him I take two pills each time that we figured out why I was walking into walls. I am back to the right dosage and yes, guess who is once again in charge of dispensing?
Of course Jacob blamed himself, being busy and not having time to really pay attention to them but he was so proud that I was taking the pills at all and that I was doing okay, even though I am still slightly a degree away from okay (aren't you, Bridget?). Like sleeping. Sleeping in any solid block of uninterrupted time had become insurmountable. A few more emotional grenades were lobbed recently. And since April we haven't had any large blocks of time to spend together. It's all carried out between duties and appointments and workloads and schedules and it's become a running joke that we were carrying out a marriage on a day planner only no one was laughing. Time has always been our enemy. To use his own words, Jacob was stressed the fuck out and he threw it in. The towel or his hat or whatever you throw in when you've reached your limit.
And so he's home and he doesn't want to be anywhere else for a long while. And I'm happy he's here because we have time. I was admonished for the boasting that he was putting me first, before God. Jacob pointed out gently that God understands that Jacob's primary concern right now is the well-being of his wife and the needs of his family and he is where he needs to be and God doesn't have a problem with that. And that without God, Jacob wouldn't be able to be here at which point I'm sure I threw a faint at having an impromptu sermon in the kitchen but I got the point and I know he isn't turning his back on God and I would never want that in a million years though I do have a deep-rooted newfound sadness about having caused so much turmoil for him.
This is the part where he would shake his head and insist with all of his precious heart that this isn't my fault and possibly the only thing I am one hundred percent convinced that it is and he knows it is but he's too kind to consider it.
I have started some therapies that might surprise people, of which I'm just going to endure and not talk about here. I'm on a prescribed diet plan again, because hovering slightly below 93 isn't ever where I wanted to be. I don't have to stop or start any medications, and I get to spend my days indefinitely, fingers intertwined with Jake's, one step away from one of his annoying forehead kisses or one of his adorable nose kisses. I get to see all the expressions that accompany his words, I get to hear the songs he sings all day long (yes, even Paralyzer) and he's actually got enough still on the go that this is a matter of simply changing his base of operations and switching gears yet again. He's picked up some counseling once again, and he's going to keep the chaplaincy which I'm sure is really because of the whole firetrucks fascination. I keep poking him and telling him he might have missed his calling, which is a play on...oh nevermind. Jacob is a four year old boy when he sees a firetruck go by.
And he's relented on a big terrible issue that he has held on to for too long. Counseling me. He refused, he cut me off cold last May but he went too far, unwilling to function less than objectively, the conflict of interest being too great to be healthy. But he went too far and he wouldn't talk to me, about anything short of getting that fucking barometer and he used to talk to me about everything. Enough to the point that we had reached a strained and difficult place where we couldn't connect the way we needed to, and I couldn't articulate what had happened, but somehow with Claus' help we figured it out and now he has opened his mind again to just talking and it's made such a huge difference.
I needed him and he had shut me down out of fear that he would make it worse. But that's silly, because he makes it better. He's never experienced being with someone in a love relationship in which they ever talked about anything deeper than what was happening on the surface because of the long-distance aspect of his previous marriage and we had so little time to really get to know each other in that sense before the shit hit the proverbial fan that he had removed himself when I really needed to talk to him and it was like pounding on a door and screaming and he would never answer it. He's finally answering the fucking door and I feel like we've got a chance.
Inhale, exhale, Bridget and Jacob. And yes, in the interest of moving forward I'm letting the picture I spoke of yesterday go. It wasn't until I wrote it all down that I could see how stubborn I was being about something I don't need to hold on to.
The relief was written all over his face but then he talked about how he felt (thank you, God). Which was better than any one of Jacob's twenty-nine hundred facial expressions. And a big step for the giant blonde hippie, don't you think? And hey, it's so much easier to talk about him. Because he's fun, and he's here on a Thursday morning no less, hanging out and doing nothing but singing, which I'm sure is going to spiral into some sort of bickerish couchpotatoeyness sooner than later.
...and reading over my shoulder and saying wonderful things like this:
If you join me on the couch, I'll make it worth your while, princess.
Sold!
Bridget's learning to hum. I can hear it. I used to sing alot under my breath but humming seemed pointless.
Jacob is singing so loud today and it's contagious and I'm embarrassed for both of us. Make it stop. What a funny song. It strikes me as very...eighties, for some reason. Jacob won't quit singing it and I'm about to shove fingers nine and ten up his nose to shut him up.
Well I'm not paralyzed
But I seem to be struck by you
I want to make you move
Because you're standing still
If your body matches
What your eyes can do
You'll probably move right through
Me on my way to you
He has infinite patience to torture me with songs he likes that I don't. Feel free to tease him, his musical tangents are really weird considering this is the same man who had a shouting match in an elevator shortly before Christmas with my psychiatrist over who knew The White Album better. Because what is life if you don't know the basis for Savoy Truffle?
I pointed out he's going to lose his hippie seventies vibe-thing if he keeps this up and he just gazed at me steadily and smiled.
No worries, princess.
Now that Jacob is home, he has relaxed to an amazing extent. Like nothing I have seen before, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. He may be the strongest person I know but even the toughest nails eventually bend. He was bending.
My friends are pointing out that I have spun myself here to sound like a wholly unhinged princess, and I apologize if anyone is worried. Please, don't be. I didn't overdose-overdose, I simply goofed and took two pills at the same time, being the responsible idiot that I am (because I didn't complain even once this time around) when I realized late last week that I had missed a breakfast pill in the morning rush. Then I was understandably confused and I continued to take two pills twice a day after that, effectively getting double what I was supposed to be taking. It wasn't until I told Claus my proud routine that he stopped me and confirmed that I was telling him I take two pills each time that we figured out why I was walking into walls. I am back to the right dosage and yes, guess who is once again in charge of dispensing?
Of course Jacob blamed himself, being busy and not having time to really pay attention to them but he was so proud that I was taking the pills at all and that I was doing okay, even though I am still slightly a degree away from okay (aren't you, Bridget?). Like sleeping. Sleeping in any solid block of uninterrupted time had become insurmountable. A few more emotional grenades were lobbed recently. And since April we haven't had any large blocks of time to spend together. It's all carried out between duties and appointments and workloads and schedules and it's become a running joke that we were carrying out a marriage on a day planner only no one was laughing. Time has always been our enemy. To use his own words, Jacob was stressed the fuck out and he threw it in. The towel or his hat or whatever you throw in when you've reached your limit.
And so he's home and he doesn't want to be anywhere else for a long while. And I'm happy he's here because we have time. I was admonished for the boasting that he was putting me first, before God. Jacob pointed out gently that God understands that Jacob's primary concern right now is the well-being of his wife and the needs of his family and he is where he needs to be and God doesn't have a problem with that. And that without God, Jacob wouldn't be able to be here at which point I'm sure I threw a faint at having an impromptu sermon in the kitchen but I got the point and I know he isn't turning his back on God and I would never want that in a million years though I do have a deep-rooted newfound sadness about having caused so much turmoil for him.
This is the part where he would shake his head and insist with all of his precious heart that this isn't my fault and possibly the only thing I am one hundred percent convinced that it is and he knows it is but he's too kind to consider it.
I have started some therapies that might surprise people, of which I'm just going to endure and not talk about here. I'm on a prescribed diet plan again, because hovering slightly below 93 isn't ever where I wanted to be. I don't have to stop or start any medications, and I get to spend my days indefinitely, fingers intertwined with Jake's, one step away from one of his annoying forehead kisses or one of his adorable nose kisses. I get to see all the expressions that accompany his words, I get to hear the songs he sings all day long (yes, even Paralyzer) and he's actually got enough still on the go that this is a matter of simply changing his base of operations and switching gears yet again. He's picked up some counseling once again, and he's going to keep the chaplaincy which I'm sure is really because of the whole firetrucks fascination. I keep poking him and telling him he might have missed his calling, which is a play on...oh nevermind. Jacob is a four year old boy when he sees a firetruck go by.
And he's relented on a big terrible issue that he has held on to for too long. Counseling me. He refused, he cut me off cold last May but he went too far, unwilling to function less than objectively, the conflict of interest being too great to be healthy. But he went too far and he wouldn't talk to me, about anything short of getting that fucking barometer and he used to talk to me about everything. Enough to the point that we had reached a strained and difficult place where we couldn't connect the way we needed to, and I couldn't articulate what had happened, but somehow with Claus' help we figured it out and now he has opened his mind again to just talking and it's made such a huge difference.
I needed him and he had shut me down out of fear that he would make it worse. But that's silly, because he makes it better. He's never experienced being with someone in a love relationship in which they ever talked about anything deeper than what was happening on the surface because of the long-distance aspect of his previous marriage and we had so little time to really get to know each other in that sense before the shit hit the proverbial fan that he had removed himself when I really needed to talk to him and it was like pounding on a door and screaming and he would never answer it. He's finally answering the fucking door and I feel like we've got a chance.
Inhale, exhale, Bridget and Jacob. And yes, in the interest of moving forward I'm letting the picture I spoke of yesterday go. It wasn't until I wrote it all down that I could see how stubborn I was being about something I don't need to hold on to.
The relief was written all over his face but then he talked about how he felt (thank you, God). Which was better than any one of Jacob's twenty-nine hundred facial expressions. And a big step for the giant blonde hippie, don't you think? And hey, it's so much easier to talk about him. Because he's fun, and he's here on a Thursday morning no less, hanging out and doing nothing but singing, which I'm sure is going to spiral into some sort of bickerish couchpotatoeyness sooner than later.
...and reading over my shoulder and saying wonderful things like this:
If you join me on the couch, I'll make it worth your while, princess.
Sold!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)