Cold and sunny Saturdays

I've left Ben in bed this morning to sleep in, dead to the world in his own fragmented, psychotic dreams, blankets tangled around his arms and legs. He sleeps stretched out long on his own side, my side if it's very cold, never moving an inch unless I pester him to be held sometime in the early hours of the morning. He will sleep until almost lunchtime.

Henry and Ruth were up early as usual for toasted bagels and Power Rangers on the television.

I am up fiddling with my journal. I'm trying to make it friendlier. I put up a (partial) list of my favorite blogs, I added a picture and labels and I'm considering adding comment capabilities back again. I'm trying to write about life in addition to feelings and sometimes it will work and sometimes it probably won't. You've been so patient.

Thursday night we had one of the last dinner parties of the summer season, since Autumn officially starts on Monday. August stayed late, his arms wide open for me to let my head go off-leash and pretend he was Jacob. And Ben allowed it only as far as I did, which was so generous but he always takes the spoils in the end. I'm feeling like I might be tough enough to get through the winter that's coming. Only in the last little while have I really been able to approach certain memories of Jacob without keening in pain.

And for now I just want to get through today.

I have to see Sam this morning, he's conducting a private grief therapy class for me and I go every second or third day and I've kept it up for almost two months now. Later on I want to get a bag of apples at the farmer's market and eat some Thai food and watch a movie and bask in that rare and perfect sweater, jeans and suede clogs weather that we hardly ever seem to get around here. It will be a good day.

But first, I need coffee. Coffee and maybe some fried potatoes. Saturdays are very slow to begin around this house and I like that fact.

Objectified.

I'm incredibly mindful today of the fact that my mind has waged a mostly successful mutiny against my brain and they are currently engaged in a fierce struggle for victory. I used to think that my mind was stronger, obviously because it always seemed to come out ahead, but lately I find myself rooting for my brain to win and take back control of the things it is supposed to be in charge of.

I'm not sure if it will and so I watch with interest and more than a little curiosity because it's a rare gift, a day in which I see it taking place from the outside instead of from my usual position between the two.

Faster, pussycat.

There's something to be said for being good to yourself. It's one of the things that should come first, but in my life has always come last. First comes trying to be the best wife and mother that I can. Second comes trying to be a good friend. Third comes taking care of this giant house and all of the things that involves. So I come in fourth, in my brain, in the grand scheme of things when it comes to treating myself.

Lately I've been holding the line, enduring stress, keeping it together while we go through Ben's traveling, double-stacked therapy and grief counseling, medication, changing seasons and whatever else you can throw at me. Well, what I mean is I'm keeping it together as well I always have, which isn't great but believe it or not it's been better.

Yesterday I got a little overwhelmed and lost it completely. Somewhere across the late afternoon I fell apart and couldn't pull my pieces back to resemble any bit of Bridget whatsoever.

And Ben stopped pretending I was fine on my own.

He gathered me up into his arms and took me upstairs for a three-hour nap. In his arms. Held tight. He woke me up in time to read to the children and get them into bed and then he made us some dinner and we ate on the living room floor in front of the fire, not talking much at all, just being. Just being good to ourselves. Food, fire, rest. Comfort. Closeness.

I'm not here reporting on any changes to my grand plans or any epiphanies. Therapy with the new doctor will continue, albeit I get tomorrow off. Grief classes with Sam will continue tomorrow. Medication will continue. Autumn will officially arrive on Monday whether I like it or not. Life keeps going on around me and in spite of me. I just need to remember to stop and be good to myself here and there and take time to do quiet things like sit by the fire, nap when I'm low on sleep and hold Ben, since I don't see him enough and can't get enough of him besides.

It seems so easy to forget about those things when I'm so busy trying to be a fully-functioning human. The definition of which I do believe I got wrong. It has nothing to do with keeping moving. Not at all.

Why talking at 4 a.m. is never a good idea.

If you could change one thing about me what would it be, Bridget?

I'd permanently remove your temper.

Really?

Yes.

Good choice.

Are you mad?

Is that some kind of pun, Bridget?

I don't really have an answer for you.

I know what I would change about you.

Really, what?

I'd make you taller.

That is what you'd change? Of all things?

Sure. You're so tiny. I feel like I'm going to break you half the time.

And the other half?

Oh, the other half of the time I WANT to break you.

Snort.

Okay, maybe I'd change the snorting thing, too.

Oh, well, if we're going to throw down now, I'd change something else then, and you know what that is. It's a waste.

Oh, really?

Hell yes.

Nice, Bridget.

Benjamin, you started it.

You're so ungrateful.

And you're mad again aren't you?

I give up.

Does this mean I win?

I'm going to go with your competitiveness as my final answer.

Yeah, Bridget for the win.

Are you listening?

Nope.

And you wonder why I get mad.

I KNEW IT! I was only kidding, by the way. I'm very grateful indeed.

Fall for me.

We're great in small doses
I pronounce it.
You're satisfied loving me.
You're so proud of yourself and your disadvantage to me.
It's just something you love to say (and hear that you're uncommon).
The greater the dosage makes me mispronounce it to be.
You're dead inside of me.
You're dead inside of me.
But when you're alone.
And no one knows.
It doesn't seem to matter.
You're the same inside of me.

Outside this house the last of the cherry tomatoes are ripening on their vines, while the leaves scatter haphazardly across the stones and thread their way through the grass. The toys have been put away and a rake leans up against the wall beside the garage door, ready to do duty against the coming autumn winds. The skies are dark, overcast and grey, full of clouds that herald the colder air.

Inside this house the air is equally cold sometimes, our emotions scattered like the leaves, pills and therapies leaning up against the door like a rake to clean everything up, only we're never sure if we should use it as the leaves appear or wait until everything falls down and the trees are bare. Do it once, do it big.

That doesn't seem to work. None of it works and last night saw magnificent change once again as I was halfway to the airport in spirit. I swear I didn't want to go, I just thought Run, Bridget, run! But at the last moment we discovered a new kind of balance somewhere in the middle, somewhere between Ben's earlier attempts to do nothing at all in fear of being compared to Jacob and Jacob's ways altogether. Instead Ben found a Cole-balance. One that always worked, no matter what. The leaves always got raked and it was never a bit at a time or all at once, it was the just the usual magic that worked for Cole and worked for everyone else too and now it appears to be working for Ben.

We've had more than our share of struggles with this, with everything, with trying and failing to adjust to him leaving and coming home and being here versus being away and we seem to have picked perpetual fall to live in, with the leaves needing to be picked up all the time, but they never stop dropping. They block out the sun, there's so much here to gather but we rarely make headway.

It's a big yard.

We made some headway last night. We made a lot of headway. We figured out a great way to stay ahead of those falling leaves, just in time.

If there's one good thing about living in endless Autumn, it's that winter will never come.

All the cool kids are doing it.

I thought it was time, guys. The slate is clean and I'm writing fresh. From this day forward it's going to be fresh news, fresh entries and a fresh outlook.

A fresh start. I did this before, back in 2005.

For those of you missing the archives, well, eventually you'll see them again. I promise (Edit: Nov. 5, 2014. They're back up. Every last one of them.)

It feels kind of good to start over here. It was a long overdue and slightly painful decision to remove the entries of the past three years but I'm glad I did. A huge weight has been lifted.

Onward and upward, dear readers. Oh, and your feeds might be messed up now. Sorry about that.

On not looking back: entry #1000.

Dear Internet, readers, friends and strangers who have graced my words with your presence,

This entry won't come so easy.

Over the past four years this journal has become a comfortable home. A place for me to let it all out, even when I probably should have kept it in. A safe place. A very dark and quiet place for me to bleed without making such a mess. A thousand entries written, a thousand read.

A hell of a lot of words, don't you think?

A hell of a lot of time spent, even though it always took less time then you think. I could always rattle off a post while eating toast standing up, or on my way to bed, or on my way to a swim in the coffee pot. Thirty-two months of winter and sixteen warmer good months brought to you to savor over your own quiet moments.

Almost one hundred thousand people have forged a path through my words now. Mind the flowers, would you? Watch for the moat so you don't drown, for you have been as close as one can get to a real-life fairytale princess. Remember that.

I survived these words and I emerged scarred but tougher. Scar tissue is always less resilient, a grim reminder, a legacy. I came out of things okay and I'm not going to overstay my welcome. Somewhere there's a quote about leaving while the going is good. If I could find it I would share it with you but you already know it, I'm sure.

I'm leaving on a high note, too. Somehow I expected the final entry here to be something Loch would write so that this place would be finished, something I had asked him to do, should the need ever arise. But you know what? Thankfully it doesn't end sadly.

It ends happily.

Everything is good. I'm happy, Internet. I'm so very happy. I'm beginning a new chapter, a life with a guy who was always more laughter than tears, with nothing but a heart of gold and a song to give me, interested in nothing but what we can make of life together. And whatever life throws at me in the second half will be okay. I'll figure it out, putting one foot in front of the other. I'll deal with it and I'll be such a fighter. You'll be so proud, or maybe you won't even care, having moved on to new journals and new places to visit. Find those, and go and read them as voraciously as you did mine, okay? Promise me that.

Just know how much I loved coming here and how much I will miss it and how gratifying and educational and heartwarming this has been. And that I never meant to upset you or make you sad.

I only meant to touch you.

I also promised I would let go of you when it was time to do so.

That time has come and I was meant for a more private life than what this has become. A circus, and I was the lone juggler standing in center-ring. We've packed up the tent and are retiring from life under the Big Top. I hope you enjoyed the show. Wish me luck, okay? I'm really going to need it. Email me whenever you want. I'll answer.

I love you. All of you. Fare thee well, and thank you for reading.

(Edit: I lasted until September and then I came back in full force.)

Mrs. Ben, day two.

    Could you stay long enough for me to say goodbye
    You can be free as long as you're with me
    If you could see the real me you'd bleed
    If you could see the real me I'd breathe
    Could you still breathe long enough for me?
    Could you still be long enough for me?

Thank you for the kind wishes. It really warms me how many of you have taken a moment or two to sit down and send along a letter of encouragement. We have our detractors for sure but we're content. We're relaxed. I keep bursting into tears at odd moments. I keep forgetting we got married. Then I remember in a sudden burst of emotion. Like Oh! We did it.
He has not forgotten.

Today isn't all that remarkable. Ben has gone back to work. He's going to tell them and life takes an even stranger turn with that. He takes Cole's place in life permanently but he will not become Cole. Ben may be rash and without consequence but he doesn't have violence toward me in his heart save for his strength under the quilts. Save for his emotions, forceful in their escape from his head and his heart.

I'm headed over to the shopping center shortly. I need new runners, going to try on some of the newer Saucony shoes. Then I need to get my watch strap fixed (again) and check on the mail and see if the bank calls me back on one thing and then make a really good dinner. I want to greet Ben at the door when he comes home tonight with the apron/stilettos/pearls and a nametag on my dress that says "Hi, my name is Mrs. Ben" and a pot roast if the Gods of cooking are kind to me later on.

If not, it will be pizza delivered to the front door, which, honestly? Would make him just as happy.

Things are really good. Very good. The rain is pouring down in sheets today, it's so dark inside the house I have lights on and it feels cozy. It feels good.

We did get rings yesterday too. Ben switched the rings that he usually wears on that finger and slid his wedding band on and smiled, saying he'd get used to it quickly, that he liked it. That we picked cool rings. We did, they're very plain polished platinum bands that are really comfortable. He likes comfortable rings, he never ever takes his off. I take mine off for painting and heavy construction because otherwise I would probably crush them when I hurt myself, which happens more often than not. I may not from now on.

Lochlan went back to Toronto this morning, hesitating briefly before telling me he wasn't going to give me the 'if I need him' lecture, that he knows I know how to reach him if I need him, that he's that sure that I probably won't need him, that this is possibly the shortest distance I have ever jumped. That this makes so much sense no one's worried or watching or hoping for the best. They know it's right. They know it's good, that we'll be fine. That we're happy.

So damned happy. And getting better every single day, both of us.

And it's a red raincoat day, a day for walking slowly to catch each and every drop, a day for wearing warm layers under that bright coat, with headphones and hair tucked firmly under a hood tied tight against the elements. A day for smiles half-hidden under an umbrella, a day for changes of the good kind. A Monday like I've never seen before.

Late afternoon update: I stayed home and good thing, that. Ben came home with a week of matrimony leave which he said is like maternity leave without the sleepless nights unless that's how Bridget wants to roll, and he preempted my disaster-in-the-making roast with McDonalds. He did ask me if I'd wear the stilettos and the apron, just later on, when the kids are asleep.

This is what life with Ben is going to be like. Weird.

To hold.

If there's one thing about me that you know for sure, it's that I only skip a day of posting when I am away. So, sorry, but I was away yesterday.

Getting married.

I got married, Internet. I married Ben. Sigh. Do you want to know what he said that changed my mind? He told me this:

Maybe you would feel less like his if you were mine.

He told me that the night he came home to find me sitting on the floor in the front hall covered in ashes and sobbing my heart out, and it's a sentence that I couldn't argue with if I tried. I don't want to try.

I haven't slept since forever. I haven't stopped smiling. I...I don't even know where to begin or how to explain or why I feel as if I need to continually justify this rather Elizabeth-Tayloresque turn my life seems to have taken.

A third husband, and all before I am even forty years old? Ben will be forty this December and for the record I am soon going to be a blisteringly ancient thirty-seven. Thirty-seven. Told I don't look a day over twenty-six. Do I believe them? Not on your life.

We started with prenuptial agreements and promises, through most of last week. Priorities. Me finding out that Ben started a trust fund in the children's names and they're wealthy because he didn't know what else to do with his money. And he can't touch my future earnings and I cannot touch his. We're just keeping things the way they are. His lawyers are paranoid, mine are not hopeful but we laughed anyway, after I found out he is way wealthier than I thought he was, and I have far more money than I did the last time we traded financial secrets, which would have been sometime long before I paid off his motorcycle and then to retaliate he put the money back in my account.

The ceremony took place last evening out by the creek on Nolan's farm, near picnic rock where Ben proposed. The children were there. The guys were all there. The woods were full of love and support and we recited our simple vows to Sam and cried a whole bunch and maintained a sort of incredulous joy that leaves me tearful even now.

We ate and drank and danced and cried and laughed and it was the most wonderful night ever. He...he's amazing. Giving and generous and caring and vulnerable to a fault. But instead of bringing out the worst in each other somehow we've managed to harvest the best. None of it is difficult or painful or unreal. All of it is beautiful. He's real. He's alive, he is healthy, he's forthright and passionate about the little things. He doesn't want to fix me, doesn't care if I am weak, he just wants to be with me.

He slipped his giant silver ring on my finger because he didn't have rings and told me I had to give it back, that we'd get real ones. I had to clench my fist all night to keep from losing it and when he noticed, he said we would go out and get them today. After lunch.

He asked if there was anything special he was supposed to know about being a husband. I told him I require a large glass of orange juice every night around eleven and he reminded me he said husband, not butler. I reminded him he said he would be the butler.

We've said a lot of words recently, we've dug deep and dug in hard, and a lot of that is so private I'm not writing about it, just know that we are very serious and this is very important and it wasn't a whim, in spite of our pretenses to make it appear to be one.

Ben is surprised at how this feels, far more wonderful than he ever thought it would, coming from someone who always viewed marriage as 'just a piece of paper'. It's never just a piece of paper. It's supposed to be a lifetime commitment to another person, through thick and thin, something we already have. Now we have the paper to prove it, that's all, a formal promise of commitment. A plan for a future together. No matter what.

He said he finally did the right thing. I said me, too. I'm not taking his last name and he's not adopting the kids until they are ready to have a say in the decision, though he is more than willing right now. We aren't moving very fast at all, despite what it seems.

He seems brave enough to be the man of this house, though sometimes he is as fragile as I am and I wonder how he ever wanted to be with me. He says he always wanted to be with me, that he was always vaguely sad that I didn't feel the same way before. I let him in on a little secret. I did, and quite often. I just never let it find the light of day, I never said anything. There's a ease to being with him that has never existed with anyone else. He's Ben and no one else is.

When I told Ben that he walked out of the room. Too cool to cry in front of Loch, I think. He came back and brought me with him to hold.

Everything's going to be okay.

Brothers by choice.

    A momentary lapse of reason
    That binds a life for life
    A small regret, you won't forget,
    There'll be no sleep in here tonight
    Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love?
    Or was it the hand of fate, that seemed to fit just like a glove?
    The moment slipped by and soon the seeds were sown
    The year grew late and neither one wanted to remain alone
    One slip, and down the hole we fall
    It seems to take no time at all

Loch is here. Pink Floyd seems to follow him wherever he goes. And since Ben is off work today he and Loch are participating in some sort of unspoken contest to see who is cooler, who knows Bridget better and who's just all round more know-it-all.

They're being obnoxious. It's ridiculous.

I'm not sure what Loch's problem is, he was one of the few unquestionable supporters of Ben and I getting together and then he shows up and tries to pull rank and get under Ben's skin. Ben isn't having it. God bless him, he's keeping Loch in his place and proving that he knows me better, the only trump card Loch has being the length of time we've known each other and that ubiquitous first time milestone. And...all that other stuff in there. Wait. Who has the upper hand?

They're doing that unconscious muscle-flexing thing. Okay, honestly Ben looks so stupid doing that. He doesn't need it, being as tall and dark-haired as he is. All he has to do is stop smiling and everyone tiptoes around him. Loch couldn't look scary if he tried. Besides, he's 5'9". Which is super-tall in my universe but relatively short by the guys' standards.

The patio lights this year are the little white and green paper lanterns. The chairs are all green and the table and bench are painted black. I like my yard but the dog really needs a gravel dog run. We've been walking him four times a day so he doesn't ruin the new grass. It almost happened last fall.

Loch just walked past me and kissed the top of my head. Ben watches him carefully. He says I'm back on my path now. That he's happy I'm away from Cole and happier still that Jacob is history. I swore at him. I cried into his collar and then he handed me off to Ben because he doesn't want to cause problems, he's here for happy reasons.

He says he gets to see Hope three times a week or so but otherwise she's nursing still so many times a day that he doesn't get whole days or weekends and it's rough on him. He said he now understands things about parenting being hard that he never truly understood before.

I nodded. I feel so bad for him, but he'll be okay. He and PJ are going to hit the town this weekend. They should take Mark too. And maybe Duncan. August has no interest right now in looking for a girlfriend, a fact that proves to be a tragedy for women everywhere. He's adorable. They all are. I'm happy at least some of them are making an effort.

And no, my pills aren't working yet. Therapy isn't really getting off the ground yet. I haven't freaked out on Sam and asked him for the box yet. Ben and I are getting along possibly better than we ever have in our lives, which only goes to show contentment can go a very long way, and things are pretty good for the moment.

My guys are all here. I'm making them dinner and they'll watch me as I move around the kitchen and they'll all take their turns kissing my head or my cheek or having a hug or taking a moment to corner me and see how I'm really doing (awesome) or just to tell me that they're happy I'm doing well, and then Ben will get more time and more attention than anyone else for the first time ever at one of these dinners, rarer than they used to be. I can stop and he'll pull me onto his knee and kiss my neck and then grin because he has everything he ever wanted, and so do I so I'll match the grin and everyone else will make fun of the two happy fools in the corner.

I'm thankful for this. Times like these. Moments like these. This is what living is all about.