Part One: The Memory Thief.

He slipped in during closing, when no one was watching, sliding a leg down through the open window and finding easy purchase on the highly polished wooden floor. He walked carefully down the dim hallway, avoiding the boards that might creak under his weight and then froze at the first door, silent and still.

Was someone coming?

He held his breath and waited.

No, there was no one there. It must have been the wind. Or the building. Sometimes buildings settle and make noises that only seem to be important when it's getting dark outside. Filling his lungs with air again he pressed on, trying the first door and finding it locked.

He moved on.

After several frustrating minutes he came to the conclusion that all the doors seemed to be locked and so he circled back to the first door, the one closest to the window at the end of the now-dark hall. It appeared to have a rather flimsy doorknob lock in a door that was half-glass, a large window set into it, single-paned, rippled with age.

Doable, he thought.

He took one last look around, just to reassure himself that he was indeed alone.

He covered his eyes with one arm and put his fist through the glass.

It shattered all around him in a deafening crash and he tore his arm away from his face to check again to see if anyone was watching him. The hallway remain deserted but now an alarm was ringing somewhere, deep within the building. He looked at his hand, watching as the blood ran down his knuckles and dripped off the edge of his palm. Any other time he would have been hypnotized by his injuries but he knew he didn't have a moment to waste now that the alarm had been triggered.

He reached through the window and unlocked the door from the inside, throwing it wide open. The door slammed against something on the inside, ricocheting back into his face. He kicked it open again before it struck him and threw himself through the doorway.

Inside he took a quick inventory of the room. There was a small window on the opposite wall that afforded better lighting than what was now in the hall and as he surveyed his surroundings he saw the room contained only a row of wooden file cabinets on each side, their drawers neatly labeled in her modern handwriting, a distinctive blend of capital letters and loopy lowercase, easy to read and impossible to duplicate.

He crossed the room with purpose now, and with rage roiling through his veins he began to rip the drawers out of the cabinets, two at a time, letting the contents fly around the room in a paper blizzard, a storm no one would ever want to be caught in. The beginnings of an evil smile began to tug the corners of his mouth upward and he started to laugh as all the lights began to come on, one by one down the hallway and then the room he was in was suddenly bathed in the harsh fluorescent light of day even though the day was long over.

And that was when the alarm stopped ringing and the screaming began.

Dischord is such a pretty word, though.

The night is gone and all we get
A picture for a poem, and we lose her

There's something about a late-morning run that throws off my entire day. I don't know why it is, but it is what it is and this is what it is. Thrown, but in a good way.

Go rake some leaves and drink some mulled cider and find a good scary movie and a big warm blanket. I'll see you tomorrow.

Reeling and dealing.

I have a headache. A blisteringly painful stabbing noise that cuts my vision in half and makes me wince every time the car door is closed and the driver (Mike..I think) is doing a damn fine job doing it gently because he knows how I feel, having been chauffeuring me around for over an hour now, stopping at the pharmacy so I could pick up a bottle of ibuprophen to go with the Evian water Caleb has stocked wherever I'm going to be.

I didn't know I could post on the go but apparently I can.

I'm playing assistant again today.

I've already gone to the loft to inspect the work that was done over the last few days, I've gone to pick out a dishwasher because Caleb can't be expected to do dishes any more than he'll be able to do his own laundry (which will be sent out) even though I can't see him cooking either, I've arranged to have his movers on the right day via phone and now he wants me to go pick out linens for him to be delivered the day before his move. I've arranged cleaning services to come and clean his old condo, which he will be giving up and also to clean the new loft before he arrives.

I still can't believe he is seriously moving here but in his state of present mind he has decided that he needs to 'retire' close to family and since his folks have each other and he wouldn't dream of moving back to Nova Scotia anyway with it's rustic charm and unsophistication he chose to come and be closer to us. And since he's only technically retiring from his CFO position at his law firm, he'll still have all his other business interests to keep him busy so I hope that means he'll have precious little time to devote to his 'family', which is the children and I.

I won't say I'm thrilled about any of this, honestly. But Ben just tells me not to worry about it, and he strums another chord on his guitar and picks up the words to a song, singing them quietly to calm me. I'm trying to hang on to that memory of last night while I get through my morning, but really, I think I'm going to try to check off the next three items on the list and then pack it in and go home and lie down. The rest can wait.

The reading tree.

During dinner this evening, Ruth and I crafted a story about a tree that ate paper. It ate scraps of notepads and phone books and cardboard tubes and paper towels with pizza sauce and old forgotten Westerns and the books that fall down behind the tables in the waiting rooms at hospitals. It ate opened envelopes, coffee filters, concert ticket stubs and love letters too.

It grew to be many different colors, high above the other trees in the forest, in shades of green and brown but also in the pale pink of Aunt Merriweather's favorite stationery and the pretty blue of city water bills. It shone in the sun because so much paper is plain white, but there was nothing plain about this tree, oh no.

If you look very closely when the leaves begin to fall from it you'll see the faint etchings on them, discarded poems, grocery lists and abandoned stories too, a little math homework and a rough sketch of the very pretty girl you sat across from at the coffee shop, and smiled at so bashfully. Poem was her name, but you did not know that. You did not ask. Her name was Tuesday and Lyrica too. She invents all kinds of names, as many names as there are leaves on the reading tree. She will never tell you her name is Bridget. She doesn't want to be the last leaf still holding to the pretty pink bark of merriweather elm.

Do not collect the leaves and try to make your own story, just read them into the wind. This is iambic recycling and you are the collector.

Mmmmm. Phish and porn, all in one day. You are so lucky, internet.

Not my youtube, but good youtube nonetheless. Today's theme, if you will. And a really good jam.

Pantomime mixtures of heaven and earth
Jumbled events that have less than no worth
Time in the forest to dig under rocks
Or float in the ocean asleep in a box

Or sink just below all the churning and froth
And swim to the light source or fly like a moth
So toss away stuff you don't need in the end
But keep what's important and know who's your friend.

My beautiful husband rescued the disaster that was yesterday. When I couldn't put the words together anymore and nothing went right and everything fell apart in the most epic fashion ever, he took a moment and then refused to buy into the ruin after the initial exchange of words.

He rescued most of the evening and then all of the night in a wonderful, physical match of wills as his hands slid over my legs just before I fell asleep. He brought me back to earth with his hand holding down my head and his lips everywhere and then took me away again and it wasn't until I was writhing against him that I realized the little things don't matter and history doesn't matter and nothing matters once the mistakes of the day get sorted out. What matters is that we're here, we're together and that with the touch of his hands I can forget everything, which makes him half porn king and half mad scientist.

Snort.

Thank you, Benjamin, for saving the no good very bad awful miserable fucked up day. I love you.

Better in the end.

It's been 328 days, 37 to go and I'm lying if I tell you I'm not counting.

But I'm also living. Trying to choose paint colors and swim lesson times and distractions and words. Choosing words is the easiest and the hardest thing of all but here I am, the one saving grace in my life being this journal because nothing else is constant except maybe the sun or the moon but maybe they're total bullshit, special effects meant to make us feel less alone somehow. I'm not sure how that works but we'll leave it for another day to explore. I refuse to go down a tangent because I have things to discuss.

Ben didn't come back with us on Sunday evening, instead choosing to stay on with Nolan for a few more days and soak up the simplicity of life on the farm and maybe give himself a chance to get over the worst of his rage and his shakes and his cravings in private, because he got progressively worse as the weekend went on and he tried so hard but I still found myself flinching when he spoke too loud or got too close or shook too hard. He should be back tomorrow or Thursday and we are being babysat by Uncle Daniel in the meantime.

And I had dinner with the devil last night, which was interesting in that he was behaving again and that's almost more frightening than when he doesn't. He bought the last loft we looked at last Friday and then threw me a curveball when he announced that he planned to move in as soon as possible. They have about ten days to finish it, closing is on the seventeenth of October.

I'm noticing everyone is sort of doing that. PJ has booked his vacation for the first two weeks of November. Schuyler moved up his dental surgery. Ben isn't hitting the road until early December again. And Duncan hasn't made any plans at all. Loch took a six week work term here to start in two weeks and I'm so incredibly touched by what I see them doing it makes a huge lump in my throat and my eyes are swimming and I can't even focus.

I was going to attempt to ask for a medically-induced coma for November but I think I'm going to be okay.

Caleb asked me formally at dinner if I would be his assistant here. He hired me to work for him part-time this week, helping to arrange the move, oversee the builders and the inspectors and the financial aspect of everything and he kept hinting at wanting me to come work for him full-time because I'm good at it, or so he said, but I wouldn't be allowed in a million years and so I turned him down.

And please, before the feminists start the email campaign about what I am and am not allowed to do, let's remember we're talking about Satan here. And Bridget.

I would have turned him down anyway. I have no interest in being with him on a daily basis. I have no interest or plans to see him on a weekly basis. I'm snorting my face off picturing him trying to live here through the winter with our blisteringly frigid temperatures and endless ice and wind. A cold day in hell indeed. He wants me to pick out a truck for him.

A what?

Can you picture him driving a truck?

Cold. Hell. Yeah.

But dinner was nice and he didn't do anything stupid. I didn't either. For once. He did comment that my hair suited me at last, being shorter and much darker and he spent far too long staring at my legs whenever he could but otherwise, yes, I know. He's still up to something. When is he ever not?

And though it may cost my soul
I'll sing for free

Jacob, you're hilarious.

Really. This whole saving-Ben thing as a way for me to save myself is...well, it's genius. Fine line between love and hate, indeed. It's the exact same way I feel about you. Loving you desperately and hating your guts at the same time for breaking every last promise you ever made to me.

I kept mine to you. I'm still here. Still fighting my way uphill. Still making so much progress, finding footholds and grabbing weeds to pull myself along and then hitting a soft part and sliding halfway back down, screaming and cursing the whole way.

I've been hot and cold, cold cold cold, hot, cold and never in-between. I've been face-down in my own agony and floating on clouds I think I self-generated. I've known love and loss and more pain than death and still I have your stupid unrealistic, unwarranted hope.

Why is that?

Why, indeed.

I don't know. Say God if you will, if that works for you. Days like this where I can wake up and nothing much is different and the inside of my head is still a shambles and a shame too and yet I'm smiling.

It's got to be the mark of true insanity.

Barn none.

Turn me inside out and upside down
And try to see things my way
Turn a new page, tear the old one out
And I'll try to see things your way

Please come here
Please come on over
There is no line that you can't step right over
Without you well I'm left hollow
So can we decide to try a little joy tomorrow
Because baby tonight I'll follow

Yesterday Ben endured no small amount of loving ribbing from the guys, everything from welcoming him into the kitchen for breakfast from congratulating him on his clear and precise enunciation. He got hugs and slaps on the back that would have knocked me down. He got smiles from the guys, they're happy to have him back and relaxed and no angry and defensive anymore. Encouragement, in boy-form.

it was nice, you know? He says it will hold. He got the mother of all scares Thursday night when he said something to me that was something Cole had said, word for word, and I pointed that out and he hasn't touched a drink since that moment.

So maybe it will hold.

It's another beautiful sunny day here on the farm and we're going for another ride. An early one, only Nolan is up so far, he's already done the chores with Ben's help and he's going to field breakfast for the kids while Ben and I take our favorite horses to picnic rock for a picnic breakfast. With jackets on and thermoses of hot coffee. And two big blankets, one to sit on, one to snuggle in.

For some more...encouragement. Yeah, we'll call it that. Have a great day.

Stealing one last breath of summer.

Maybe it isn't quite summer anymore, since it's fall already and last night saw us arrive at Nolan's farm in a caravan of trucks and smiles in the 0-degree midnight sky.

But it sure feels like it, being here.

Ben and I brought the kids and August brought the lobster, Chris brought Erin, Daniel and Schuyler brought each other, and John came too because eventually August will run out of lobster and John would like to have a hand in that event. And something about even numbers, too. I've never seen Nolan so thrilled to come out on his veranda and see us all piling out with our weekend gear, Ben and John with sleeping children in their arms, since we got the kids ready for bed and drove out at bedtime.

Ben and I crashed hard in our room, the one with all the antlers and the Mexican blankets that I love so much, so tired, such a long week behind us. Ben has stopped again, and whether it's for the moment or for the rest of his life, I like him without the liquid courage, I like him without the liquid mean and out here at the farm I don't hold my breath, he will attend meetings all weekend and soak up the strength of men who are stronger than he is and we'll just plain bask in this place where we fell in love, where he proposed and where we got married.

But isn't life always easier on a farm? Maybe we should move here.

When I woke up this morning I slid out from under Ben's arms and pulled on my jeans and Ben's sweater and went out to make coffee. There were dishes everywhere, and the fire was already made. Nolan gets up very early and the note on the table said he had gone for an early ride to get the last of the apples, if maybe I would make a pie for dessert tonight, to help ourselves, to enjoy the time, and he would be back in time to see to the kids' breakfast, since the kids have a tendency to sleep in here as well. Everyone does, and that's why I'm sitting alone here by the fire with my laptop at the breakfast bar enjoying some serious quiet of my own.

Maybe we should move here.

It's a far cry from yesterday morning, standing in luxury warehouse lofts with Caleb, lamenting wearing my black wool gabardine coat and my five-inch spiked-heel boots because I was hot and uncomfortable and worried and tired and Caleb did wind up buying the last loft we looked at before he tried to pull a trick on me, needing to stop at his hotel, and I wasn't buying it and came home early to be with Ben and was so glad I did because he had his head on so straight yesterday you could have used it as a level.

No, today is like being on a different planet. A planet where the object of my heart's desire has black-tinged circles under his eyes and shaking hands, but those eyes look at me with love and those hands are cool and gentle and his own heart beats for me so loud most of the time I don't hear anything else anymore anyway, even though I know that out here the leaves are louder in their easy rustle from the wind, and the horses neigh gently in their paddock and the creek threads itself between the stones and under the little bridge and that one breath I've been holding for a week straight comes out in a rush, air filling my lungs, clearing my head and slowing my own heartbeat down enough so I can be calm, and still, and...

...happy.

Happy.

I like that.

Idle hands, devil's work, blah blah blah.

Yesterday was difficult but it's done now and we woke up early together like ninjas in the forest, back to back, fighting the ghosts off as they came at us, one at a time. The way it happens on Henry's Saturday morning television shows. For the moment, we seem to have emerged victorious, and I'm going to get the heck on with the day, which may or may not include accompanying Satan on his short tour of converted-warehouse lofts downtown as he chooses a place to live here. I don't know what I did to get that honor. He said he needed a woman's opinion. I told him to take Daniel with him but he didn't find that funny. He wants to get me alone and see how I'm doing while he throws his money around in an attempt to impress me.

There's thirty dollars in my wallet, which leaves me already impressed. It's a good day.

It will be a good day.

Ben has a very structured day ahead which he sorely needs, because hanging out around the house with the bottle of whiskey, playing guitar, well it's all fine and romantic and something that should only happen in the movies. In real life the hero must go to a meeting with his AA sponsor, and then go see his doctor, and then come home and feed his children (I wrote stepchildren three times and then opted not to) their lunch and walk them back to school and then he has a quick meeting because I sounded the alarm and now people are worried who never seem to worry any other time, and then if he's still in one piece I'll send him to the airport to pick up August, coming home from Newfoundland, hopefully armed with a box of lobster and a lot of patience.

If he isn't up for that I'll have to go myself, in which case August had better have more than just an armload of patience for me.

A good day. Need a good day. Really, really badly. Going to make it happen.

Isn't that how it works? Jesus, throw me a bone here.

Thinking out loud.

In sleep and in waking I have discovered that our back and forth, up and down, give and take, covet and reject, love and hate exchanges were pretty much the way we've always done things, and pretty much the way things are going to be. And you can have a preference, but that won't really matter because in half a day you'll be faced with the polar opposite.

So Ben goes back and forth between warm and cold, between Jacob and Cole, between being completely sober and mildly drunk and I go back and forth between strong and weak, between determined and hopeless. Full of shit and full of stubborn, beleaguered hope. Dog-eared and tattered hope, goddamn you, you're mine.

But...wait. Go back.

Jacob and Cole.

After snarling through most of yesterday (because he hates that word and so I must use it AGAIN) Ben found some peace in our talk after dinner with Lochlan and then as Loch was leaving he overstepped a simple friendly hug, staying a little too long, holding Bridget just a little too close. He put his head down on mine and kissed my hair and wow, Ben got over here really fast and he didn't talk very loud or act very mad he just very gently pulled me out of Loch's arms and wrapped me in his own and he started rocking. Rocking back and forth while we stood there and eventually I saw Lochlan's shoes turn and walk quietly out the front door and we stayed in the front hall locked in this awkward...dance, for lack of better description, and my head was pressed to Ben's chest and his hands were shaking, everything was shaking but he was strong on his feet and his arms were tight and eventually his hand moved from my ear and I could hear what he was whispering over and over again.

You're mine now.

It's a strange and frightening feeling to know someone so well and come to find out you didn't know them at all in the way you thought you did. He looked at me like he could read my mind because he can and he told me not to ever be afraid of him, that he would deal with this. That we'd be okay because we're always okay, even when we're not okay at all. He's right but what in the hell do I do to help keep him safe in the meantime?

That's a rhetorical question, in case you thought you had to answer it. I know what I have to do. Be here. Wait him out. Protect him. Not freak out. Just stay wound up tight and keep doing what I'm doing and wow, it's just like Cole. But then, the words coming out of his mouth, that's Jacob and...

Oh, I'm so fucked.

Miles to go.

I saw your light once
Did you see mine?
But not all things will pass away
You turned your light off
So I turned mine away from your sadness,
Away from the nothing that you feel for me

My run this morning was cold because of more than just the weather. Temperature-wise it was almost perfect. Cool enough to keep my sweat cold but warm enough to strip down to a t-shirt three kilometres in and I could take my jacket off and tie it securely around my waist which gives me a slight wobble when I run and gave Lochlan pause to assume it meant I was open and ready to talk.

I wasn't.

If I wanted to talk about Ben's drinking problem I would just talk about it instead of writing about it and then logging off, closing the browser window and walking away from it so I can see if he needs anything, pretending that it doesn't bother me when he retreats into himself, as if his pain is that much greater that he can't crawl out of himself long enough to let me help him. I want to help him, I just never know what to do because nothing works and so I just hover on the fringe of his life like a bumblebee around a garden full of wild flowers.

Loch flew out yesterday because in the brief span between the total blackout and brief, tentative sobriety Ben asked me to stop. Just stop everything. Stop letting everyone run our lives, stop letting them interfere, stop taking medications that barely work and therapies that merely spread the pain around, keeping it in the forefront and just let us be. Let us be in love, let us learn how to be happy, let us just do family things and smile more and not let the ghosts win. Not let the past be the Most Important Thing.

But then he would slip again and the snarl would return and he no longer wanted to talk or do anything except disappear and pour more liquid on his flames to try and make it stop hurting so much.

He was angry that I told people. Because I need help with this. I've never been married to an alcoholic before. I've never been married to Ben before. When we were friends, I could never understand how he made himself so easily loved and hated all at the same time. When we got married I expect that to change and it didn't.

I spent last evening following him around and watching as he turned all of our friends away. While he tried to lock down our lives even though at this point we're forced to play them out to a group vote based on the choices we've made, based on my needs to not isolate myself from more objective sources that I trust. As fast as he could turn them away, I would call them and reassure them that I was humoring his outbursts, that we are okay, and someday we might be more than okay but for today just please, please keep the peace and stay away from him so that he doesn't hurt you.

He had a few kind words for the kids, but they know and they look at me as if I make choices that will ruin their lives because they're old enough to pass judgement and they're old enough to know a total breakdown in willpower when they see it. The fragments of broken promises all over the floor was a dead giveaway.

And so I used my hearing loss as a convenient excuse not to talk to Lochlan while we ran, but just to churn the distance under my legs until I could turn despair into determination and Loch didn't have to do any convincing anyway.

I had an appointment booked this morning for therapy and I just got home from it. Just now.

It was watching Ben that convinced me not to stop. It was so much like looking in a mirror that I have no choice but to keep going forward, keep letting people in who can help me, keep going to therapy and keep taking medications that make me shake and have nightmares because for god's sake, I don't want anyone to ever look at me like I looked at him last evening. Maybe they already do and that's why I had to break one promise to keep a million others.

I was really hoping he was stronger so I don't have to be so hard. Or so cold, maybe.

Bring me your enemies
Lay them before me
And walk away

The one thing I always think is the most amazing thing about you is the way you will come to me with all of your secrets and then once I am holding them, heavy as they might be, you fall apart. You keep yourself together just until you can get to me, and then the flashing, angry black eyes that you look upon people with melt into warm honey-brown pools and the anger is something I don't have to see, if you can help it. If I can. It goes with your standard stern and concentrating face that dissolves into the sweet awkward smile when your eyes find my face.

I try so hard not to be afraid of you. When the hulking impossibly strong and impulsive form towers over me is instantly replaced by the willow-thin and sinewy guy who isn't as coordinated as he might have you believe, I can breathe. The one who only shakes when he doesn't drink, the one who holds those secrets inside until they block the light from his eyes and that is what turns them to black. That's the one that scares me.

But I have those secrets now and I'm putting them out somewhere because they don't matter.

I walked into this with my eyes wide open and my broken heart beating once every seventeen days and I knew you had a very big problem but hey, don't we all?

So the fact that your albatross won't go away doesn't scare me and I'm not going to hide it for you.

I'm not leaving you either.

Last night you said only we matter, and we'll figure it out but when all the complications are stripped away we're still a team and we're going to stay a team no matter what. And you said it with fear instead of conviction and I don't like that but when I tried to turn away you wouldn't let me. Most days I don't know who needs who more. You can burn down all the history you like, the memories will remain.

The memories are what make us who we are.

Last night I learned that it wasn't you that the angel appointed to save my soul. It was me, sent to save yours.

Fade like a played-out song.

We come to find
What we take for granted
Keeps us alive in the end

So don't let time
Leave you empty handed
Reach out tonight and make amends

What's different is nothing. We're on a long play record and the needle is stuck in the middle, grating across the grooves in a hiss of static and the wailing guitar notes have dissipated into thin air.

In this house misery loves company. She waltzes across the wooden floor and reaches her arms out to embrace him and company, well, he comes back for more, always. He does whatever he must to put forth a show of strength and no matter how flimsy he feels he keeps coming back for more.

And every now and then someone will bump the record player and we all get to hear a little more of our song, but really, this thing is never going to work right.

Wooden ships and iron men

We'll have to stop at the river market today to get apples, I didn't get them yesterday. I got something else instead.

After not appearing at home more than thirty minutes after my appointment with Sam ended, Ben came looking for me, walking the three blocks to the church, a curious look on his face no doubt. He found Sam pacing his office pretending to be busy and found me locked in the tiny women's bathroom, shaking like a leaf and unwilling to leave that room until I felt like I could pull myself together and face the world. Sometimes our appointments end like that.

They're really hard.

Ben came into the washroom and shut the door behind him. He smiled at me softly, told me that lunch was ready and that he'd walk me home now. He ran some warm water and wet some rough paper towels and held them out to me to wash my face. Then he took my bag and my coat from me and asked if I was ready. I shook my head and he said we would do it together, on three. He counted to two and took my hand, pulling me out of the room and into the hall. Sam met us, with so much concern in his eyes he matched Ben perfectly and sometimes I wonder who exactly this is harder on.

But nevermind that, there's a group hug to be had, and four arms is always better than two.

Ben and I walked home slowly, holding hands, and made sandwiches and some milk for lunch. After we ate, Ben offered a drive. A long leisurely drive burning up overpriced gas and carbon credits in his oversized truck with the oversized speakers under the seats so I can feel the music and we drove for hours, listening to music I chose, holding hands and stopping now and then to let the kids explore things and blow off energy and to eat some Thai food because I had wanted it earlier. I ate an entire plate of pad thai and thought I might start sprouting beans through my ears but it tasted so wonderful. And then to my delight we kept driving, exploring new neighborhoods and hearing the wind on highways I've never been down before, still holding hands.

And then finally, home. Home to respond to messages from Sam seeking assurance that I was indeed okay and home to get the kids bathed and in pajamas and home to not pay attention to movies on the television and home to charge phones and change to warmer sweaters and home to put the day to bed so that the next would be better, happier and different.

Holding hands.

We'll get the apples after lunch today, and maybe some carrots. I won't be letting go of Ben's hand though. I think I'll keep it. It's warmer than it used to be and that is a gift I didn't expect from him. Something tells me it was there all along, I just didn't want to see it before.

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.

Dayplanner on fire.

    I want to know if you will beg me
    and then tell me how to love you
    like anybody else would
    I know you're risking failure, (risking failure)
    but I'd hope you set your levels (for how long)
    so you can run for cover

I'm home from nottherapy. Fun. Actually it is fun. I just go and talk to this very kind man who seems to know everything and he sounds like a minister but I haven't asked. I just go and talk. It's very quiet, very low-key and very low pressure and it seems to be nice so far.

Today he had donuts. I didn't have one but he offered four times. I made a promise right there to never bug anyone again with multiple offers of food when they've said no already.

We're home now for lunch and then we're going to an appointment with the lawyers, all of 'em to iron out some things, first me privately for cutting ties with my publishing company and then together to map the future so everyone is safe financially. Long story I will share early next week.

And then Loch arrives! Late this afternoon by commercial flight, hopefully armed with a drive full of baby pictures and a goal to do nothing but enjoy the weekend. He's not staying here, he'll be taken care of nicely at John's house instead. I'm so happy Loch is coming out. It's important that he's here for a break and to catch up with the guys. I suppose this weekend is going to turn into a testosterone-fest but I don't care. Having all my friends in one place is important and it's few and far between anymore.

And I still need groceries. Ack. I'm off, then, have yourselves a good day.

Swinging from a star.

There is no post today. I'm too busy trying to learn how to be a normal human bean. Maybe there's a post in here after all, between the epic battles and last-minute jitters, and why in the hell someone would pick right this month to quit smoking. Probably the same reason another person picked right this month to go back on her meds, and oh, aren't we two peas in a pod, two licks with one stick. Sometimes I fear for everyone's sanity on days like today.

Loch arrives tomorrow, slightly ahead of schedule. Escaping. Escaping is an art form in this case, he is fed up, took a super five day long weekend and will spend it with us. Ben is being difficult, I am being worse than difficult, and thank heavens we have Ruth and Henry around to teach us all how to behave like adults.

Because sometimes we are children. And not the good kind.

In other news, the ice cream parlour is open for the summer, the very last pile of snow from where I was making a sled-mountain at the bottom of the driveway is gone and Butterfield knocked me right into the mud. I raked all the dirt and sand and trash right into the road this morning because the street cleaners will be around soon and for the past two years I would bag it all. I felt daring and scofflawish. I felt weird doing that but try bagging sand, guys. PJ came by and said things looked great, that I was doing a good job putting winter away and ushering in the warmer times.

I nodded. I surely fucking am. I have help though. Gothboy does a good job putting up patio lights.

Without representation.

Waking up this morning was fun.

Ben was already awake. Lying there breathing softly, tracing my hair down across the pillow. I turned over and he pushed me away again, tucking me down against him, one hand on top of my head, holding me still, the other hand pressed flat against my lower back, forcing my pelvis out. It felt so good I didn't want to ever stop this morning but eventually he turned me back into his embrace and I do believe I screamed right into his mouth.

He's awesome. He knows things to do that I swear I don't think other men are even remotely aware of. Don't ask me to elaborate though, ask him. He'll probably tell you in excruciating Bridget-detail because he can now.

You probably won't even have to ask.

In other news that's not fit to print, everyone has contacted the Evil One to let him know that they aren't the least bit worried about their Bridget and he can't touch her. Literally or figuratively anymore. It's funny, I didn't have to use anything I had. His attempts at blackmail fell flat because I beat him to it and offered up the DVD from that awful week in November because I needed them to safely know what it was all about. They knew and they sat for just long enough of it to take Caleb's leverage away. And instead of punishing me for my jacked-up, destructive risks they just hold me tighter now.

God bless them all.

And Lochlan is flying in for the weekend! I've been cleaning today and wondering who in the hell I'm going to get to represent me now after squeaking out of my contract at the last minute. Any ideas? It wasn't so much about not wanting to write anymore, I just don't want to write as him anymore. My pseudonym/alterego. He isn't me. It became an epic struggle. So Loch was invited up to celebrate my independence from that guy who shadowed my every word and to maybe try and celebrate a little independence of his own. It's going to be a terrific weekend. We have a very small and important party planned. I've already raked up the grass and swept the patio and put the lights up. It's supposed to be warm and sunny, everyone is very excited and that, my friends, is contagious. I hope it's terminal.

I have a million things to do, so I'm going now but tell you what: why don't you write in your blogs so that when I'm tired later I have something to read. That would be great. Or go have very good sex and tell us all about it.

No? Chickens.

Change.

Another post courtesy of the secretive esoterrorist. Esoteric terrorist? Terroteric. Whatever.

I've always been so incredibly resistant to change. There are changes coming. Nevermind, they're already here.

Clocks are ticking, whistle-bells are clanging and if given a choice, I would choose to run the other way, slipping on my headphones as I go and living in that moment, only that moment when I am deep inside my head and cut off from the world.

Changes like standing up to Caleb, who in the what the fuck were you thinking category today sent me a text message, written this morning probably somewhere between a hundred-dollar shave and a breakfast meeting. Because he isn't stupid and somehow he always manages to find things out long before the rest of the world. Someday someone will tell me how he does this, though I expect a lot of people told him just to rub it in. His reaction was to send me a threatening message, which, when I stopped laughing, made me sad for him.

Not a feeling I am used to, I'll tell you that for nothing.

I'm sure my reaction will simply trigger a wave of disastrous emails or confrontations with him, so I'm just going to KEEP GOING FORWARD because hell, nothing in the world could fail me now. The good news is I preempted him months ago. The best news?

He underestimates my friendships.

Other changes like cutting ties with virtually all of my network in the publishing world in order to start over, my agent disagreeing with my choices, with backing out of contracts at the eleventh hour and refusing to support me now, though he stood for everything else and it's like losing a family but I'm going to start over.

Changes like going back on meds I really need but different ones that might work or might not, and changes like ones I won't tell you about today (to save for another) but they involve everyone I know to some extent and I'm leaning heavily on their good graces for the duration.

Again, starting over.

Every single day of my life I've fought to stay out of the inside of my head because it's sad and panicky and destructive and so unhappy. It's the part of me that has no answers for itself. It can't tell you why it's unhappy any more than I can tell you why I am. It just is what it is. I have learned (almost) how to live with it, in spite of it and within it.

It is who I am.

There are moments of joy, moments when I am relaxed. Moments when I'm having fun. Escaped into a movie, forced into my seat on a tilt-a-whirl, the moments before I fall asleep when things are good right then and there, not awful. Moments when I know for sure that I am loved.

The rest of the moments I will never wish to be here. I can't do what I want. I can't go where I want, I can't be who I want to be. Sure, I'm making a stab at all of it but at the end of the day this is a race I can't even place in, let alone win. I have so much on the inside and no one is ever going to see much of any of it. I have qualities that reach so fast past what you'll get from other people it isn't even funny.

But you know what? People will always go for the shallow because they can't deal with what's inside of them. They can't touch it, they don't know themselves, they don't want to know.

It's dumb. It's sad. It's ironic and pointless too. And I wasn't even going to post today. I'm busy being shallow-but-deep too, seeking out those tiny moments of joy just to stay alive because it's what's expected. And I'm going to live the rest of my life being told what to do because it's for the best and it doesn't sound like it but I chose all of this and I'm happy I did, and I will be happy with the outcomes because I'm doing the best that I can.

Even though I hate change. I hate being forced to do things I would otherwise put off and I have learned to thrive on pain because it's all there is and maybe if you keep forcing change, something will change. For the better.

For the best.

On taking dares.

    I'll shove your head under water
    but I won't ever let you drown

The day I met Ben it was sunny and warm. He was sitting in front of an unlit campfire, guitar in arms, singing at the top of his lungs. A cool song, an original song. It sounded good. It was grungy and harsh and soft all at the same time. It was deep.

He was adorable. Dark. Pale. Gothic metal guy. Cute (shhhhh, Christ.). When he got to the end I clapped, having plunked myself down across from him to listen to the rest while Cole went off in search of deadwood with Christian. He smiled and introduced himself and I told him my name and said he had a beautiful voice. He said thank you as if it were something he heard many times a day, a confidence evident in his abilities that he keeps so far removed from his personality it's as if he has two men trapped in one body. He told me he knew who I was, that Cole spoke of me often and that they worked together, though Ben was leaving for a new job soon. He said he hoped he'd be a good camping friend, proving his thoughtfulness right off the bat, as if you've ever been on a group camping trip with people who just don't mesh, it can turn a fun long weekend into a never-ending agony in which the minutes tick by.

It's funny how that part turned out actually. When it comes to travel, Ben is incredibly forgetful, especially with big ticket items like, oh, passports. He never ever forgets his guitar. Always has the guitar.

It was hot that day, oppressively so and we had all retreated to the shade to try and stay cool, drinking beer, being silly, while Cole and Ben and Mark entertained with songs and trading leads and telling stories. Finally the sun went down and everyone had grouped off, some talking by the fire, some exploring the shoreline, some in tents talking or reading.

I wanted to swim, wanted to remove the stickiness of the day, the bug spray, the sunscreen, the sweat. I told Cole I was going and asked if he wanted to join me. He didn't but Ben did and so we agreed to meet at the water in ten minutes. I was back in five in my bikini and he came along a couple beats later, in board shorts and a t-shirt. I asked him what the t-shirt was for and he said modesty. We laughed and he took it off. He had a perfectly smooth chest with nicely defined, thick muscles without being obvious. Natural strength.

He went in first and held his hand out for me to follow on the rocky bottom. We got out up to my neck and he stopped, the water barely mid-chest on him. We swam around each other in circles, talking and floating and diving and then all of the sudden it was dark. Super-dark. We could see the campfire lit from shore and Ben asked if I wanted to take a dare.

I pointed out foolishly that I have never failed to make good on a dare, a comment he never forgot again in his life.

He dared me to skinny dip, his eyes flashing.

I said I would if he did. He laughed and said he probably wasn't nearly as impressive.

I asked him what he meant, and he said he never saw a girl less self-conscious in a bikini. I pointed out everyone had the same parts to cover. He asked if I minded when people stared. I said no.

He held up his shorts.

Okay, fine. I untied the strings and held up my two piece.

He let out a surprised laugh. We weren't self-conscious with each other in the least.

He, well, he was impressive. Do I need to elaborate? I guess there are things I never forget too. (He has since read this and pointed out he must be twice as awesome, since cold lake water tends to have the wrong effect on things such as that. I would have to agree there.)

We continued to swim around each other and talk. Cole came down to the water and grinned and told me it was time to come in. Ben swam over to me and grabbed my bikini and threw it to Cole. I tried to retaliate but only served to get dunked and Ben went in to shore. About waist-height he pulled his shorts back on and then joined Cole and they exchanged a few words and had a laugh at my expense and then I asked Cole to throw back my suit so I could come in. He refused and they laughed again. I said fine and I came in anyway, Ben watching every step I took, Cole watching Ben. When I passed Cole I told him thanks a lot and I grabbed my suit. I struggled back into the wet suit and we returned to the campfire and he brought out a towel and tried to make it up to me.

I didn't realize his brain was already in motion.

An hour later Ben announced that his tent was at home because it wasn't here. Cole wasted no time, inviting him to sleep with us, even though I pointed out Chris brought a two-man and they could bunk together, couldn't they? Cole told me not to be so fucking uptight and Ben waited until we were settled and then Cole abruptly put me in the middle, saying that he would have more room and it would be less weird if I was in between them.

And that night I slept. I didn't think I would but I slept between them all night and when I woke up I had four arms around me and Ben was wedged in behind me so tight I think I might have known his middle name before I had to ask. Cole woke up and grinned and asked me if I slept well. I'm almost sure now that Cole was definitely grooming Ben for something more when I left him and long before that, and that's why Ben felt so slighted, jilted when I left Cole for Jacob and subsequently vetoed the great polygamist plan of 2007 or whatever the hell he was up to.

And I failed to notice my friendship with Ben was strangled by his feelings because I was too busy chasing angels.

The goofiest part about the whole thing was every single camping trip since that one, Ben has forgotten his tent on purpose. And I still have never missed a dare. I'm taking one tomorrow, actually, so there might not be an entry. I'll be back Tuesday to tell you all about it.

The energetic nature of volume.

    will it change your life if I change my mind?
    when she's lit the whole wide world
    I want to know if you will beg me and then tell me how to love you
    like anybody else would
    I know you're risking failure, (risking failure)
    but I'd hope you set your levels (for how long)
    so you can run for cover
    you better start to love her
    now are we this pathetic?
    you made me finally see it
    (will it change your life when I change my mind,
    will it change your mind when I change my life)

You know how life just ticks along and then you get thrown all kinds of curveballs? Things you don't expect?

Yes, like that. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Good. Don't get comfortable, then.

Is it Saturday? It seems to be. PJ called me Muffin today. He hasn't done that in years. Ruth went on her first sleepover at a friend's house for a birthday, leaving me feeling panicky and overprotective and Henry got to stay up late and watch movies and eat chocolaty things and be spoiled.

I mailed off some unsolicited short stories today that will probably be rejected in due course. I learned I buy jeans too big and that my ego is so fragile I'm amazed I can get out of bed in the morning.

But I do anyway.

Because I'm Bridget. The former Saltwater Princess and that nickname is nothing more than a painful reminder now of a romantic dream-like state that had all the stamina of a bubble blown by a child on a rainy day. I'll just be Bridget, and you can be Internet, and we can pretend we get along.

It's a good night.

I feel happy.

I have Beg by Evans Blue firmly lodged in my head. How in the hell did that happen?

My spartans fight a different sort of enemy.

Bridget, don't move.

WHAT IS THAT?

A baby spider, baby, relax.

GET IT OFF ME! OH MY GOD.

Shhh, it's okay. I've got it.

Oh hurry hurry hurry, please, Ben.

Man, you need to relax.

I hate bugs.

Yeah, I know, but this is over the top.

Sorry. I really really really hate bugs.

See, if you were bigger they wouldn't look quite so scary.

Nice, thanks.

Anytime.

Saltwater Youtube.

Oh and ignoring the post around the link, remember this? The youtube part, linked in the third paragraph in that post. The Foo Fighters. At least thirty female emailers thanked me for pointing out the goodness that is Taylor Hawkins.

Who everyone said looks like Jacob, but he doesn't IN REAL LIFE.

Because what I never told you was that I got to experience it live a little while ago and I put up my own taped experience. The video isn't great (I was jumping up and down, now I understand how all the bad concert vids wind up on youtube and I'll never speak ill of them again), but the sound was awesome and seeing it live, seeing them live, was really fucking cool.

At 2:22 into the video you can hear Ruthie squeal.

Enjoy.

(Link has now been removed, thank you).

Dented kettle.

More surprises today.

The beard? Gone again, mostly. He's rocking a goatee of stubble today. He still looks like a serial killer. A hot one, but serial nonetheless. It's just too scary. Or maybe I'm too used to his clean-cut cuteness. Hotness. Whatever. I almost forgot my post.

Ben has quit smoking (again, shhhh.). His doctor has advised that he really really needs to stop this time. I'm so glad, I pointed out kissing the Marlboro man isn't nearly as nice as kissing a guy who doesn't smoke and he was vaguely offended. He points out it's the only thing that makes him look like a cool kid anymore, being thisclose to forty and all that. I pointed to the wall of guitars and asked him why he didn't get his cool from that.

Well...he thought that was pretty cool after all. For now.

Oh and the Fridays off thing? Still a feature of his life and part of his new contract with his old shop. When he worked every Friday night delivering pizza as a teenage boy he made himself a promise that when he grew up he would never work another Friday again as long as he lived. It took until he was almost thirty-nine to pull it off with any ceremony at all considering how little he actually works when he's home but it's certainly nice to see him home today.

This morning also saw a third (fourth?) surprise. Bikes. Not the motorcycle, but actual bicycles. The last time I was on a bicycle was when I was a preteen (or 'tween, as they seem to be called these days) and I went ass over teakettle over the bars and broke several teeth. I did the same thing on a skateboard a few years earlier. Me in control of things with wheels (or rudders!) are just not a great plan overall, okay? He thinks it would be a great idea for all of us to go on bike rides.

I'm trying to get into it. Slowly. I did survive the four-block ride this morning and pointed out I run faster than I bike. He was not impressed with me at all. He said we were riding slowly for me to get used to the gears. And I am not graceful. I kept trying to get on and off the bike by hurdling my leg over the front bar instead of swinging up from the back, like how I get on (I know, mount. Gah.) Nolan's horses.

Okay, the horse might have been less scary but at least when I got going on the bike I didn't have the high-pitched squeal that went on for a good ten minutes like I did with the horse.

(Snort.)

I'll take the horse back, in any case. Horses don't need to be pedaled and don't have to contend with cars crowding us off the trail.

Ben asked me if I would do this for him, and he would quit smoking just for me. I told him in order to be a success he needed to do that for himself, not for me. He called me something awful and said I sounded like a therapist and how ironic of you, the formerly so fragile miss b.

He said he would quit for me anyway, that he'd do just about anything for me, he wants me that much. I told him he could make lunch for me then. I'm starving.

Notes from left field.

    Make me a better place
    it's filled with a little love, yeah
    make me a better place
    it's filled with a little love, yeah

Oh, look. It's a better day, a stronger morning, a chance to get some things out that I won't say out loud for fear that I go up in smoke or catch fire or maybe just blow off the face of the earth like dandelion fluff on a warm summer breeze into the endless blue sky.

It's raining. A glorious dark sky, closed in, warm. Cozy.

The box thing. Really, it's better that it's not here. If I need it I know where to go. And it's a tiny little satellite Jacob that fits in two hands. The mothership was taken back to Newfoundland by Jacob's parents. All ten pounds of it. They wanted to do it the other way around but I was otherwise engaged and not here to argue and it was decided for me that the smaller one would be more Bridget. I could carry it around. Oh how I carried it around at first.

There is no obituary. Stop looking. There was a lovely tribute in the church Jacob grew up in and the one that he left here which amounted to something he had written and a picture of the four of us above it and otherwise his parents were too horrified to announce his death publicly. Suicide isn't something you speak of, you see. They are old-fashioned like that, as they well should be at their ages. They, like me, almost six months later are just beginning to try on their new shoes of bereavement and finding out that they are still too tight, painfully so, and you can't walk in them yet so they'll go back in the dark closet and let's just close the door now, shall we? We'll try them on again another day.

Yes his things are still in that closet and yes every day I'd like to go in there and shut the door and never come out again. Instead I go in the pantry and sit by the Keebler boxes and wish I lived in the cookie factory inside the little cartoon tree because I bet that no one ever cries in that house. I make a very good elf.

Ben has come in the pantry three times to sit with me. He's been very good about this. The first time he sat down and brought two shelves and fourteen cans of soup and fruit down on our heads. It hurt like hell but we laughed because Ben doesn't quite fit in the pantry. He didn't adopt Joel's trick of turning around, getting as close to the door as possible and then sitting down slowly beside where I tuck in beside the baskets on the floor. He's getting the hang of it now.

He brings home a new CD just about every week for me to try out and listen to. He's trying desperately to avoid the old favorites and the crashing pain of me listening to songs that tear my heart apart. I can't afford any more injuries to my poor little heart and for the work I try to do to strengthen it every day those new seams that I sew are tested and sometimes they hold but sometimes they're weakened and I know this patch job won't hold forever but for now it's still better than nothing.

Loch calls me every single day to talk, only he tells me about Hope and all the wonderful things she can do and he tells me things I shouldn't be told about himself and his struggles to be a dad from far off because instead of getting married they broke up again and we trade miseries and confessions and call it support. It's his only way of keeping tabs from far away and Ben has begun to resent it just enough to bring a difficulty to things and I don't blame him in the least but for now no one is going to go out of their way to point it out.

Ben and I are terrific, thanks for asking. I love him to bits but there's still a huge part of us falling back on friendship to get us through the very hard parts. It's sometimes very awkward. Well, Ben is very awkward sometimes, tripping over his own feet and his own words as much, and then other times he's the smartest person I've ever met, cool and smooth and sure of everything. I like him best when he's warm and funny and making sick jokes and being so perverted I don't think I'll ever let him have lunch with my mother. My kids are used to him, he tones it down or complicates it enough to keep them from being corrupted. They think he's awesome. And he likes them for them. He isn't trying to step in and be a father to them. Ben has never wanted to be a father in his life to anyone, but he's told a few people now (not me) that if he had to chose children to be responsible for and to love (he already loves them) it would be my two. No small feat for a man who is a giant child sometimes.

That isn't an insult. Hell, look at me. I am so immature I let people lead me wherever they want to go and then I realize I'm lost and I need to find my way back but I wind up hitchhiking on a back road and along comes a truck with a guy inside and he looked familiar and he told me not to expect him to carry my baggage because he had his own and it was heavy enough. And then he asked for my help in carrying his stuff too and I agreed and it was maybe the best thing ever. It gave me purpose and it gave me power, to be the strong one.

Even though sometimes? I think he's pretending just to see how far I will get. I hope I can surprise him because I'd like to make him happy. I'd like to make me happy too and I have to come first.

Don't I?

Bites of wind.

Holy smokes, it's freezing outside.

It isn't actually, it's sunny and almost ten degrees. But it's cold if you're on the back of Andrew's motorcycle for a good forty minutes. My thighs hurt. It's very difficult to unclench my fingers from the shape they're in from the deathgrip I had around Andrew's chest. He's not nearly as big as Ben is and every corner felt like a bitter end. I thought I would die and would have rethought the whole trip had he not taken me to the coolest little place for lunch.

It only took me all of three minutes to figure out that he was Ben's snitch, buttering me up only to find out if I have any doubts at all now, over events of late and conversations conducted with fragile hearts packed tight and clinking in the back of a truck on a long and bumpy road. I told him what he could take back to Ben, and that everything is better, that somehow Ben found one sentence to say to me that managed to express both how he felt and eradicate any doubts I might ever have about his motives or his mortality or his loyalty to me, if I had any doubts left at all.

I'm not going to share what Ben said because for once I'm not going to jinx it by telling everyone who isn't awfully close. But I made PJ cry when I told him. And I will tell you, dear Internet. But not just yet.

The blind leading the deaf.

    I'll follow you if you follow me
    I don't know why you lie so clean
    I'll break right through the irony

    Enlighten me
    Reveal my fate
    Just cut these strings
    That hold me safe

    you know my head
    You know my gaze
    You'd know my heart
    If you knew your place
    I'll walk straight down
    As far as I can go

My shoes are wet and soaked with creosote and my hands are ice-cold this morning. Butterfield and I ran the tracks until I couldn't see my neighborhood anymore and didn't really know where we were but I knew I could turn at any time and just follow the line back the way I came.

There are giant standing pools of filthy winter water where the snow used to be, within which rests litter of eight months of indoor weather and outdoor helplessness. Somewhere is even the wrapper from a granola bar I ate in a hurry one day as I tried to multi-task on a walk and then I realized when I was halfway back that I must have dropped the wrapper when I pulled my mittens out of my pockets. It was simply too cold to go back. My penance will always be picking up water bottles and coffee cups from in front of my house. People park up and down my street on football game days and they're a messy beerish lot. I pick up after them quite a bit.

I've brought the windchimes and the angel statue out of winter storage. They're by the back door along with all the lawn chairs and patio lights, ready to go out the minute the snow goes. Then I'd like to sweep the little pebbles off the big flat rocks and rake the grass up well so it grows, lush and green and then maybe I'll excavate a little in the front since we have worn a path cutting through the front yard from the side for as long as we've lived here to go to school. May as well give up on grass in front and do a path and some bark and maybe a few low flowering shrubs, hardy ones to get through the winter. I failed to protect the junipers this winter, having been left by Jacob mere days before I was to head out with burlap and stakes and it just never got done but the bushes look okay so far.

The steps need to be fixed, I want to paint the front door, maybe later this week, and I need to paint one of the kitchen doors too because I forgot and just noticed it today.

While all that goes on I'll begin washing and putting away winter things, we're now in lighter cold weather gear. The hats and big heavy mitts can go. Ruth's boots that hurt her legs because they are stiff and new, my hikers, barely broken in.

I'm going to put winter away. A time a year for me that speaks of promise and warmer nights and days I can think without it hurting so much.

And last night Ben came home and kissed me hard and lingered so long, when I finally pulled away and stared at him, he grinned. I asked him what was so funny and he said it wasn't funny but it was amazing. The whole way home, he said he held his breath, to give to me. It wasn't literal but I knew what he meant and I love it all the same.

Private Benjamin.

(By request, an esoteric explanation.)

We're alright. Really. Sometimes downhill is an abrupt direction, don't you think?

Ben did indeed come home about a half an hour after I talked with Daniel. He brought me flowers (!) and painfully-found apologies, proving to not do so well after all when faced with the spectacular freakouts and ultimatums I put forth as hallmarks of whatever personality I have left.

The lesson we learned? We can't walk away from each other if we're going to do this properly.

It's a hard one at that. He's as vulnerable as I am, he's lost more than I have over the past two years and we both know by far that we're bringing far less than we both have to give to the table, showing each other our worst sides, almost daring the other to give up first but no one's giving up. I waited and got my act together and he went off and took some deep breaths and came back ready to work through it or at least figure out how to weather it. Facing his fears even though they're the scariest thing in the world to Ben.

Last night he rode the darkest hours holding me tight in his arms, his chin painfully pushed down onto my head, his fingers digging into my skin for purchase from his nightmares and this morning I had some more surprises.

He went running with me. He didn't hate it! We came home out of breath and covered with mud but it felt so good you have no idea.

And then he delivered his ultimatum.

This time I was ready for it. I could meet his eyes and I didn't flinch or anything.

Little brothers as go-betweens.

Bridget, he wants me to tell you that this isn't a dealbreaker. You have to understand-he was upset. He comes home to find you hysterical and there's ashes all over the kitchen and he didn't know what was going on. He flipped out. He does that, you know this. But he wants you to know that he'll be home at dinner time.

That's in fifteen minutes, Dan.

Right.

Oh my God, he wants you to soften me up or see how receptive I am?

Oh, probably.

Where's the box?

Sam has it.

Why didn't Sam let me know?

He left it up to Ben.

And Ben dumped it on you.

Look, Bee, I'm just helping out. He loves you.

Right. Everyone loves me, no one can take it.

It's not like that.

It's exactly like that, Danny.

Do you love him, Bridge?

Yes. But there has to be room for those setbacks he was so 'healthy' about.

And ashes-all-over-the-room doubts?

Maybe.

I'll let him know, then. And I want to hear all about the make-up sex.

No, he's your brother. That's disgusting.

I imagine sex with Ben is disgusting.

Not a chance.

Love you.

Me too, Dan. Tell him to come home. The kitchen's in much better shape and so is the girl.

K, will do.

And thank you.

Anytime.

On leaving well enough alone

Here, please, learn from my mistakes. You probably would do better anyway. Give me a choice and I'll make the wrong decision every time.

Fight #34573623845358359348734 was probably the dealbreaker.

For the record, as of this morning I don't have the ring, hell, I don't even have the box. I don't have Ben and I don't have a plan. You can blame him, maybe. As Sam stood there last night trying to tell Ben it was normal and Ben screamed at him that Bridget wasn't fucking normal and never would be and he couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't stand by and watch me get hurt anymore by Jacob.

Ironic, that. This from the guy who saw almost everything Cole did to me and never said a goddamned word.

And whether he took the box with him to prevent any further accidents or just to make sure I couldn't get my ring back, I don't know.

I only left him one message and that was to remind him that he pinky-swore that he would never leave and that he promised to have the patience of a thousand men, that he would do whatever it took, even though I warned him.

Everyone warned him and then encouraged him when he said he could handle it. That he somehow thought he could handle Bridget, with death under her belt and a tenuous grasp of reality as it was.

I warned him, I told him not to fall for me, not to get mixed up with me, that I was fucked up and nothing would ever be better than the occasional short stretch of happiness and otherwise life would suck.

He didn't believe me. Said he didn't care.

I bet he does now.

How am I, you ask? I'm marginally pissed off. I couldn't get this right if I tried. I goofed. I wanted to do the right thing and put the ring away permanently and failed epically, to the point that I'm sure Jacob is still on the kitchen floor to some extent though Sam said he looked after everything. Sam told me just to have patience with Ben and that he wanted to talk to him a little more but we always seem to come out swinging anyway.

But I don't blame Ben. How could I?


It's fine, everything's fine. It appears to have been an emergency only to me.

Oh, I've fucking done it now.

The guys are at Nolan's, all of them, playing with their motorcycles, barbecuing dinner. The kids are in bed and I decided I wanted my ring back.

There's two little screws holding the box together and my hands are too jittery and the whole thing dumped out on the kitchen table. Jacob is dumped out on the kitchen table, which is too much for my head and I may implode here any minute. I had to come out and shut the doors and leave him there. On the table. He's on the table and I can't touch my ring, I can't even go into the room.

On. the. table. Oh god. I've messed up.

I called Sam but he's at church, not answering his phone at the end of the evening service and I'm just about too embarrassed and panicked to call anyone else so yes, googling the best way to ah, Christ, get the ashes back into the box is not the way you want to spend your night especially when you know you can't even touch them. I can't bring myself to and I don't know what to do. Jacob would know what to do. But I didn't ask the table because the table won't talk to me. The table gave me up. I briefly thought I would get the vacuum but oh my God, no.

Freaking out. My God, why didn't I just not wake up today?

I can't call Ben. That would be dumb. I don't know how he would understand. I think he was relieved when I left this morning because he knew I wouldn't be wearing my ring anymore, how am I supposed to tell him I wasn't up for it after all? Better yet, how am I supposed to ask him for help in getting Jacob's ashes from the table back into the box?

I'd laugh but this is not funny. It should be but it isn't. And I thought I was strong but I'm not.

This morning, I went to Sam, the bluebird box clutched in my hands.

With his help we broke the seal and I slipped my wedding ring off my finger and put it inside. Sam resealed the box for me and then gave me a hug and said a few words that would have been comfort had I been able to feel anything with my ring removed.

I wasn't ready for this. I should have left it on.

He asked me to stay for morning services but I took the box from him and fled.