I have to spend today cleaning, getting more groceries and opening back up the house since the kids will be back tomorrow. They're excited to come home. I missed them so much. Everyone is anxious to get back into routine and we're all more than anxious to get on with life. Or begin our new lives or start over or make up time or whatever it is that we're doing, because it's all new to me.
Jacob sometimes seems as if he has the inside edge, like he just knew exactly how everything was going to play out. Career-wise he's slightly shaken because he put me first. He doesn't do that. I don't want him to do that. God always comes first with Jake, no matter how messed up his life is. And he's at a crossroads now inside his heart. I think the sabbatical will be a good thing if he gets approved. Cross your fingers. It might be long delayed because he is supposed to submit his plans the year before it is to take place. At any rate he still has a month's worth of vacation and a month of education weeks he can take if things get too hard for him. He is so strong but he's taken a hard look at his actions and he told me God must have decided I am rather special to push me to the forefront of Jake's life so consistently. I tell him he was sent by God to look after me. Maybe God knew how much I would need Jake. And Jake very simply reminded me that if I believe in God's forgiveness than I will have it.
But frankly I don't know what the hell I am talking about anymore. It's complicated and half-stupid and half-wonderful and I know how to be a lover, a mother, a wife, a friend. I don't know how to be a girlfriend, a divorced woman, a single mother or one of God's children.
It's like the first day of preschool and I don't know where to sit.
I've had some strange calls too. People wonder if having been away from Trey for a whole week might make me miss him too and maybe they think I'm going to bounce back to him once again.
I'm not. I don't miss him. I haven't missed him for the first time ever. It doesn't feel weird anymore because I'm not up in the air anymore. And I try not to dwell on the dark spots even though sometimes they swallow me whole.
And I asked Jake for help, for figuring out how to do what he does, to live one day at a time and not get caught up in trying so hard to wait out the present in hopes that the future will be better or different and he smiled and went into his televangical parody in which he presses his hand on your forehead and raises the other up to the sky. Then he cracked up. It wasn't the time for that, I was being serious.
He told me if you don't take the time to find life and laughter and fun out of every single day on earth then what a waste.
And Bridget, life is too good to waste. There is too much out there to do, see and feel and it's all for us. It's a gift and we'd be foolish not to accept it.
I think I'm mad at him for not telling me this back in 1997.
And history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us
The bible didn't mention us, not even once
You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first , I loved you first
~Samson, Regina Spektor
