I'm angry. And it's just going to fly right out. Because I can't keep it in.
Based on Ben's penchant for continuing to comment on my journal, Jacob asked if I would just turn off the comments, because he doesn't like it. So I did.
Then he asked me to stop publishing my journal online. Which I briefly considered for a whole minute too much before wondering why in the hell I was considering his request at all.
I make no demands of him. None at all, except that he be kind.
And yet, the deluge has begun. He's been asking me to change my clothes, or telling me we should go to bed early (and not in the fun way, in the sleep way. Fun is still not allowed as per doctor's orders), and making me food I didn't ask for. Not cake, actual meals. He polices my moods, my weight, my pills and my words. He's been nitpicking my journal after telling me he wasn't checking it much because it makes him sad when I pour on the feelings to a hard-edged machine instead of to him. He's been pressuring me to return to couples therapy. He's been talking about taking us away for Christmas, in spite of my hard and fast rules about airports and major holidays. He's taking control. Only I didn't ask him to do that.
His ego has landed and he's forgetting that marriage is a partnership, not his kingdom to rule. But most importantly he's been forgetting that I just fell out of a marriage in which not only did I get to make no decisions but I was told what to do and how to do it, much like a child, which is sick and fucked up and I'm not doing that again. He put himself in charge because I have to be protected. What the fuck ever.
He had the nerve to reply to an email I received asking if I wanted to help organize a Christmas thing. He responded as me, and then didn't tell me. Jacob's savvy enough to delete emails but apparently not clever enough to empty the trash folder. I found them yesterday by accident. That was my final straw.
And I started a war. A spectacular leveling of my composure that he won't forget any time soon.
I lost it all over him. I left him stunned, speechless, and angry too.
The smallest people in the world have the biggest, hardest to rouse tempers you haven't seen the worst of. He got all of it, all at once. I told him if he wanted to take Cole's place then he was forgetting the most effective part of control. To rape your wife each night, to hurt her in every way that can't be seen because she can't turn to anyone after that kind of love. And that he was precious few actions away from being just like Cole. How dare he level all this unreasonableness at me now? What in hell prompted him to drop all these bombs at once and why would I ever consider living life by rewinding every bad thing I ever went through with Cole and doing it again? Didn't he remember how precariously I existed before? Didn't he remember how living under someone's control crushed my spirit and ruined my life? What in the hell could change overnight for him like that to make him behave so much like everything he told me he stood against?
He had very little in the way of answers for me. His nightmares, the ones of me leaving him. After all this, like I would walk away from him. He says my only answer when he asked was that I said I guess it wasn't what I really wanted after all. I changed my mind in his dream and he's terrified. So afraid that he isn't thinking straight.
How can you be held accountable for something you say in a nightmare you didn't even have?
The same way you can be held accountable for taking men you love so much and somehow turning them into stone.
I don't even know how I do it. But I do it and it's done and I don't know what to do with him now. And he doesn't believe that I love him, not nearly as much as I ever loved Cole, without seeing the whole love/hate thing anymore that I can't be held responsible for. It wasn't right, it wasn't healthy and it wasn't anything I had any control over. Why can't he see that all of the sudden? What in the hell is he thinking? Why is he doing this? How could he think that I don't love him. That alone puts me to the floor.
Doubts for me are like loaded guns for everyone else. Dangerous. They go off and people get hurt and right now the fact that Jake, of all people is messing with my head scares the fuck out of me in the worst way. Because I'm not in a good place anymore in my head. And when this place is all I see I run. I self-destruct.
I keep having thoughts that I should be packing. That I can just give him this house and take the kids and get away from him. That he's not helping right now and I can't deal with that. That maybe Ben and Loch were right and I'm no better off even though Jacob maybe just has a less violent, more charismatic method of propelling my life. That he wanted to control me just as much as Cole did, that it was a competition that had nothing to do with me, it was a contest to see who was the stronger man, and I was simply the trophy. What is the prize? Why, sex with Bridget. Supposedly the best thing you'll ever experience in your entire life. Whatever.
Only I didn't think Jacob was that shallow. That sick. He doesn't play with my emotions. But he does. And he isn't perfect and yet he waited so long to show his true self to me I don't even recognize him today. And his reply to that?
Bridget, don't be crazy.
Not the smartest thing to say to a heavily medicated, grieving, freaked out fucking suicidal fragile shred of humanity, is it? I didn't think it was either. But you know what? He can fucking read about it and we'll wait out our afternoon appointment with the therapist in dead fucking silence.
Oh, I'll defer to you, Jacob, I'll go back to being that submissive girl who can't find her own voice. I can be that girl for you if that's what you want. I promise you won't like it very much though. You want me to look pretty and rock your world every night and not speak in public, oh, I can do that, baby.
I had no idea it would hurt so fucking much to fight with him. It hurts. I can't even describe how badly.
And Jake can read his very first public emasculation because he pissed off the wrong girl. I'm not who I was six months ago. But he didn't know that until now. Neither did I.
