It's Thursday and I can't work so I'm stalling. I can't think. I can't play music and so I can't write.
I've been on the phone all afternoon apologizing to the boys, one by one, for the screaming, the silence, the stubbornness, and the snot and tears I have oozed into their collars and their arms. I apologized for being such a fucking bitch and for driving yet another of their friends out of our lives.
Bless their hearts, they refused to accept my offers on the basis that I am to react however the hell I please and they can take it. Because no one else could and I keep picking the ones who snap.
Most were gruff and offered me whatever I need, whenever I need it even though they know they'll get stuck with middle of the night phone calls and weird requests to do things like come and clean the drain gutter over the kitchen window so it doesn't pour out the middle from that glut of leaves stuck up there.
Joel told me that sometimes when under extreme stress people break, and that Jacob must be confused and overwhelmed and his soothing talk read like a page from the letter Jacob left for me and I agreed before pointing out that what makes me so angry is that he dropped everything to help me, why wouldn't he let me help him? Why leave without a goodbye? Why not stay and fight for this?
Joel said simply that Jacob never looked at me as an equal but only as a precious gift that he no longer feels he deserves.
I asked Joel very slowly how Jacob was doing. Joel said he didn't know, that he got a letter from him asking for help with me and nothing about the future. Just a brief explanation with no answers.
He offered to show me but I don't need to see it. I have one just like it. Only it doesn't say take care of yourself, it says I will always love you.
He's not coming back for me. It's time to face reality.
