The black and white night.

It's dark out now. All the heavy drapes are closed against the night and against the snowy cold. There are two lights on in the whole house, I believe. The one on the nightstand beside me, and one in the guest room downstairs where Jacob's parents are probably still reading and talking quietly, maybe looking at pictures or listening to the radio too.

The furnace just ticked seven times and came on, sending hot air into every room. I can hear that and my own quiet breathing and the ever-present keyboard clicks as I write and delete and write some more. My phone keeps buzzing across the dresser. I know it's Chris or maybe Ben, sometimes August or Tam wanting to say hello and ask me if I need anything. My boys are so sweet.

An hour ago I was a bit of a quiet lunatic. But instead of caving in to the panic I bit hard on the inside of my cheek and splashed some cold water on my face, took my pills and counted my breathing until I could force my mind off the path to ruin and find a distraction, maybe a bit of a story to start or a few lines of poetry toward a holiday card that I can use later this year.

When a full inhale took ten seconds I checked my head again and found that I had outsmarted it thoroughly. Not only was I no longer panicking but I forgot the great story I had thought of only seconds before.

These pills do that, I think. My short term memory has dissolved to the point where I forget the toothpaste on my brush, I put on one mitten and get outside and wonder where the other went, and Butterfield and I got halfway down the drive this evening before I realized he didn't even have his leash on.

There goes the phone again. That was Christian letting me know he has tickets for a concert in the spring. I am noncommittal, spring is eons away. Winter has just begun. He laughs and tells me to look forward to it. As we are hanging up another call comes through on the house phone and for a moment I am juggling receivers and voices and words with a world-weariness suggesting I am used to the cacophony of keeping tabs. I suppose I am.

I am still counting, still at ten seconds. I have to keep my head busy or the slide begins. I refuse to slide. I refuse to be destroyed and I refuse to be fragile anymore.

The furnace has stopped breathing on us and the house once again settles into discomfortable quietudes. Empty houses are curses on the landscape. A blight signifying a failed family, an abandoned life or the end of a dream.

This house will never be empty because I'm not going to fail, I am not cursed and I don't live in a dreamworld. No illusions mark my ideals, no false pretenses color my intentions any longer.

One of the things Jacob always found amazing about me was when push came to shove and he wasn't around I would stand up for myself and fiercely defend my right to a fair and simple existence free from drama and heartache and bullshit. Like I hid away a magic set of girl-armor under my dress and was as brittle as glass until I was the last one fighting for myself and then I became a tiny force to be reckoned with. He said he never wanted to be on the other end of my sheer force of will, that it was something. That it was devastating.

He was right. It is.

I am.

Think I have my tenses wrong.

No, still going, dammit. No slide, Bridget, no slide.