A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures.
This morning I went somewhere new.
Ben took me to see someone he knew of, he cashed in a favor the likes of which he'll never see again, it was worth that much and he offered me a simple sort of help that feels promising. Not a therapist, but someone who takes all the standard therapeutic platitudes and boils them down into a simpler stew from which you can find your nourishment. An approach that is about as natural as it gets and the one used to get Ben to stop drinking, after a year of him trying virtually everything else.
And as private as Ben has been about his recovery, this was a very generous thing he did in taking me to maybe see if it might work for me. I left feeling drained and I have a headache now but inside I have those quietly excitedly-jumpy feelings you only get when you're afraid something might be too good to be true. If it works I'll eat my own leg.
So for now, I'm not going to say any more about it. I go back in a week and then the week after that. Ben made me pinky-swear promise that I would give it two whole months before I started complaining, and that I would try really hard to get to the spot where I am happy in my own skin but otherwise he won't be going again with me and he won't talk about it with me any more than he talks about his own sessions with me (he doesn't) and so we can run parallel, intertwined races that have no finish line but, as he said earlier, the view gets nicer the longer you run.
I'm also not going to say much more about the parallels of life with Ben from life with Cole and how things are always what they seem. Ben going back to being an artist is simply a way for him to not dread going to work, to have more money and more fun and less responsibility and as he says, the grass was definitely greener on the other side. And then he laughed maniacally like the freak that he is. He isn't stupid, and he readily points out that he's always been jealous of Cole and what the fuck is the difference if he was, because he's not any more. But he stops short of saying he has everything because that's when the curse begins.
Oh, and I asked PJ what he wanted in return for showing up to babysit at six in the morning because he is the best friend ever, he told me just to post a picture of the damned tattoo already because it makes no sense to talk about something (here, here, and drunkenly here)when no one knows what it looks like.
(*poof* since I never leave certain photos up for long, sorry.)
He already got his payment besides, he ate all of the eggs I had in the fridge. I believe there were eleven. He'll be sick the rest of the day. He's a curse unto himself, that one.
