Maybe it's starting to sink in finally, and maybe I am still sicker than I thought.
Ben never entered into this to try and fix things or make up for things or change things. He and I were attracted to each other probably more physically than anything and the love part was slow in coming. We had a lot of growing pains. He had a huge substance abuse problem and an ego problem and was immature and sometimes selfish to a fault. He never wanted to be conventional even as he found it fun in the way that anything becomes a novelty in its infancy. He wanted Loch on board for the parts he couldn't cover. The serious parts. The tough parts. Any part that contained his absence, really. Lochlan was an easy sell. A duplex marriage. Polyamory. Divide the love and it grows instead of fractioning off. Split life evenly down the middle and watch it flourish.
We're good at this. This works. Ben has no ego with me, with us. He is patient and generous, perpetually distracted and hopelessly in love with Lochlan.
He keeps saying that this will give us a chance to sort everything out, but that isn't what this is. This is a test and it's one for Ben to find out if he has a place here. If there is room for him in the big overwhelming teenage love that is Lochlan and Bridget.
I know there is, we've been doing this for years.
I have been pretending for days now that he is just downstairs working and everything is business as usual. It's better than thinking he's walked away. Better than thinking he might come back and everything would be different or that he might not come back at all.
Better than waiting for him when he's barely left.
Better than losing my mind.
Better than feeling my heart break again when sometimes it feels as if there are hardly any pieces left, big enough to fracture. Most of what is left has been pounded into dust. I'm not capable of weathering any more but Ben knew that if he left me choices that it would be okay. So August came back. Joel didn't go very far, Daniel and Schuyler crowded right in and Sam set up a command post downstairs to conduct the whole mess like a song. Lochlan held back, held his breath while Ben gingerly pulled the trigger on the legal side of things because he wanted to all along, and now who knows?
Who knows?
