Down like a ton of bricks.

An easy-to-manage ton. The sun came up. I went to the door of the den, opened it and couldn't seem to go anywhere. So I called for help.

Jake.

Jacob met me with a cup of coffee and a fierce hug. I pressed my left ear to his left ear and I could feel his heart beating. He ran his hands through my hair and told me everything would be okay.

It was permission to fall apart. His, mine, ours.

I lost whatever frayed string of sanity I was swinging from all week long.

Oh lovely. Brutal. Ugly. I swayed and was held up. Jacob didn't let go, he held me tighter and I dissolved into nothing. He got both of us rather gracefully down to the floor and sat and held me so tightly and I held on right back. We missed calls, doorbells, appointments and just held each other. My legs were asleep and I didn't care. We both cried. It's done. Over. No more court dates, no waiting to be divorced. No worries about what Cole will do down the road. Done. He took it all with him.

I'll take it as a gift, among other things that have happened since he died. Many surprises.

Jake?

Yeah, Bridge?

I really expected to throw things.

Yeah, I expected you to throw things too. maybe break stuff.

I'm glad I didn't.

The day is young, Bridge, the day is young. And I love you.

I love you too.

Oh oh oh the sun is going down, the birds are chirping their goodnights. I called the kids to say goodnight, they love an adventure. There's no need for them to be here to see me incapacitated by their father's death. Nope. Happier times to be had someday.

My day is drawing to a close. It took forever yet again. I heard them placing wagers as to when the alcohol will hit again, I have found some weird plateau in a forty of Absolut. I can't bring myself to have anymore yet I have had enough to bring down a large man. Interesting. Of course, I'm not standing up anytime soon.

The best thing about today is the plateful of pad kee mao that was just slid under my nose. I see Jake is bringing out the heavy artillery. Thai food.

My goal for overnight is to attempt to sleep and not make an ass out of myself on the internet or in my house. Oh and the Vicodin is back. God bless whoever makes this shit and no please don't say a word about washing it down with vodka. I know.

I'm still here. Thank you for the kind comments. They mean more than the platitudes making the rounds in my living room.

The cognac ran out after midnight and I was made to suffer miserably, loudly, indignantly, until Jacob finally gave up the location of the vodka. I listened to nothing else. I see I'm going to have to ration it. We'll see. I don't think he'll give me anymore. So much for the pain-free drunken stupor I had planned. A four day bender? For one, please. Just don't touch me, for I will shatter. Don't worry, he's watching from a safe distance, right outside the door. Ready to catch me when I fall so spectacularly. Wait for it.

But for now, even half-drunk I have responsibilities. I have to sign papers and make plans. I have to be steered everywhere because I don't know the protocol here. Not familiar. I have to return a dozen phone calls and I'm too broken to talk out loud. Good to have a minister in the house because sadly Jacob knows exactly what to do and who to call. Is this my karma?

I'm lucid though. I managed to have a shower. I could button buttons. Stupid things. I managed to hug my kids as they left for a sleepover at PJ's mom's house. I don't feel like eating. Or speaking. Or moving, really. I'm still alive and really if you had placed your bets knowing what you know about Cole he should be the one still breathing and I should be the one who died.

I managed to not rip Jacob's face off when he came back last night for being away too long. I need help. Jake's helping. He was off making so many of the immediate arrangements so I don't have to. So that he could be here today for when the shit hits the fan and Bridget falls apart. Everyone thinks I'm so fucking strong. I'm not strong. Oh my God I'm like paper in the fucking wind. The kind that blows into a tree and the tree doesn't budge an inch. Not even in a tornado. Jake is the tree. And I'm almost plastered again, blissfully. And Cole, Cole is still dead. When will it be real? I know when-when that weird homesick feeling stops. The one that has been there since April. When will it stop and what the hell is it?

I can kill whole freaking WEEKS in here. I'm going to finish the vodka and read the internet. The worst thing is that I can't shut off the noise. Inside my head I'm screaming and I can't shut it off.

I feel nothing. They're all letting me drink. No idea who is watching my kids. My kids, not ours. Cole is dead. Dead. Do you not see how permanent that word is? I see it now. It's flat. One sound. Kind of like the sound of my head hitting something hard. When I come out of my fog it's going to hurt so I'm going to stay in it and then it won't be so bad. But you know what? I'll have to be the first one to say the selfish things, answer the loaded questions and figure out which end is up. Hell, I'm in charge. I sign everything. All questions will be asked of me. Who has all the power now? Thanks for passing it on. It might be enough to match the blame. No more prayers required. I'm up to my eyeballs. Jake is nowhere to be found. Well I know where he is but he should be here. He's tired of looking at the closed door. There is no comfort here. There is so much to do and I'm still stuck in one spot. Unreal. It feels unreal. I can't shut up my head. So I might possibly drink a little more and make it stop. Or maybe a lot more and finish it off. Shut the bitch up for good. Almost wrote for god there. How ironic. God isn't in today. My phone is ringing. Probably Jake. Who should be here because we need him. I don't think I could stand up if I tried. Let it ring.

Today brings so little in the way of updates. Every time we think we'll go in Cole suffers something else and they whisk him off to surgery again. It was a severe attack and they think he must have had several smaller ones before now. The complications are keeping us home because they can't keep him stabilized. The damage might possibly be too severe. But he is alive. For today, they said. He's only 39 years old. He's been in tremendous pain now since the early hours of Monday morning.

We're going in when hours start at 2 pm, if he's stable enough. They said he won't be able to talk, he might not even be awake. I can't bring the kids, they're under seven but Jacob promised to talk with someone to have that changed in case, well, in case something happens.

Thank you for the prayers, they're much appreciated. Please continue if you can.

I'm sitting tight waiting for the call to let us know when the protection order is lifted so we can go to the hospital. Cole had a heart attack yesterday and didn't even have the meeting with Jake as he requested so no one knows what he wanted to discuss. I can't get any details on his condition and the wait is torture. To top it off no one called until late yesterday afternoon which makes me angry.

Nothing to write, I'm frozen.

Injection of fluff and puffs of cuteness.

Or something.

I had four phone calls wanting to know what was wrong now. Please, I'm emptying my head. If you've hung around all summer you know that already, don't pay me any mind. How often do you get an uncensored look directly into the brain of someone else?

Right.

You want fluff? I'm FINE. Fine. I went to the Aveda salon and had lowlights put in. To combat the straw appearance. And bangs were trimmed. And now I can get some laundry done and the kids are sacked out watching Madagascar. It wasn't a typical Monday by any means. Jake is in meetings all day, one of which involves Cole, isn't that just grand?

Yes, I thought so too.

But the bangs, the bangs rock. And I'm making muffins too.

Is that more normal? Oh and yes, I'm about to go clean the toilet. Well, once the muffins are out of the oven.

Pft.

On not being very good at self-assurance.

The album playing now is Tool's 10, 000 days, or as I like to call it, the aphrodisiac album.

    You believe me don't you
    Please believe what I just said
    See they're telling the truth
    And this wasn't all in my head
    See they took me by the hand
    And invited me right in
    Then they showed me something
    I don't even know where to begin

It doesn't give me nightmares, the music. What it does is make me mad, in a way. In turn that gives me back the control I desire so ferverently. I feel like I can bat my eyelashes and slay a thousand demons with my charms when I get mad. Some of the only power I have ever felt in my life. Figures it would be based on sex. Self-vilified by my own perceptions of myself. Is there not any other way I can feel confident? No, I just turn it up so I don't fall apart. I feel the strongest when his desire for me is conspicuous.

Enlightening. Hard to explain. Fuck, Bridget is hard to explain. You have no idea.

Pushing. Shoving. Fighting. It hardly breaks for the moments of overwhelming comfort and you know what? Some days aren't so fucking good and I don't feel like I'm going to get through it at all. Some days I don't feel like we're going to make it. There. Out loud and everything. To him. Knowing he wouldn't want to hear those words because they're pessimistic.

He didn't want to hear it. Me, shoving at his heart and testing the limits. He has no limits.

But the simple solution of me being committed and him going off to find a nice normal girl, well we tried that route already and it didn't even work at all. All it did was delay the inevitable. Which was the certainty that we would be together. Someday.

Someday is now and the price is so goddamned high from Cole's...brainwashing. We're not having any luck at all with the intensity. It's staggering. I only have to open my eyes and see him first and my heart is in my throat. The nerves, butterflies, the anticipation will knock you flat. It hurts. It hurts like trying not to hyperventilate.

We both still feel like we're doing something so wrong here. Something verboten. Every time I touch him I can't take ownership. Inside my head I'm trying to justify it. Still.

How dumb. Because failure is not an option. I will. not. fail. Jacob.


    Overwhelmed as one would be placed in my position
    Such a heavy burden now to be the one
    Born to bear and read to all the details of our ending
    To write it down for all the world to see
    But I forgot my pen
And as much as everyone waits for more admissions, further confessions from me, there aren't any. The night of the hayride constitutes the one time we lost control. That's it. Which is remarkable and I am fucking proud of that fact because no one, well okay everyone knows how often Jacob and I were alone together. We could have carried on the longest most intense affair of all time but it wasn't right to do so, and we are good people, in spite of our debiliatating flaws. Such damned good people, except when it comes to wanting each other. Oh my dear God, when it comes to each other we're a fucking trainwreck. Careening down a mountain pass with no brakes because. we. can.

We are.

And it shouldn't be so hard anymore but the temptation to continue at arms' length is so prevalent. Like snatching your hand back out of the fire so that you don't get burned. Only the fire, well, it's been out for ages. There's no danger anymore.

Bridget, enough with the analogies. Why can't you just write what you want to say?

WHY WHY WHY?

It's reverse-homesickness. Fucked-up. Bridget, you're SCREWED, girl. I'm so terribly sorry but I'm in a hurry to find out how it feels to be happily in love without twenty years of Cole's twisted definition of what a relationship should be hanging over my head. I want it undone. Faster. Now. I have no patience. I waited long enough and now it's my turn to express disappointment with having to wait for the gratification. For the simple profound love that Jacob offers me.

When I take it it's not mine. I have no ownership of this and I don't get it.

Hell, I can't even explain it.

I want the fluttering to stop.

I want to see him and be happy. Not see him and for a heartbreaking 10 seconds a million thoughts go through my head, starting with "Where is Cole?" and "Why am I not with this man?" and by the time I reconcile the past inside my head the moment is gone.

Lobotomy for one, please.

And he lies when he says he feels relief and overwhelming euphoria when he sees me. He lies because the first thing that he thinks is usually a wonderment of how fragile Miss Bridget is going to be today, or 10 seconds to reconcile that this is not a dream.

And so I bring out the demons. Put on the most angry music. Play it loud. Get out the acrimony and hold steady with a smoldering atttitude that is a total put-on. Give myself the only control I know I have, because some is better than nothing at all, in my eyes. At least I know how that works.

Because some days aren't great. But it's normal. No worries. It's getting better. Getting it out helps. Good girl. Good job Bridget! Yes, please, everyone pat me on the head for dragging out every last dreadful thought out of my head and terrifying myself with the endless parade of nightmarish outcomes from this. And foolishly Jacob promised me that he isn't leaving and he was so angry because he hates repeating himself even though he'll do it as many times as I need him to without showing an ounce of the frustration he must feel.

I would love it if he could share that patience with me, it's the patience that he has for my fear that he doesn't even have for anything else. How many times can you tell someone who has barely a idea of what sanctuary feels like that they have it at last. They can't see it but they feel it sometimes but they don't believe it's real, they're in perpetual shock and it's going to take time. Well, you do it when you love them, of course.

I will not fail him. Even on days like today when the optimism is an excruciating reach for me, I will not fail him. Because I love him.

Of course.

Tying down the butterfly.

Hmm...I think I like that phrase even better than Nose Butter. If you don't know what Nose butter means, you're not a snowboarder. If you don't know what it means to tie down a butterfly then you don't have to live with me.

Always fluttering. From one leaf to another, one of my absolute worst personality flaws is that I can't shut anything off at will. Especially my mind. It flutters and churns and click clacks away and I can't sleep, I can't run, I can't get any peace from it.

Friday night was no exception. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't even relax, I couldn't stay down. It was hot, so muggy and miserable in the house. Jake slept restlessly. Every time he tossed his giant frame I would snap wide awake. Finally I got up and opted to read in the porch. I think it was 2 a.m.

No sooner did I settle in when Jake appeared at the door with a tray. The tray held two plates of blueberry buckle with ice cream and two snifters of cognac. The cognac was Jacob's very adult bottle that he keeps locked in the desk in the study for Very Hard Times because he's very old-fashioned in that way, really very proper despite my repeated attempts to unravel his fabric with my total foolishness.

For example-my snifter contained about a quarter of the cognac that his held. Just because I'm really not supposed to drink and I asked him if he was looking for the wild Bridget and he laughed and said he figured since we were locked in the house and it was so late it was probably okay to have a little, just once. But that there wouldn't be any more for me.

He's feeling better. Good. I was glad because honestly I never really know what to do with him when he's upset over something that can't be changed. And to me that's very sad because he knows how to fix me. He knows how to make me feel better, when to leave me be, and how to make things bearable.

And boy that sounds stupid. One of the things that made me cringe about Cole is that if he was happy, everything was okay. Like everyone else's well-being hinged on whether or not he was in a good mood. And I'm smart enough to see that this is how my universe works as well. Cole used to say it wasn't him, it was I who made the planet rotate smoothly. Me with my legendary petulance and ineffectual, lethal gaze.

Right. What a crock.

When I test the theory to see if it holds, it does and boy that's scary. Almost as scary as Jake waking out of sound sleep because I was restless and he wanted to comfort me, while I couldn't sleep because I wanted to comfort him. So I get comfort in the form of warm food and warmer liquid solace and he feels better because I feel better and we all get a little sleep.

So the moral of this story is if a butterfly lands in cognac it will stop for a rest. Or something like that.

Bitter blessings.

Sorry to leave you hanging. There was no time earlier to come back. Why oh why didn't I keep the Vicodin? That would have helped today. Or something. A very stiff drink right now would be nice. No such luck. Jake gets one. He's not on antidepressants. Lucky guy.

Jacob is not Henry's biological father. 100% not. When the lawyer called to ask if we had the results she actually had the nerve to ask me if we were going to change Henry's middle name now. I promise I didn't swear at her out loud. I was a very good girl.

My relief was so fleeting. And then I realized that I was briefly given the bulletproof heart because someone had to hold us up. Because Jacob took his long overdue turn and fell apart. He went down in a spectacularly controlled measure of total anguish and it caught me by surprise because at no time did he reveal how much he wanted this because I wouldn't discuss it first. But Jake doesn't castigate me. He should, but he doesn't. I am unscathed. There is always the future. I'm done looking back now.

No, instead he got down on his knees beside the table and he asked God for comfort. And then he miserably looked at me like I was able to somehow channel it straight from heaven, as if it would come through me.

He says sometimes it does. And when the shock wears off, he'll be able to accept this as the best possible outcome under the circumstances. Jake is strong. A remarkable man. Just not a father yet. Not on this day.

Thanks for all the kind wishes. I'm off now to go breath very deeply and read some bedtime stories to the kids. The kids who are completely oblivious to all this. Oh to be five years old again.