Broken mirror.

This morning after dropping Jake off to have some tests the kids and I were driving home through downtime when out of nowhere a little red BMW with a license plate that read SEXY cut in front of me. A pretty girl with long blond hair was driving, she looked to be about 25.

I was instantly jealous.

And I'm no slouch, really. My hair is the same, I drive a sportscar, mine is black. People check me out on the road, too.

So the differences? Well, I don't drive like a maniac, right now I only drive when I absolutely must, thanks to the pills. She drove like she had a deathwish. The booster seats holding precious cargo in my backseat keep me grounded and obeying traffic signals and speed limits.

The differences were probably ones I couldn't even see, if you'll excuse the snap judgements. I bet she's six feet tall, carries a spendy handbag, shops often for the latest styles. She sleeps around a little, not a lot, and probably goes to parties every weekend. She has rich parents or a sugar daddy (probably the latter with that plate on the car) and doesn't have doubts about who she is, what she means to the rest of the world or where her place is in life.

Me? Eh, you know. Troll-size Bridget with her small but mighty rotating dress collection, loyal til the bitter end, hasn't been invited to a party in years, budgeting every last dollar and positively brimming with destructive thoughts twenty four seven.

Thinking back to when I was 25 it wasn't much different, except I had even less money and was still surprisingly short, though I did have a heck of a lot of fun every weekend.

There was one thing I did have over her, but she'll never know it.

I don't need to impress anyone.

Seriously. A licence plate that says SEXY? What are you trying to prove? And who really cares?

It's official. I really am 35 and showing every day of it.

Techie-free house.

I'm an idiot. All I saw was that eventually every blogger using this will be forced to swap out to the beta version so I jumped when I saw the invite.

Things are a little mucked up as a result.

I was never the techie in the house, Cole was a computer wizard. Bear with me, I don't think I've lost anything (yet). Maybe Lochlan will help.

I believe you can still comment even. Ben seems to have tested that. He didn't get an invite though and is still on the old blogger.

This is why people buy their own domains. Right?

Let me know if there are horrible problems I have missed. Same email as ever:

saltwater princess at gmail dot com.

Never again do I touch it if it seems to be working fine.

Damage/control.

(This is slightly explicit. I edited heavily. You should have seen it an hour ago. I practically needed a cigarette. I don't even smoke.)

Didn't I say before and repeat myself the other day about how Jacob can fix everything only to wreck it all over again, day after day? He has a bittersweet way in which he can build me up and tear me down in seconds and a dry delivery leaving you not one hundred percent sure whether he's kidding or not.

When he said I was a whore I know he was quoting..me. I've called myself one so many times I've lost count. I do it in life, I do it here, I pretty much label myself at every turn and he put it on the end of his point to illustrate what he meant and everything went horribly wrong in the instant between his depiction and when he realized that I thought he was calling me a whore.

Either way it still fucking hurt very very much.

I put the kids to bed, still alone, made tea and unlocked the front door to go out on the porch with my phone, hoping to reach Jake at some point and at least make sure he was okay.

He was. He was on the swing. Just sitting there. Thinking.

When I came out he jumped up and grabbed me into his arms and simply held on for dear life. I put my arms around his neck and we put our foreheads together as we do when we're having difficult conversations.

If I'm a whore then I'm going to be your whore, Jacob.

Don't talk like that, you're not a whore. I said that because I knew it would hurt you and that's what I wanted.

Do you still want to hurt me?

Never again. It hurt me as much to know I caused you pain.

What hurt wasn't the words, in the end. Just the fact that they came from you. I've been called worse. Worse has been done to me but it didn't matter because you never did it.

I'm sorry. Of all people I shouldn't have lost it like that.

I forgive you. And Jake, you don't have to be perfect all the time.

Oh I'm so far from it, Bridget.

Not in my eyes.

Thank God for that.

I'm sorry too. For yelling at you. For blaming you.

I forgive you back. And I love you.

I hope so. I love you. Geez. What a long fucking day, Jake.

Yeah, it was, wasn't it?
He smiled at me then, and held me for a while. Tight. Hard. He was breathing in my hair. It was the calm after the storm. We had expected it, in the building tension around the trip, and how the trip went and everything else going on here, there was bound to be some sort of blowup and I had set myself up for a bad day as it was.

We salvaged it with a lovely round of desperate, crazy, affirmative make-up sex.

Yeah, of course I'm going to go there. Do I ever not go there?

Last night Jake actually made an effort to expand his (ahem) horizons. To put it politely. I may be the freaky one and he's the straight arrow but there are times, well...my friends, there are times when he is completely relaxed and just in the right mood and likes to try to match my enthusiasm. Not that he isn't always totally enthusiastic, but he has drawn a box around the parts of the kama sutra that he's comfortable with, and he fucking burned the rest of the book. Sometimes he remembers what was on the pages that were destroyed, and it's like Christmas for Bridget. Somewhere around four a.m. I ruined it. I was straddling his lap holding on to him and even the headboard for dear life because otherwise I would have been flung across the bed and I told him all we needed now were those strobe lights and a slow-motion sequence and we'd have the most erotic movie ever filmed. He laughed and the spell was broken. Damn it.

That's okay though. We always finish. He put me down and then he made me scream. Face down into the pillow. Because of the kids. Geez, people.

Was that so bad, Reverend?

Oh no, that was very very good.

I'm not a monster, Jake.

No, you're totally a freak though.

You love it.

Yes, because you're my freak.

That's right. I am.

Emotional Prostitution.

Kind of like my journal, public so that I can trade my deepest feelings for just a little more attention.

Look out. I'm angry and sad and possibly fatally wounded, psychologically anyway.

He wants me to make myself vulnerable to him, to let him in, let him help and let him see what's in my head and my heart. I let it all out and then he becomes frustrated and shocked by what's there to sift through.

We've developed a dangerous pattern of trading angst for passion. I give him an open door and he claims ownership. I am his wife now and that's a confidence he wanted very badly.

I've been down this road before, but in reverse. And it ended badly and every night I curse myself for falling into traps like this. Tell that to Jacob and he'll rip your face off, because he's not that kind of guy. He's talked himself into an innocence where my feelings are concerned.

I feel like a dangerous game that people play if they're brave enough and only after they develop an alarming addiction to me do they realize they're in over their heads. Not even a fair comment, but we jumped on the train of thought today in therapy at lunchtime and discovered we're in more trouble as a couple than we realized.

I'm not the impatient one.

You probably guessed that.

Me? I thought I saw it but then I was assured that I must be mistaken. Only it turned out to be true and I am not the one sabotaging my efforts to heal. And yet Jacob refuses to see his role in this. In the urgency to put the past behind us.

I said I'd like to go off the meds. He instantly thought that was a great idea because he's hating the birth control and we'd be on our way to adding to our family and being happy, as if I am somehow holding us back on purpose. He tries so hard not to see what a mess I am. Bless his heart.

He'll say he's nothing, saw he's flawed, broken, and just a man and be humble until you call him on it. Then he's insulted and ired and not so content to sit back and take criticism. He wants to be the one to fix it and god forbid anyone else gets a credit or a chance. Or calls him out. Or tells him to slow down.

He refuses to see his own selfishness. In the interests of preventing my own nervous breakdown likelihood I was forced to point it out. His response was to lash out at me and tell me I had no idea what I wanted, that I enjoyed my power over men and I liked to have fun and I had no interest in creating a healthy stable life for myself with a real future and maybe I really was just a whore.

Way to impress your bride of less than one month, Jacob.

I had no words, I just stared at him, my eyes welled up and I shook my head, not even believing that with three little words at the end of his diatribe he could hurt me more than I had ever been hurt or humiliated before but he managed to pull it off in spades.

The minute it came out he tried to take it back but the damage was done. Claus ground the session to a halt right there. I left the room and asked his receptionist to call me a taxi. Both Jacob and Claus came out and I told them to keep talking, the session was paid for, but I had had enough and I was going home. I was so cold on the outside and I was holding my coat together so I didn't crack into little pieces. Fragile indeed. Who wouldn't be after that? From Jake of all people.

Jacob grabbed my hand. I wrenched it back. The look on his face would have crushed anyone with sadness but I had nothing left to feel for him right in that moment except the coldest, loneliest rage I have ever felt in my life. He has no illusions when it comes to me and I thought he saw nothing but good when he looked at me and instead he sees nothing but my flaws and mistakes and weaknesses. And that changes everything. All of it, a beautiful magical illusion and like all good things, temporary because Bridget doesn't deserve happiness.

Oh no.

I guess I don't. Whores are not worthy people, are they?

So do you think his love for me is real or did I simply trick him and draw him in with my charms, since it's what I do best? Now that he's fucked me a few hundred times and had his fill he's comfortable laying blame and pointing fingers and saying what's really on his mind.

Who knows? I'm not talking to him. I don't even know where he is. The expected panic is lightened by the shock of his outburst. Prostitute indeed.

Craving Jake.

Neurotica for a Wednesday morning. Hopefully a better post will emerge later and bury this unexplainable misery far down the page.

Here's a prime example of how my brain has functioned since Cole's attack in May. I sat down to write about how before Jacob left to go to work this morning, he came back upstairs and kissed the back of my thigh and then told me he wished he could stay home one more day. Which, damn, is awesome enough as a whole post by itself but then I came downstairs, poured some coffee and sat down to write after making the kids some breakfast and so much anxiety started pouring out around the edges of me that I went back for my robe and put it on, in hopes that it could somehow absorb the excess.

I'm about to have one of those days.

A mental list of things I can't write about, things I can't deal with and things I don't understand begins to wind itself around my thoughts, choking them off abruptly. A tangled mess woven into my psyche and no matter how long I sit on the floor unraveling and finding ends and trying to make some order of it all it's pointless. No headway at all.

This is why I'm still taking pills. Sporadically, begrudgingly. Soon to launch an all-out campaign to stop with the pharmaceutical therapy, for now I take them and scowl. Because, oh yes, they make the grinding pain of the anxiety bearable. Bearable is much preferred over completely uncontrollable. Notice I didn't say unbearable. As long as everyone including me (!) can control Bridget, if they know how to keep her calm, keep her down, keep her from losing it than the day can go on.

As you were, folks, as you were.

Otherwise I'm sure the men in the white coats are right around the corner with their stretcher with restraints and some needles of euphoria and sleep, ready to pounce. I've been told unequivocally that this is not how it is, but I'm not stupid.

Claus calls me the impatient patient.

Somehow while we were on the coast I held it together, in spite of my juvenile efforts to tear myself apart and sabotage myself it went smoothly. It was easy. Too easy. I was, no, okay, honestly Jacob was warned that it might all blow up in our faces once we arrived, or worse, once we came home. At least he's had some warning. I'm ticking. Like a fucking bomb.

The things I don't want to deal with remain. Those things I can't erase from the story of my life and they're all things I will have to examine in detail at some point. Like when I dropped the box, like the kids starting school which terrifies me to the point that I refuse to think about it. Like when the hell am I going to get better? When will I stop comparing?

When will life go on, because I thought when the box fell from my hands that everything was going to magically be better?

When will I smile without doing a systems check? When will benign greetings like "How are you?" stop being loaded questions, dreaded and anticipated and difficult to answer?

I was so so happy once. Okay, no I was miserable for so long and unhappy in my own skin and wanting everything I couldn't have, and it's become an all-encompassing expedition to finally move past all that and I can't. My life has become quicksand and everyone pulls until I'm halfway out and then they walk away and someone else comes along for a try.

I'm not blaming everyone.

When do I stop craving Jake? He's here, for god's sake. He's RIGHT HERE. I can still taste his kiss on my mouth. A coffee kiss. My bangs are still swept to the side from where he smoothed them away with his fingers when he looked into my eyes and told me he loved me and that he'd be home for lunch.

And the minute he leaves I feel like someone has taken the warmth of his presence and replaced it with jagged shards of pain, a dull ache that never goes away until he comes home. Stabbing pain radiating through the entire structure of my heart. No one gives you instructions for this and they should. So, tell me, is faith carrying me on these days or isn't it?

Some days faith isn't all it's built up to be, some days it just isn't there at all. God takes sick days too and when he does watch the fuck out. Jacob hates it when I talk like this but honestly smiling tightly through my teeth and repeating "I'm fine." doesn't get me anywhere at all. This, writing about it, well, this works somehow. Almost as good as a kiss on the back of the thigh from Jake.

Or maybe it's just that the vacation is now officially over and everything is the same as it was before and I was hoping for better. Or maybe not better, just different. Just not this. I only feel better when he's here. And that's not fair. To me or to him.

Lucky lucky girl.

It's a really good thing that Jake hasn't stopped with his kitchen karaoke. I was treated to this song this morning. All I can say is Nickelback is pretty damn cool. I also forgot what I was going to post today as a result of hearing the lyrics. I'm well known for taking almost any poem or song and making it all about me, but Jake told me to listen closely because this was so going to be our song.

Have a wonderful day.


    This time, This place
    Misused, Mistakes
    Too long, Too late
    Who was I to make you wait
    Just one chance
    Just one breath
    Just in case there's just one left
    'Cause you know,
    you know, you know

    That I love you
    I have loved you all along
    And I miss you
    Been far away for far too long
    I keep dreaming you'll be with me
    and you'll never go
    Stop breathing if
    I don't see you anymore

    On my knees, I'll ask
    Last chance for one last dance
    'Cause with you, I'd withstand
    All of hell to hold your hand
    I'd give it all
    I'd give for us
    Give anything but I won't give up
    'Cause you know,
    you know, you know

    So far away
    Been far away for far too long
    So far away
    Been far away for far too long
    But you know, you know, you know

    I wanted
    I wanted you to stay
    'Cause I needed
    I need to hear you say
    That I love you
    I have loved you all along
    And I forgive you
    For being away for far too long
    So keep breathing
    'Cause I'm not leaving you anymore
    Believe it
    Hold on to me and, never let me go
    Keep breathing
    'Cause I'm not leaving you anymore
    Believe it
    Hold on to me and, never let me go
    Keep breathing

Excuses.

Maybe today I should have stuck with writing about enjoying the beach again. Or maybe I misrepresented myself but when I said we acknowledged the drinking problem I guess I blew it out of proportion. The problem isn't that I need alcohol, the problem is that I will choose to use it, when available, as the pain-duller of choice. I hate pills but I am trying, even when I say I'm not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make excuses. I'm not someone you have to hide your alcohol from or someone who wakes up with a craving, I'm a very subtle imbiber kind of gal, a few times a year, who is coming to terms with a hell of a lot of stress and I'm dealing with it in the worst way and so now I have to deal with one more thing now. That's all. I don't make waves. I'm not out of control and I'm seriously so straight up when it comes to these things you would find it all incredibly uncharacteristic of me to drink too much. You can tell because when I do, I blog about it and the few times I have crossed my own lines all ended badly and I wrote about it because it was so uncharacteristic. Let that be a cautionary tale for those of you exploring your own issues. I'm not a drinker, but I let something go too far. And I didn't ruin our trip, it was ruined before we left. The whole drinking issue was a lot more low-key than I would have you believe. But suffice it to say we both noticed what I was doing and I did finally surrender to the common sense we have lovingly cultivated thus far. I'm trying, guys. It's been a rough year but I can do this too. No one ever would have expected all this from Bridget, trust me.

I'm going to shut up now. Lord.

In a happier twist, I have a picture here of Ruthie on the beach four days ago. A mini-me. One of my favorite pictures I've ever taken.

Betrayal

 Tonight feels like a million miles away
    And these times just won't change
    Life just stays the same
    I'd give anything to see the light of day
The bad stuff. Because there's always bad stuff. Especially when you haven't been home in years, and you arrive with a chip on your shoulder and a brand new husband. And you realize half the people you came to see have no fucking idea exactly what the past few years have been like for you, nor do they have any clue how you really spent your spring because it was glossed over.

It explained a lot, anyhow.

I had to let it go. Who cares, anyway? Water under the bridge. Bridget drowning in pain and fear and no one took notice, no one stopped to pick up any of the shrapnel along the way except for one and damn if she isn't going to keep him close.

Or shove him off the cliff while he admires the view.

I blindsided Jacob before we caught the second plane. Because I knew exactly what to expect. I made the easterly part of the trip a liquid voyage of courage, having cocktails before getting on the plane and then yet another on board. Fully medicated. So by the time we arrived I didn't really need to be afraid and so I wasn't. I was having a hard time standing up. I looked Jake in the eye and measured his disappointment with an unsteady gauge.

And since drinking is a really bad idea while taking anti-depressants, I chose to stop taking the pills altogether. Alcohol has always been a better friend to me, and hey, I can save the need until the kids have had a full day but once they're asleep look out.

Jacob pointed out quite brutally that I have a drinking problem.

He's right. I do.

He asked me to stop and I said no. Not on this trip. I needed it for this trip because I couldn't do it under my own sailpower. I couldn't put that box over the side without some sort of assistance. He said he would be there, that he wasn't leaving my side. It wasn't enough and it didn't matter. Once again I hurt him but I had to leave it or I would have lost everything that day. I went cold and I got through the whole ceremony of burying someone that took me to hell and just left me there alone, with no way to get back.

And very briefly I lingered, taking it in, reliving the worst and ignoring the one with the map, waiting patiently to show me the way home. Briefly. Then I took his hand and ran away fast and I didn't look back and I won't look back, ever again.

I got completely trashed that night, and Jacob took me out of the restaurant, I don't believe my feet touched the ground and he got me into bed and didn't leave me. He held me tight and he was there. Just there and it means so much I will never ever forget what he put up with on that day because I was in a dangerous place. I told him this wasn't and could never be our fucking honeymoon because we deserved better than this.

The next morning he held my face in his hands and told me he loved me so much it was criminal.

I couldn't agree more. He is everything. Everything.

And then very patiently he took us to the beach. Every single day until it got better and I smiled more and I spoke and I played with the kids and sat and watched them get to know the ocean and we turned the nightmare back into a dream. A new chapter in our own bestseller, a quietly successful pageturner. No more trashy horror stories here, knock wood.

He said nothing as I waited out the kids each night before pouring a large glass of wine. He didn't interrupt as I wrote volumes with a pen and a notebook as we drove. He didn't ask if things would be different when we came home. The morning of the flights home I woke up, took my pills on schedule and straightened the hem of my dress and smartened the fuck up. I asked him to take the pills and give them out at the right times. I promised him I would never drink again and he promised I would never hurt again. He threw out some ideas for a different trip. A trip somewhere new but with beaches. Not much further away but different. A real honeymoon. Just for us. When I am better.

It's a deal, sweetheart.

Coasting.

I'm not sure where to start.

This could be a three or four-part ramble of extreme proportion. So many thoughts, so many realizations, so many changes and lessons and lightbulb moments that smacked me right between the eyes. Believe me, the euphoria of this trip was equally matched by emotional rollercoasters that left permanent aches in my soul. I think I said a similar thing once before, something about being built up only to be torn down over and over again. Well, it was like that.

We arrived and were instantly thrust into the arms of my entire extended family, who were anxious to suffocate us to death with family events and outings and get-togethers, and then we were alternately loathed at arms length when I reminded all of them rather bluntly that I was here for a reason and it wasn't human, much as I had warned them previously on the phone. I was here to reconnect with the ocean. And lose some mental baggage. And breathe deeply. And escape from two decades of being told what to do and how it would be done. I can't say it was pretty. Jacob even waded into the fray, exchanging some tense words with my father over how my first vacation in a very long time would be conducted with our own itinerary, and not theirs. Rather brutal but mercifully after that night everything evened out, everyone backed off, and I was on my way without guilt or remorse.

So I'm terrible. I'm also the youngest child of the family and my behavior is legendary. I did make sure to love up everyone until they were almost bruised from my attentions before we left so it all worked out in the end.

So our first order of business was to drop everything and run to the ocean. We opted to drive to Point Pleasant Park in Halifax and visit Black Rock Beach first. It was raining, windy, glorious.
I ignored the weather and the rocks and the general gray miserable expanse of shoreline and waded in, shoes and all, halfway to my knees. I instantly forgot everything I had ever known and was struck silent, dumbed and unable to move. I looked out and took a very deep breath. Oh my god my ears hurt so badly from the wind because my hood wouldn't stay up, I've lost the string on my sweater. Looking down amongst the garbage strewn from storms the rocks hid dozens of pieces of sea glass. We filled our pockets with that glass and it's now on my kitchen windowsill. I actually held myself together for a whopping forty seconds before I snapped and decided I had to move back.

Right.

Not to Halifax though. Too close to the masses, the suffocative blood relatives and friends that remain so small-town and unable to see past their own wants and needs, not that I blame them.

Nope. Shortly before Cole accepted a job out west we had settled into a pattern of taking drives from Halifax to Lunenburg via Bayswater, and we would pass through Aspotogan and the two rolling and winding coves that mark the beauty of this tiny dot of land. Of course there's a big white farmhouse for sale, there's land available and it's affordable even. I never told Cole I wanted to live there but I always wished I could. Jacob hadn't been through the area so as he drove I asked him what he thought and he told me we should write down the for sale sign information and look into buying something here because it was beautiful.

The smile didn't come off my face for days.

It did come off eventually though. I'm a realist. This move could take a year or two. Maybe more. But at least we've got a goal to shoot for, whether you'd call it a plan or a pipe dream. Because being there was a thousand times easier than being here, even with the problems of logistics and overbearing relatives, a higher cost of living and the wind. The damn wind I loved. So worth it. In every way possible.

Of course the next trip home won't have the exhaustive itinerary as we ambitiously set out to cover every inch of the maritimes with our presence. I'm sick to death of ferry rides. I have decided PEI and I weren't meant to get along well, so Bridge got on the bridge and left it. I missed Shediac by minutes. Minutes, girls. I was so close, and yet I was so close to a mental departure of sorts from exhaustion that Jacob left the road further down and we drove to Joggins instead, spending the entire afternoon looking for neat rocks and then being forced to drive all the way back to the south shore in the dark.

I met Newfoundland. Dear god I couldn't understand a word anyone said but I never laughed so hard in my entire life. And I saw every little part about what makes up Jacob, because his family is like one giant puzzle and when you put it together it forms a hug and you can breathe and you never want to not be in the middle of that. He lived there until he was past twenty years old and he goes back at least once a year. Amazing what that kind of environment can do for a human being to make them so damn good. I saw sides of him I was astounded by. He saw the rest of me. We left the east coast closer, stronger and more honest with each other than we were before, if that were even possible. We fell in love again.

The kids had a blast. They have even more grandparents and great grandparents and cousins now, they have new relatives who love them as if they have been there since day one and we are blessed beyond belief.

But really, I can't see the people. Every time I close my eyes I see the blinding sparkle of the waves on the sand, and feel the wind untying my braids with cool fingers and the salt painting a film upon my lips that tastes better than any cake I have ever tried. What a beautiful feeling.

Of course there was all kinds of bad stuff. Not today though. I'll write about it tomorrow. Then I promise we're going back to good writing about good things. And maybe a few pictures. While I feel brave. Or something.

Goodnight.

Brown girl.

Hey.

We came back. Surprisingly not reluctantly in the end. Armed with a plan.

It could take a while, but we're going home for good. Just maybe not quite yet.

I have a tan.

I have gone to 14 beaches. 14. No, seriously. Jacob is a saint.

I promise I'll tell you all about it. Just as soon as I catch up on the eleventy-nine-hundred loads of laundry that are calling my name.

And dinner. I need dinner. Almost 10000 miles of travel makes Bridget hungry. Even though I would prefer to sit here and marvel at the gorgeous tan color of my skin, we really need to eat.