Hollow.

  What else could I write
    I don't have the right
    What else should I be
    All apologies

I promised this memory to you a long time ago but life intervened and this morning I was reminded that people were still waiting. It's welcome now because I'm struggling today to find a bridge between my perfect morning mood and a draining week. Softer, sweeter we go now while I take you on the memory that was our first kiss. I very purposely left it out, you'll see why by the time you reach the end.

Jacob set the bar so very high with one kiss that I was never the same and he was never the same and it's one more piece to our puzzle that cemented us together forever as soulmates. I might still be where I was had it not been for the persistence and sheer tenacity of this guy and I tell him every day that I love him. When I describe our connection as lightning it's because our first kiss almost got us killed but I will never forget it even for a second.

One evening when Jake was free he took me down to the beach. He spread out my old quilt and we sat on the sand to watch the waves break. I was tired. I leaned against his shoulder and we talked about nothing, about his studies that he was looking forward to returning to, about life. We talked about how the air smelled like rain. The skies were overcast and there were no stars that night and he frowned and said we should go. I didn't want to go, I just knew this would be my last visit at the beach while it was still warm so I asked if he would get us some bottled water so we could stay just a little bit longer.

He walked down the beach to the canteen at the other end, strolling slowly, his feet in the water, his pant legs wet as usual. He turned a couple of times to check on me and smiled.

When he reached the canteen the heavens opened. I mean, it poured. One of those fast summer thunderstorms. The thunder rumbled right through me and I was completely deafened by the noise of the rain. Huge, driving drops were soaking everything. I forced myself to my feet and was trying to gather the quilt up without bringing so much sand with me and before I could make any progress at all Jacob was back beside me. The rain was coming down in sheets now. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his shirt soaked to his chest. I made a mental note to keep that picture in my head forever. He yelled that we needed to get out of the open and to leave the stuff. I said I wasn't leaving my things and that if he would just help instead of arguing with me, we'd be inside faster.

But I couldn't hear myself and it freaked me out and I grabbed at his sleeve.

That stopped him in his efforts and he just stared at me through the rain. Then he seized my face in his hands, pulling me into him, kissing me full-on, like a lover would, on the mouth. Hard. I kissed him back and when he stopped I didn't want him to stop and so I bit his bottom lip. He shook his head and then kissed me one more time, much more gently, one hand on the back of my neck and the other resting on my shoulder, with his thumb in the hollow at the base of my throat. When he pulled back the look in his eyes was despairing. He grabbed the quilt, took my hand and we hurried back to his truck. Once inside we slammed the doors just as a huge fork of lightning hit the beach. He looked at me and I looked at him.

This is the best night of my life.

Mine too.

And the worst, princess.

I know, Jake.

You can't tell Cole.

I wasn't going to.

Oh my God, this is wrong.

What's wrong is that the only thing keeping me from asking you to take me home is this baby.

Oh God, the baby.

I'm sorry, Jacob.

What are you sorry for? I did this.

We both did.

I'm supposed to be strong. I can't be strong around you.

No one asked you to.

Bridget, it doesn't matter. My God, I'm in love with you and you're pregnant and you've got a life already.

You're....you what?

I'm in love with you.

Oh, no. Jacob, no. Don't say it out loud.

You know this. You kissed me back, I know you feel the same thing I feel.

I know.

Then what?

You saying it out loud tears me apart.

Saying it, Bridge, saying it kills me. You should be with me.

Stop, Jake. Please!

Bridge, I would help you raise this baby.

I know you would.

So let me.

Take me home, please, Jacob.

You should be going home with me. Say you love me.

Stop it, Jake.

Say it!

I love you.

Can you hear yourself now, Bridget?

Yes.

Good. So there's no mistake then.

And with that he threw the truck into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot and drove me home. Eleven hours later I went into labor.

Ruth was born a day and a half later. Her first visitor was Jacob, dressed in a gown and mask that they make NICU visitors wear, proud to be a first-time godfather. He congratulated Cole and I and we stared at each other in agony over the tube and wires in Cole's presence and we kept our secret.

Until now.

Because that kiss Cole never knew about.

And now he never will because I have outlived him.

I still have that image of Jake, soaking wet to the skin, clothes plastered against his flesh, standing on the beach poised like he was about to grab my hand and run away with me forever. His thumbs tracing my cheekbones while I tried to breathe him in and my heart fluttered so hard I thought I might die. Every time I see him in the shower he looks at me with that same look and I'm transported back in time to that day.

Here's where I admit I didn't even bother trying to describe the emotion held in those moments. I couldn't if I tried. It wasn't all sneaking and trying to have my cake and eat it too, it was difficult and bitter and painful and emotionally draining. And at the same time it was euphoric, culminative, joyful and passionate in ways I will never share with another human being as long as I live, only Jacob. It held feelings I never felt with Cole in a million years and we were in love just as hard at one point. There's just no room for that experience more than once in this lifetime.

Most fairy tales don't end so happily. Happy being a relative term, we're working so hard at our happy ending, we will get there.

Cole and I took Ruthie home after a week spent in NICU and I tried to forget the image of Jacob in my head. I tried to forget the taste of his mouth, the way his beard felt against my cheek and his hands on my skin. I tried to forget the darkness and the rain. I tried to forget that night, instead concentrated on figuring out how to be a mom, how to exist on a few spare hours of sleep and how to somehow remember that I had a husband who needed me to focus on him and our new little family and not on his best friend.

I have had to live with my actions and even though it could have been much worse, I know damn well the only thing keeping me from sleeping with Jacob that rainy night was the fact that I was hugely pregnant. And that to me is way weirder than it might be to you. But it's there and it's how I feel.

Do I think Cole knew? Of course he did, maybe not times, places, details but he knew that I was torn, he knew that Jacob rocked me off my feet and he knew that he was loving me on borrowed time, right from the start.

Prophetic and spooky and sad. And incredibly telling, for after polling my male friends, they all proclaimed me to be akin to a glass weeble when I'm pregnant, irrefutably fragile but completely round, with rosy cheeks and tentative, difficult movement, usually very sick and very hungry and very demanding, cranky and stubborn and that they wouldn't have been attracted to any of it, and weren't and that Jacob is a singularly remarkable man.

Yes. He is.

Labelmaker.

Nonsensical rambling from a nonsensical girl. I apologize, this entry is poorly strung together. I just had to get it out.

Post-therapy thoughts are so difficult so please excuse me as I unload all over the place now that I have done all the things I'm supposed to do. It used to be just Wednesdays that were so bad, we're going to change it to Wednesdays and Fridays now. Oh, joy.

I've been trying to let it go but it won't let go of me. How much power did I claim for my own? Absolutely none if it wasn't sexual. I had no control, the submissive wife. How do I take power back that wasn't mine to begin with? How do I assert myself when I've been a puppet my whole life? A Barbie. Dress her up and watch her smile and she'll do anything you want but then expect her to make a decision from a choice of more than one and she freezes, numb in thoughts she isn't capable of processing.

My head doesn't seem to work in the right way anymore.

And now with Jacob, who has infinite patience to my face but none behind my back, who's heavy-handed approach to counseling and dry delivery of his comments and responses make it seem like I'll never make him happy. He's a tough nut to crack, easy to please but no nonsense too. Bridget is mostly all nonsense. He's my very own Brubaker and I'm the prison in need of reform.

Oops, ignore that, one more nickname will only confuse you, unless you've seen that movie and there you have Jacob in a nutshell. The warden of Bridget, and a dead ringer for the Robert Redford of the mid-seventies, but with a beard. And a much better wardrobe.

Oops, digression.

Jacob is all-encouragement but he wants it yesterday and then he refuses to let you turn the tables when you point out the...enabling. And god forbid he admit anymore how hard he struggles between trying to help me and wanting me to be the fun and unpredictably reckless girl that he knows so well.

We've been instructed to keep playing, keep expanding minds and boundaries, to find Bridget some more time by herself each day (I don't recall wanting that) and to structure said days rigidly, into blocks of time that won't get overwhelming, with routines. No more varying bedtimes, no sleeping in, meals at the same time each day which are to be eaten and not ignored and to talk as much as we can. Hobbies, chores, errands, my running, talk.

That's all we do.

Oh yes, and to have patience, because I may act in ways that aren't characteristic. I may stretch Jacob's understanding of me to the point of no return, I am getting a free pass on my behavior because that's what crazy people get. Bridget can't help herself, she's so messed up.

Oh and the whole wanting a baby thing?

He doesn't trust me. It's a desperate attempt to hold on to me because I'm less likely to leap off the gingerbread if someone needs me and also if I do make the leap, why, he'd have a piece of me left here on earth after I'm long cold.

Nice. Sweet even. Way to go, Jake, on the trust issues. If I say I'm not going to do anything drastic then I won't. Even if I said I might. Of course it makes no sense. I wouldn't trust me either.

But on the other hand, the wild girl stopped and stared at Jake for a few minutes, completely and utterly dumbstruck because that was the most touching and totally fucked up thing he has ever come out with.

I'm still....wow.

Oh, and then they turned the screws and changed everything and maybe made it worse. I was dismissed like a broken toy. Right in front of me, they didn't have the decency to let me leave the room while they discussed me and I am forever branded in his eyes.

God, which one would you like first? The mentally ill one, or perhaps the one that hurt more, the depersonalization designation, that when Jacob heard that one he stopped talking and did a double take at my psychiatrist and it took him way too long to finish his thought. All along he had been just fine with my atrocious disregard for my chemical imbalances, my freaky depression that would come and go out of the blue. For the first time he saw what he's going to have to live with forever and I don't even know what his reaction is. I got stuck on the mentally ill part, too.

And to think all this time I thought I might be okay.

So just add delusional to the list, please.

I have a way of pretending I'm normal without really doing it at all. Which I knew..I'm not that fucked up that I don't see it.

We were both rather stunned. Apparently we've been speeding along at a rate that isn't productive, it's counterproductive, and Jacob's new duties mean that right off the bat we'll be fighting a chaotic schedule that isn't very routine. He gets calls at strange hours, but I am to forge ahead, eat when I'm supposed to, sleep when I should and keep going. I knew damn well I was sabotaging myself all along, which is part of the whole illness. That pesky mental one.

Oh and Jacob pulled another fast one on me that I've been waiting for for years and was almost bound to the conclusion that maybe he really didn't want to know. He does, he wants to know everything. Not to be content with knowing what Cole didn't do, he wants everything out there and there are few ways I can do that short of storytelling here. If I just say it all out loud I might disintegrate into little pieces that never fit back together ever again. If I have to tell him looking into his eyes I'll take so much away from him, things I don't want to ever lose.

Of course the team agrees. So either they're all perverts or they're all better than I thought they were and I will get away with nothing. I'm going to be drawn and quartered psychologically and they're going to dump me upside down and pound on my feet until I'm completely empty.

And I looked at Jacob and ignored them all and I whispered to him that I didn't think I would survive that. He smiled gently at me and told me I already did.

He only thinks I did.

I asked them if I was normal at all. If I would ever be less flinchy, less startling, less messed up, less depraved and less able to turn on and off different areas of my personality because Jake doesn't really know what the hell he's going to wake up with each morning.

Mentally ill.

They assured us once again in their soothing tones that time and hard work will fix me.

I asked if time alone will do it and they said no. Because I think I would rather die now than tell him things that Cole did. Or Caleb for that matter.

Dammit.

I didn't want to be humiliated or ashamed anymore. I don't want him to have that information in his head, I don't want him to picture those things. If I quit now I look like I'm not trying to get better. My hands are tied.

Bridget gets backed into a corner and then scooped into a box for safekeeping. Until she's retrained to be released into the wild. I'm my own monkey on my back now, look at that.

The only way out is through and that's not an option because I went through all of it for one single reason and then I got caught up and couldn't do it and then I couldn't do anything and now..well...now I don't even know what to do.

I believe I've been just about finished off here. I'm not really sure what the fuck end is up or how I went from trying to hold on to a destructive marriage with a violent man that I was completely in love with and possibly brainwashed to ending that life and beginning a new one that was supposed to be full of happiness and love and romance to winding up dismissed as mentally ill while they sat there and talked about my options to learn how to live with this and not wind up worse, further incapacitated. I was sitting there saying, I'm not incapacitated! Fuck, just help me deal with all this shit, and then help me deal with the shit that comes from nowhere!

It's really fucking unbelievable. It explains a lot and it ruins more.

I've been assured I most definitely can come home and continue to write my sweet little stories and continue to spin wool and read to my kids and make lunch and dust the musical instruments and do bookkeeping for the church and drive my friends up the wall because hey, life has to go on.

Just take the pills and continue the therapy forever.

Incredible.

I said very little after that, and mostly tried to pretend I didn't exist.

At the end of the afternoon yesterday when it started to get dark I went into the den to draw the curtains and Jacob was sitting at the desk, no lights on. Just sitting in his chair staring out the window into the snow.

Why are you in the dark, Jake?

I'm thinking, princess.

About how quickly you'd like to run away?

No, about vacations and revelations and second opinions and a lot more sleep.

Heavy stuff.

Oh, it's very serious stuff.

Do you regret marrying me?

Please don't tell me you think I'm that kind of guy.

Hey, at this point I would say you've had more than your fair share of this bullshit and no one would blame you if you bailed.

Then you don't know me very well, princess.

Boy, am I happy to hear that.

I aim to please.

Ah. Charity for the mentally ill.

You're really stuck on that, aren't you? It only means you're depressed. Christ, Bridge, I see twenty people a week who fall into that category too. They're teachers and representatives and cops and some of your friends, even.

I know. I was just hoping we could build a rubber room.

So you can thrash around and go apeshit in one?

No, so we can play naked twister and not get hurt. Silly man.

Why did I know you'd find a way to pervert that?

Because I have to laugh about it or I'll lose what's left of myself.

Then naked twister it is.

For the record, we've never played naked twister. Somewhere along the way it became a running joke that never stops. There are lots of those. Happy memories.

So there you have it. Pretty, loves to write, loves to tell you stories about Jacob and how romantic he is, but mentally ill. Way to go, Fragile Miss B.

Oh! Psychiatry.

Can I phone it in this morning and do a solitary karaoke entry instead of publishing my explanation for yesterday's bitterness that is still present? Thanks, I appreciate it ever so much.

Jacob's been singing Circles as he walks around in....circles around the house getting ready this morning and he just belts out the bridge. I love it when he sings, it means he's content or at least not one hundred percent unhappy.

    I've lost all that I wanted to leave
    I've lost all that I wanted to be
    Don't believe that there's nothing that's true
    Don't believe in this modern machine
    The modern machine

No, I can't phone it in today? Well, don't blame a girl for trying. I almost wrote that I hate to be a tease but that would be a lie, and so to tease you I'm going to go get all my work done first while I wallow in the mood and then hopefully I'll have time to tell you what happened yesterday that left me so bitter. There's a dulled edge (called time) to the sharpness of yesterday's revelations and so it's a bit easier today to process all of it.

Oh and for fucks sakes, if there's a chance in hell that my neighbors who live 3 km east (down along the river beside the pretty tudor-style house with all the ivy on the gate in the summer)read here could you PLEASE stop shovelling down to the concrete, there's just enough film remaining to freeze each night and make your section of the sidewalk a virtual skating rink and I really don't want to be in the snow and the traffic is too heavy for me to move to the street. Or find some salt, sand, kitty litter, anything. There's little room left on my body that isn't bruised now from falling in front of your house.

Or perhaps it's a game now. But ha! I'm going to go west tomorrow. So screw you, OCD neighbors!

I hate therapy.

Right now I think I hate just about everything else, too.

Except my children. I'm going to go out with them and play in the snow now because every second word I write stabs me in the head. If I'm outside no one can call me either, so consider yourself told.

Cancelling the noise.

    Does it have to start with a broken heart
    Broken dreams and bleeding parts
    We were young and world was clear
    But young ambition disappears
    I swore it would never come to this
    The average, the obvious
    I'm still discontented down here
    I'm still discontented

Up before the sunrise and out into the cold hushed air I went this morning, in my technical tights and fleece, plugged into my zen player and ready to burn off excess energy in the dim light of the beginning of this day. I hate Wednesdays, I don't sleep much. It's Big Therapy day, in which the whole team and Jacob is present and they all look at me so expectantly as I speak and I get angry so easily because it's the one time I can be in a room with four men, and I have their undivided attention and I can't do a thing with it.

    A spark ignites
    In time and space
    Limping through this human race
    You fight and crawl your way back home
    But you're running the wrong way
Oh yeah, except get better. Good girl, Bridget.

    The future is a question mark
    Of kerosene and electric sparks
    There's still fire in you yet
    Yeah there's still fire in you

But my god, the run felt so good. Right up until that part when I wiped out on a freshly scraped sidewalk and bruised the hell out of my hip. Running after that really sucked but at that point I was only fifteen blocks from home.

    I keep cleaning up the mess I've made
    I won't run away
    I can't sleep in the bed I've made
More later if I survive my appointment. Blah.

    If we've only got one try
    If we've only got one life
    If time was never on our side
    Then before I die
    I want to burn out bright

Cruel and gentle things.

Progress, as Bridget moves onward and upward, purging herself of the best and the worst memories to make room for new ones that don't involve monsters and mistakes.

    She said I tried to mind my own business
    But that sad look on your face was a challenge to my faith
    Made me wanna chase the dark out of your room
    So she smiled and said hello; little did she know
    He would take over her soul and never never never let go

    He was fine before he met her
    Eyes like faded jeans, soft and blue and he had seen
    Everything, and he had been everywhere
    Til he turned his gaze away, longed to see it every day
    Heard a voice inside him say you'll never never never be the same

I'm pulling out my CDs this week, a sort of ritual performed each new year to remind me that my own personal soundtrack never stops playing, it just advances and recedes like a lyrical tide to give me strength and soothe my wounds, to lift me up and drag me out. Listening to music I haven't heard for a long time helps me categorize these memories, because I don't have to suppress it all anymore.

My brain is a virtual HMV store, arranged by artist, alphabetically. Feeling music, because there is so much I don't hear and that's a travesty.

This morning I pulled out Volcano, my favorite Edie Brickell album, and one that has seen it's fair share of memories made.

Jacob passed it back to me over coffee once upon a time, here in this city several months after he moved here, which would have been around the time I left Cole very temporarily and with no regret and was promptly returned to him, soundly rejected by Jacob who was married by this time and struggling just to keep his own head on straight.

That would be the new years eve that Cole lost me in a snooker game. He lost me to Jacob and Jacob took him up on his offer simply to teach him a lesson, but he wound up learning one instead. We were set up and we took it and ran with it anyway, our mistake. All the way to Jacob's house, shortly before midnight. We went inside and he turned off the porch lights. My eyebrows went up, because up until that moment I hadn't considered the gravity of the situation. We had all been drinking, a night long planned, complete with all-night babysitting by Cole's mom.

I'll teach that asshole to treat you this way.

What are you talking about?

You're staying here with me tonight, princess.

Right. You took me home. I'm yours for the night. Make him pay, Jake. Make him pay by having me.

Stop it. Just be quiet.

I'll do whatever you want me too.

There's a word for this, Bridget.

Extraordinary?

Pathetic. I'm not going to touch you. You're not the prize. The prize for me is teaching him a lesson.

It's because you're married isn't it? Jacob, who is ever going to know? This is sanctioned, it's permissible.

Not by me, it isn't.

So you don't want me?

Oh, I want you. Bridget, I have wanted you forever but it isn't going to be this way.

So why am I here? Fuck, I need to be far away from both of you.

I told you, you came home with me and you're spending the night and I'm going to show Cole a thing or two about treating you the way he does. I'm sick of it. Come in out of the hall and we'll get some tea.

I don't want any, thank you.
He put on the stereo. Our eyes met just as the announcer started counting down the final 10 seconds to 2005.

Auld Lang Syne came on. True to form, my eyes welled up, standing there in the middle of Jacob's tiny living room, staring up at him.

Bridget don't cry over this song. It's a song about times that have long passed. We're in the here and now.

Maybe that's not why I'm crying.

Happy New Year, beautiful.

It won't be for me, but Happy New Year, Jacob.

Have hope, princess.

I'm running low on that particular commodity right at this moment.

He put his arms around me and kissed my forehead (lord) and held me until the song was over. Then he smiled and asked me if I wanted the bed or the couch. I just kind of looked at him, surprised.

What is it?

We've done this before, Jacob. We can just share the bed.

Right and that wasn't a good idea before, either, Bridget. Just pick one.

Could I have the bed? It's warmer in there.

Sure, princess. Let me get some blankets first and I'll be out of your hair.

We're going to sleep right now?

You're half shot and I'm headed that way. Maybe tomorrow morning I'll take you out for breakfast before I bring you home.
All business. I'm standing in his living room, his for the night and he's worried about whether or not I'm eating, goddammit. I just nodded. It's Lochlan all over again.

He walked me to the bedroom door, kissed the tip of my nose and told me if I needed anything, just to holler. I closed the door and took off my dress, hanging it in his closet and got in bed with my camisole and undies. For some reason I didn't want to sleep that naked so I got out one of his organic undershirts and put that on too. It was huge on me but so soft. I slid between the sheets of his bed and it smelled like him. Out in the living room, I heard him put a CD on the stereo. The one I had with me when we left that had been a belated Christmas present from Jacob. A copy of Edie Brickell's Volcano that he knew I wanted. The music was familiar and I was asleep in moments.

I woke up at 3 am, not knowing where I was, terrified.

Jacob was sitting in the chair in the corner watching me sleep, an expression on his face I could hardly describe, it was a mixture of anguish and longing. He wasn't moving, he was just sitting with his elbows on his knees, still dressed in jeans and a plain white button down shirt with another of those soft tshirts underneath, bare feet, hair messed up as if he had been tossing and turning instead of ever sleeping. I sat up.

Jacob. What's wrong?

You make me so crazy, Bridget. Being near you, touching you, talking to you. It drives me crazy and I don't know what to do about it.

He was so distraught, I flew out of the bed and put my arms around him. He held on to me so gently and then he pulled away with a confused look.

Why are you wearing my shirt?

I was cold, I'm still cold. Will you lie down with me?

Oh, God, Bridge, I can't do this. You're wearing pink underwear. Oh my God.

I'm only asking you to be here. Not to do anything but be here.

Sometimes that's the hardest part.

His voice was thick with desperation, but he didn't talk anymore. We climbed back into his bed and settled in with our arms around each other, my nose to his chest, his breathing on the top of my head, blankets up over our heads.

Jake?

Yeah, princess?

Are you really going to sleep fully-clothed?

He took off his shirt and jeans and left everything else on, tshirt and boxers, and settled back down against me. And he sat up again and rubbed his eyes.

Princess, this is a bad idea.

Sleep, Jacob, just sleep with me. Please.

He lay back down and pulled me even closer. We were breathing the same space now and he held me so tightly against him. More than once that night we lost our way and began kissing each other and at one point he had me flat on my back, both hands hooked under the hips of my underwear about to pull them off and he stopped. At one point he had the tshirt I had on yanked up over my breasts and he licked one of my nipples and then he stopped. At one point he pulled my hair back and kissed my throat and pressed his body against mine but then he stopped.

I woke up around 5:30 am, completely tangled in his arms and legs, his face turned into my shoulder, arms locked around me, his hands clasping me to him almost exactly the same way we had woken up the last time we slept together, in the hammock.

I'm beginning to love sleeping with him at this point. Even if very little happens. Even if it all feels so unfamiliar and is heavily laden with guilt and grief for a life I was deliberately throwing away.

He opened his eyes when I shook him awake and smiled at me bitterly. He said quietly that he knew now that I wasn't so much a prize won but a screw turned and that Cole had succeeded in hurting him worse than anything I could ever do or say to Jacob, he had dangled a forbidden need in front of Jacob and it was about to be yanked away again.

Oh God, there's that look again. The one that speaks volumes, that says Jacob will die if he doesn't get his way, and he pushed me down onto my back again and pushed up my tshirt and kissed my belly and then right down my thighs and I wanted to scream. I thought for sure he was going to give up and just take everything I was offering him right there. Instead he stood up abruptly, pulled his jeans back on, shrugged into the infamous moss green blazer and ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to look less distraught.

Which failed.

I got up and put my party dress back on and tried to fix the smudges of black underneath my eyes. I gave up and just scrubbed my face raw instead. I dreaded going home.

My God, you look so pretty.

Is that pretty cute or pretty pathetic, Jake?

There were eleven missed calls from Cole on my cell phone when I turned it on. Jacob had turned it off sometime after I went to sleep the first time. I didn't question him, I just followed him outside and got into the truck beside him and we found a diner far outside of town and took a booth and drank coffee in silence, both of us pushing hashbrowns around on our plates half-heartedly, not sure how to keep going forward but knowing we had somehow crossed an imaginary line with each other and we couldn't continue down this road.

The guilt that was crushing him was absent in me, I was still angry with Cole and in shock that Jacob once again held me all night long.

Don't forget your CD, princess.

Thanks.
We didn't say any more words to each other during the meal. I ate nothing. Then Jacob let out a long shaky sigh and suggested he drive me home.

I don't want to go home.

Well, I don't want to be around you right now, princess.

Oh my god. Fine, get mean. That helps, Jacob.

You're killing me.

You're married, how can I have this effect on you anymore?

Yeah well, I can get unmarried. You seem to be having trouble with that.

Jacob, don't be like this.

Be like what, Bridget? I just had a heartbreaking night in which I almost exploded because I wanted you so damn bad, a night where I thought I was going to go half-crazy every time you moved in your sleep. What sort of romantic dream will you make this night into inside your head so that you can live with what you do to me? It's terrible. All of it. Cole wins. I fail, and you're so fucked up you don't even know the difference between right and wrong anymore. I'm disgusted with all of us but the little voice inside my head is screaming for you and right now I just want it to stop, and I want you to go away.

Fuck you, Jacob.

Oh, fuck you too, princess. Now shut up and eat something so we can leave. Christ, you're too thin.

If you think being mean will make me stop loving you then you're mistaken, preacher boy.

If I thought you would ever love me enough to do something about it, then I'd try anything at this point. This isn't mean, princess, it's frustration talking.

It's mean. You're making me cry in a fucking truckstop in the middle of nowhere because you held me in your arms all night and you want me and I want you but I don't want to leave Cole.

Bridget, you can't have both of us. And I don't understand why you stay with him. He's bad for you.

Maybe you're bad for me.

Maybe I'm the only thing that's good for you but you can't see that and I don't know why you can't see it after all this time.

Then maybe you should just take me home.

Fine, put on your coat.

He stood up, threw some bills on the table, and took my hand, walking too quickly for me, I had to rush to keep up. He drove me right to my front door and I went inside alone and Jacob roared off. I walked up the steps and reached out to open the door when it flew open from the inside, Cole meeting me on the threshold with a smug, angry face, but a look that also screamed relief because I came back. He told me the kids would be brought home after his mom took them out for lunch and then he asked me how my night went.

And he didn't believe me when I told him.

I didn't fuck him, if that's what you were worried about.

Oh, no worries, I was well aware that I would pay for my Judas kiss either way. Even with lies of omission.

And I paid for it, in spades.

Jacob called later on, exchanging some terse words with Cole. Cole wouldn't even let him talk to me.

And Jacob never forgave himself for whatever way he imagined that Cole made me pay for that night. But he remains protected because whatever he came up with most likely wasn't half as bad as what actually took place but I would never put him in the place of having to feel any worse, he's paid his price just like I have.

But somehow, something Jacob gave me in that one night in which we struggled with ourselves and with each other made me find the hope and the strength he had wished for me. And I hear it now when I listen to songs I heard then.

Nothing hurts right now. Even pulling memories out of the dark and bonking myself over the head with my own foolishness, for the first time it doesn't ache. Listening to songs and thinking about difficult moments and somehow I'm not bleeding.

Point with no exclamation.

I know, I said nothing about therapy yesterday.

Because I quit again.

    And if I don't make it
    Know that I loved you all along
    Just like sunny days that
    We ignore because
    We're all dumb and jaded
    And I hope to God I figure out what's wrong
    And I hope to God I figure out what's wrong
    I hope to God I figure out what's wrong

Don't say it.

I walked out less than a third of the way into the morning's festivities and around 15 minutes after that I noticed Jacob's shoes under the table where I sat staring into a cup of coffee in the window of our favorite little lunch spot downtown. I didn't look up, instead I picked imaginary fuzz off the lap of my vintage coat and tapped the toes of my boots slowly on the floor. I was gearing up to be lectured to like a runaway teenager but instead he held out his hand and asked me if I was ready to go home.

I spent about four hours anticipating the fatherly ultimatums, the inevitable lecture, the request for some cooperation, and instead I got a very wonderful kiss and I was held and he asked if I was planning to continue to take the medication.

And like a child testing their boundaries I said I might, that I wasn't sure.

He confirmed a surprising new lack of boundaries by not commenting on that and said that we needed to start packing because Friday morning is going to start very early and that the trip couldn't have come at a better time. I looked at him and asked him if this was running. He said it was nothing of the kind, instead it was simply a coincidence and that if we just hold our breath long maybe the hiccups in our new year will be over soon, that he's got to try something new because forcing me to go and sit there and be ripped apart in the name of healing isn't helping at all.

It took me forever to meet his eyes, and what I saw in them wasn't disappointment, it was relief. Relief that barely begins to ease my own guilt at letting him down because I can't get my head on straight. He told me to throw away my guilt, that we're just going to hold on tight and if I have a bad day, then it's a bad day and if it's good then the world is a beautiful place and now we're going to see what time and love is going to do for fragile miss Bridget. In my waiting for the other shoe to drop I didn't notice Jake had both feet already firmly planted on the floor.

He's a trained counselor. This is a highly unorthodox and unusual step for someone who has such a close interest in my health and happiness, for someone who is such a stickler for going by the book, for being proactive and aggressively trying to righten the world using a single hand. He's jumping with his eyes closed, which says more than I ever dreamed, maybe he trusts me after all.

He's giving me back my control and I'm floored by how this feels. It feels good. It feels normal. It feels a little risky to go in this direction right this moment, but that speaks louder than any words I could write about it.

When you mix light and dark your goal is to wind up with medium, and that's what I'd like. A happy medium.

Superhero moments.

    "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" is your Benzedrine
    Butterfly decal, rear-view mirror, dogging the scene
    You smile like the cartoon, tooth for a tooth
    You said that irony was the shackles of youth
    You wore a shirt of violent green
    I never understood the frequency
    You wore our expectations like an armored suit
    I couldn't understand
    You said that irony was the shackles of youth
    I couldn't understand
    You wore a shirt of violent green
    I couldn't understand
    I never understood, don't fuck with me
I'd like to know what the sign is that I should be looking for when I wake up with a song stuck in my head every day for weeks on end. A song I haven't heard in twelve years.

Life can be strange.

Life is good, too. Love is grand and Jacob is feeling better this morning, trading in his feverish chattering for a drawn and weary face this morning when I brought breakfast up for him. His fever broke sometime around 2 am with a whole litany of incoherent ramblings and I had to get up and pull him back onto the bed because he was half on the floor and he pulled me back into his arms because he wasn't burning hot for once and he kissed my ear and slid his hand down between my thighs and promptly fell asleep again. I think I pulled something. He weighs eighty pounds more than I do.

Happy New Year indeed. There's absolutely nothing better right now than sipping a hot cup of coffee and watching a giant hunk of a guy walk around the house in his waffleweave long johns. We keep smiling at each other like stupid fools.

And I'd kiss him but he keeps sneezing. He did warn me once that he has a lot more snot than I do. And you know something? He really wasn't kidding.

The long kiss goodnight, or goodbye 2006. Forever.

For my final post of the year, I could have copped out and written down my resolutions for 2007. I could have detailed the previous seven out of eight New Years Eves, which is what I originally sat down to write about, spent with Jacob in attendance (except for one) and a maddening record of forehead kisses, ones I held an exemplary disdain for.

Hell, I could write about that one year we all drank too much and Cole lost me in a game of snooker. What fun. I think I'll save that story for another day. Maybe tomorrow.

Life was a confusing blend of pure comfort and total awkwardness when Cole and Jacob were in the same room and we all refused to acknowledge it but put ourselves in our familiar places year after year, seeking out the same pain all the while hoping for some magical promise that the year we were starting together would be different at last.

Bridget and Jacob survived long enough to see that promise find the light of day, and Cole will not.

Everything is going to be okay.

Jacob said that to me back in April and I still believe him.

Very early this morning I looked outside and the steps and sidewalk were shovelled and I saw Ben's truck pulling away. On the porch just inside the door was a big bag of our favorite coffee beans and a note to us. An apology and a hand given because he knows how sick Jacob is, because the grapevine is alive and well in this small-town neighborhood wrapped in a big city shell. And Caleb sent a very long letter and all the presents back to us again because he said he was trying to find some way to continue to give me everything on Cole's behalf and oddly I believe him, if only because he had the guts to do this even after Jacob humiliated him spectacularly, without meaning to be quite that mean.

No, that doesn't mean anyone has been forgiven, it just means I'm in a generous mood. Or maybe they were, for Bridget's sugar daddies rarely seem to drop the ball.

Before this year went to hell I had some very close friends who love me in their own ways, fucked up as they might be and I love them right back, like I loved Cole when he hurt me. Misguided as it all is, and sordid and messed up, these are my friends. They just have no clue where all the boundaries went. It all blew up and we're all going to start over. All of us. Together. Well, not really, but the enemies have somehow turned back into acquaintances and may well re-earn their friend status if they can keep their own perversions in check.

Hell, if I can do it, maybe they can too.

    The outcome was predictable
    Our banditos were despicable
    Of blood we lost a dozen litres
    A small price to pay for las senoritas
    The town mayor was happy but his face was glum
    The maidens numbered only one
    But there weren't seven brides for seven brothers
    I knew I had to get rid of the others
This morning Jacob struggled through his opening remarks and had to leave the pulpit mid-sentence, unable to breathe, leaving his lay minister to finish the service and to read the sermon Jacob had prepared, because Jacob was sitting in his office doubled over and attempting not to cough. I found him there around 1 pm and drove us home and made him more soup. He is tired of soup and unwilling to slow down any more than absolutely necessary but I'm forcing him to stop and rest, at last.

He's too sick to kiss me, for fear of my struggle with pneumonia returning because I'm rundown. He's too sick to make love, too sick to play, too sick to lie awake and talk late at night, instead sleeping lightly, feverishly, talking in his sleep and waking often. He has relented and has resorted to just holding me close to him and being here. He's more miserable from the lack of affection than from the sickness itself, frustrated and miserable.

In a few days he'll feel better and he said he wants to take me out for a decadent night of dinner and dancing, a delayed celebration of the promise fulfilled, and maybe possibly a few perversions of his own.

It's a huge promise, but I'm just as happy to stay in tonight and have a very understated evening at home with my family. I've been to more than my share of champagne-swilling, fireworks-watching, auld lang syne singing, celebratory black-tie New Years parties and I don't think I want to go to any more of those.

But the promise remains.

One that tells me 2007 is going to be better. A normal year, just once. Happy. Contented. Appreciated. Pain-free. Commonplace, even. Oh, bring it, please, God.

    Love is stronger than justice
    Love is thicker than blood
    Love is stronger than justice
    Love is a big fat river in flood

Would that be too much to ask or have I earned it?

Is this a promise that will be kept?

I guess 365 days from now, I'll have my answer.

Happy New Year, everyone.

And I really hope I don't get a forehead kiss again. I hope we're past that now.

    It all ended so happily
    I settled down with the family
    I look forward to a better day
    But ethical stuff never got in my way
    And though there used to be brothers seven
    There other six are singing in heaven

Stormbringer.

We're snowed in.

This is awesome. The kids have three movies to watch, Jacob woke up with the worst cold he's ever had and I'm tired. Just worn out. He's going to work from home in his flannels and I'm going to spoil him with chicken soup and later we're going to pile on the couch and rot out our brains.

I couldn't think of a better way to spend a Saturday. I don't even have to shovel, it's still snowing too hard.

This is very cozy.

Yes, there's lots of cake left. Emergency provisions and all...


    In this life I'm stubborn to the core
    In this life I've been burning after more
    We both know what these open arms are for
    You're everything that's fair
    In this life, you're my only one