Keeping promises I haven't made.

Sometimes I'm not as dumb or as blindly led as I seem to be.

    I could stay awake just to hear you breathing
    Watch you smile while you are sleeping
    While you're far away dreaming
    I could spend my life in this sweet surrender
    I could stay lost in this moment forever
    Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure

Yesterday turned out to be a much needed family day for us. With a languid start to the morning we took our time, drinking extra coffee and juice and replacing snowboots with wellies for the puddles and warmer air, and lighter insulated jackets and knit gloves for the kids. I wore a fisherman knit sweater and jeans and a vintage scarf and Jacob smiled when he saw me.

He said I looked like I was ready for a Sunday drive. An inside joke, I think Mondays will forever be our Sundays. He pulled on his midweight suit jacket over a green button-down shirt and there was the CD. I thought he had left it in the old truck when it went to truck heaven but he didn't after all.

We headed for the highway and I was singing about pilots and he was smiling, one of those happy smiles people have when everything is going well.

Of course. It was a set up.

We spent the morning poking through an old barn that had four floors packed to the rafters, but they turned out not to have anything we couldn't go home without. Then we got some lunch and took it outside to the park next to the diner, so the kids could eat and and then run around to blow off steam. It's hard to keep their hands to themselves when we're in a environment that seems fully breakable.

And Jacob turned to me and let his smile die away and asked me if I was ready to try something new.

I stared at him and didn't say anything.

Hmm?

New, Jake? What did you have in mind?

Going back to no pills, Bridge.

Oh, no, can we just have this because this is better.

You're not you, Bridge, you're someone else and it concerns me.

Gee, thanks, honey.

You've said it yourself.

If I recall correctly you also said better I stay on them and be here than be off them and lose what's left.

That was before everything else got so much better so quickly.

Right, we're rushing again, Jake.

No, I don't think we are.

Wait until-

I already talked to Claus and a few others about it. You had such a good balance before, and you did pretty well without pills. They're on board with a test run, with tapering off.

Jake, have you forgotten what life was like? I was so high strung. I wasn't doing well, I was trying to survive and hating every second of everything.

You didn't appear to have as hard a time.

Jacob, you can't be serious.

Oh geez, now I'm panicking and trying to keep my voice down and he put his hand on my face and it was so warm and he looked at me and I believed somehow he could snap his fingers and gold would just fall out of the sky. My beanstock giant.

You found a way.

No, Jacob, I was held together with a cool breeze and the weight of a thousand threats. Fear kept me going. My God, I can't believe you've forgotten.

No, I didn't forget, princess. But what if you did what you did then but without the fear? Picture it, everything as before but no Cole. All support, everything you need, plus the routine and therapy and fresh air and all of it but no pills. So you wouldn't have to be half-asleep. So you could stop taking the drugs.

I think we should leave it, Jake.

But you don't like it.

No, what I don't like is any more changes right now. I just got used to them again. I can stay awake, I can write a little, and things are going well. Stopping now would be asking for trouble.

So you don't want to stop.

No, I don't. Everyone is happy.

Are you happy?

I'm not suicidal, and that's all that matters.

But are you happy, princess?

Yes.

He looked so doubtful.

I don't want to mess it up, Jake. I don't want you to have any regrets.

The only regret I have is that my wife is perpetually drugged and all the enthusiasm has left her eyes and she has to work so hard to smile it makes me want to scream.

I'm sorry.

It isn't your fault, Bridge, so don't say that.

Of course it is. My accountability, remember?

Fuck the accountability. I don't think the drugs are doing anything for you.

No, but they make everyone else happy. You're happy.

I'm happy because you're with me.

I'm happy for that too.

With effort, Bridge.

Life is an effort, Jacob.

So what would you chose to do?

Stop taking them.

What?

I would want to stop taking them if I could chose, Jacob.

Let's.

Jacob, if I-

You won't. Your life will never be that hopeless again I promise.

Even with-

No matter what, princess.

I nodded, still not convinced but not willing to risk spoiling the rest of the day with a big blowup. I didn't sing on the way home, Jacob played Anima and kept looking at me, but I chose to ignore the music, ignore the looks and instead I just looked out my window with my own defeated expression. I don't want to go back there, or anywhere else where the lights aren't on. Not now. God, I got shivers reading that entry again.

We did have a nice rest of the day, heading to the library on the way home where I got a mystery novel and he got some guitar-making books and the kids filled up on Franklin and Critter books. We came home and barbecued steak and baked potatoes. I had a destructive glass of wine to finish off a bottle from Loch's visit. One glass puts me on the floor now, for the record.

    Lying close to you feeling your heart beating
    And I'm wondering what you're dreaming
    Wondering if it's me you're seeing
    Then I kiss your eyes
    And thank God we're together
    I just want to stay with you in this moment forever
    Forever and ever

Jacob didn't broach the subject again until the kids were asleep and we were settled in front of the fire. And by that time I had respawned my strength.

I don't want to push you, princess. I'm just so proud of your hard work.

That's good, because I'm staying on the pills, Jake.

Really?

For now.

You're sure?

No, but I'm not taking any chances yet. It's too soon.

If that's what you want most, princess.

I do.

Good for you.

I'm still me, you know.

You're everything, you always were and you always will be.

Then we need to keep going slow, we've got forever, you know.

He looked positively shocked.

You're absolutely right. We do. We've got forever.

He shook his head in disbelief and smiled, like it was something he had never considered before and then he repeated himself, because in his head I had just made him a promise that I could never make out loud. I let him have it, because it's the only thing he ever wanted from me.

We've got forever, princess.

Life is a gift to us all, you know. One of the reasons that I'm doing better and doing well at all is because we've dropped our pretenses and turned to each other instead of turning away. He hasn't abandoned me and I don't shut him out of my feelings out of some misguided attempt to spare him from feeling like a interloper. It's done wonders for finally putting Cole's ghost to rest once and for all. Despite the continued lack of ability on my part to voice promises I'm obviously not in charge of making.

And for some reason Jacob holds me so much harder now. Longer, too. This morning he handed me my pill and my coffee and smiled and told me I was beautiful. Probably because he just realized that maybe I'm not as dumb as I look. Or maybe it was because I think he finally realizes I'm giving him everything I have to give, whether I confirm that out loud, or not.

Maybe it's finally enough. For both of us.

The late bloomer.

This is not my entry.

I got waylaid by the Rude Cactus this morning, reading his post and finding myself welling up over his words today when he usually makes me laugh. He's usually my internet lift, I enjoy just about everything except for his unpronounceable Friday post about current events because I have my head in the ground and fail to keep up with American news, my fault, not his by any means. I'd just rather read his words about his family, the job he seems to dislike or just about anything that rolls through his freaky brain.

His post today was about a journey to the town where his grandmother lives to celebrate her ninetieth birthday, and he talked about his close family ties and how it made him feel. I'm paraphrasing badly, go and read instead, I'll wait. I'll get coffee.

Ready to continue?

I apologize in advance, I didn't plan to go here, I'm on my way to the doctor shortly but my brain runs a billion miles an hour on days like these, and this is eye-bleedingly esoteric at Bridget's finest.

It made me think. I don't really have that. That small town stuff, the closeness. I never have. This isn't a woe-is-me rough childhood post, hell, I've had my thrills and my knocks too. Typically average. Just like everyone else.

Or not.

I spent my childhood talking to the Atlantic Ocean. She holds all my secrets, my hopes and my fears and my dreams. I was monitored intermittently through the window as I grew up alone on a beach, to fend for myself in the changing tides, bleached and then burned to a crisp by the sun, content to prattle on as children do, and never expecting the reply, only the comfort of that sea that goes on forever and is always going to be right where I left it. Then I went straight to the freak circuit with Loch and it may have finished me off. I'm about as mature as a lollipop, stuck in your hair.

Maybe that's why I can write for hours and hours without feedback, I can talk to my doctors and not feel the least bit self-conscious about the lack of appropriate response.

Jacob really cannot fathom the exact depth of my emotions regarding this. He only ever hit the tip of the iceberg with his penchant for taking me to the beach as an adult. I was usually headed there anyway. I believe I'm acquainted intimately with every single wave. The ocean has tasted me and I have tasted it right back. We've been lovers.

But as a grownup there is nowhere to go now. And so I made my own family out of my male friends who serve as brothers, uncles, babysitters, heavy lifters, confidants and sounding boards. I would call any one of five or ten of them in an emergency first, before my family.

Let's just say I've always been an outsider, content to keep in touch, whatever that may be, but really I'm not close to anyone I was born related to. Sometimes it feels weird. I had an average suburban seventies childhood and eighties adolescence. I was alternately spoiled and deprived. I was often ignored and so maybe when I grew up it was an unconscious payback. Now I find them stifling, suffocating and judgemental, absent when they should have closed ranks, stonefaced when sought out for advice, never once venturing out of their ivory towers until it was too late, and then they looked around and decided I would keep my secrets because they were perfect and life would go on. This is the same flesh and blood who refused to acknowledge my hearing issues which led to a lifetime of shame on my part, hiding it and adding insult to injury as I try to manage getting used to hearing aids on top of everything else I'm trying to deal with.

Cole was a perfect fit, in their eyes, finding perfection at the expense of comfort. And while they love Jacob, it's mostly because he cleans up nicely and they can say there is a minister in the family. I don't think they don't know a thing about him.

They don't know a thing about me.

And oddly, I'm not bitter anymore. Sometimes, like when I read that post today, there's a twinge. But looking back it's mostly wistfulness. Instead of being permitted to thrive and bloom I was permitted to exist.

And they'll read this and not understand. And I don't really care.

I made my own family, one that brings up all of those feelings now, and I'm grateful for it. I think that God puts all the people together who don't have that, and they make their own little families. That's what we've done, because as I said before, I'm no different than anyone else that I know. It was less of a commune, and more of an effort to fulfill all of our needs. So those of you who capitalized your obscenities at me for still being close to Loch or anyone else shouldn't bother, because you probably have relatives you can go to in a crisis, family you love without hesitation, without having to skip a beat and then make your affirmation because it's the right thing to do. I never hesitate when I say how much I love my friends.

Never.

Congratulations, you are blessed and apparently so much better of a human bean than I am.

Did I ever once argue that point with you?

I'm not sure if writing this out makes me sad or makes me feel better.

My pilot is here.

    She can't remember a time when she felt needed
    If love was red then she was color blind
    All her friends they've been tried for treason
    And crimes that were never defined

    She's saying love is like a barren place
    And reaching out for human faith
    Is like a journey I just don't have a map for
    So baby's gonna take a dive and push the shift to overdrive
    Send a signal that she's hanging all her hopes on the stars

Guess what CD I found this morning in one of Jacob's spring suit jacket pockets? Was it that long ago that we listened to that song? I was sure he wore that jacket since July but I guess a lot of things got missed.

Nice to have the tunes, we're hitting the road today to go antiquing down south. I have decided I'd like a hutch/cabinet/thing for the bathroom and he likes to poke through old tools.

It's quaint in it's normalcy, I know. Embrace it, Bridget.

House of fog and pie.

I am agitated. I even skipped talking about cake, but there's a pie in here somewhere.

Today was gloomy, dark and rainy, foggy and silent and very reminiscent of days back home where the ocean ruled the weather patterns and it changed by the moment.

Kind of like moods do.

None of that was missed by the three adults coming from the far eastern edge of the country, all now stuck somewhere along the middle like Christmas lights on a string. One blows up, the others all go out, it's a group effort to keep the fucking lights on sometimes.

God I love that comparison. So so much.

Loch is on his way home as we speak. I tried not to cry at the airport but it was inevitable. He's the only fixture I have left from my former life and it seems sometimes he leaves me in a strange land that I'm never quite comfortable in, which is not an insult to my husband, just an observation in that it's taking so long to get used to this. I still pinch myself because Jacob will always be my too-good-to-be-true dream. I still talk to Cole. I still talk to Lochlan in terms of Cole not going away easily, the way friends can talk, the way husbands can't. Jacob no longer retains enough objectivity to talk about a few things. Bless his heart he has fixed everything else, but somethings he cannot touch.

Like the history Loch and I share. Kiera (his girlfriend of five years) asked him not to come back out here again so he broke up with her.

He's an idiot, yes, I know.

He told us that she wasn't his Bridget, which briefly ruffled feathers and so Jacob jumped the gun. Lochlan only meant that he wanted his soulmate much the way Jacob and I are soulmates and that he hadn't found that with her.

Jacob and Loch sorted that out before coming to blows. Thank God.

They also sorted out a few other things that concern me, like the affection I pass out like slices of pie to my friends, which Jacob never liked to see unless he was the recipient, and yet it's been a hard habit for me to break. I love hugs, I love kisses. I love kisses on the lips and hands to hold and backs to scratch and an arm to stay warm in and frankly, mistakenly, I never cared who it came from, if Cole was absent (mostly he was) and Jacob was busy, there was pecking order and I would go off down the line finding someone to snuggle with, or lie on or hang out with. This will help clarify how Ben got so far off track last fall.

And I've been good about not seeking out my other friends for physical comfort anymore but Lochlan was still a welcome target and I never even considered Jacob's feelings, but I realize now that Loch would have been a sort of public enemy number one for Jake in that regard and so we've just stopped cold. It was easier than I expected, and it doesn't hurt that Jacob is as much of an affection-giver as I am, so we just keep it tuned on each other. I won't look back again.

And Lochlan wanted the breakdown (ha, what a WORD!) on how I am really doing. Jacob may be the expert, but Loch is impartial, unbiased and just as involved in my mental health and so they had a few heated conversations about how and what and why, but I won't go into it, let's just say everyone is updated and in agreement. At last.

And hell, I'm masterfully fucked up and unhealthy. I have so many flaws I'm literally bits and pieces of a whole human being. Flaky pie crust. Flaky indeed. Berries and sugar and spills and a broken crust. Still sweet though. Who can get enough of it? Of me?

Well, I'm working on it, aren't I?

And Loch has gone back with instructions to keep his eyes and his heart open to find his own Bridget, like all of my friends have, because Jacob stole the original and he won't be giving her back. He won't be sharing either. Not anymore. Loch is fine with that, he always has been.

God, I just cringed as I wrote, I hardly ever do that but maybe the whole former whore-designation is really starting to be glaringly obvious, like dark circles under fluorescent lighting. Ugly and harsh.

I'm done with the ugliness. I can't even believe it sometimes how goddamn messed up I was.

Whoops, how messed up I am.

And now I'm relieved it all got sorted out. I'm happy that Jacob and Loch have dealt with everything openly and honestly and we're not going to cause any more hurt here. There's been enough. Loch can rest easy knowing I'm almost okay (as okay as I can be) again and Jacob can rest easy knowing he's no longer fighting for a piece of my affection, he's got the whole pie.

The pie that turned out rather messy, if I do say so myself.

The one that's far too sweet and might make you sick but you want it anyways.

Which is far better than the blown-up string of Christmas lights, because they're out of season now.

Comfort in Beta.

I'm actually all talked out today.

Something incredibly sweet and grown up about last night. I fell asleep in Loch's arm, turned away from him but he was there and we were talking and the next thing I knew he slid away and Jacob was there asking me to come to bed now and I could barely move or open my eyes but it felt good to have my two closest men there and getting along and being friends.

Loch laughs with a sad smile and says he misses his Bridget-time. He only tolerated Cole in the end for me. Cole let Loch get away with murder to spite Jake. Now no one even tries. There are no head games, no hurt feelings, no winners or losers, no stakes in Bridget anymore.

It's somewhat healthier.

Loch's trying to quit smoking so Jacob is going to hypnotize him. He also broke up with Kiera, who decided being grownups isn't enough to overcome the history here. Loch said his standards were high. We knew what he meant and vigorously objected, but he said they can't fill my shoes. I pointed out that I couldn't fill those shoes and he smiled sadly again and said,

I'm fucked, Bridge. Fucked.

No you aren't.

Yeah, pretty much, baby.

Oh Jacob didn't like that and he frowned with narrow eyes and got needlessly protective. A reflex, for he and the world think Loch and I have changed. A reflex after which he relaxed. Now they've gone off to go look at climbing gear and I get a break from all this masculinity.

More later in which I explain. Since I didn't, not really.

About a girl.

I've lived a strange existence. You would see the sharp contrasts within moments. I am rather proper, a little uptight even, reigned in and expectant that manners and morals (snort) and respect for one another take priority over how one feels. Part of it is a throwback to growing up knowing what was expected, a bourgeoisie/gypsy balanced existence in which you tempered your whims to suit society. So I could maintain my benign monarchist, logical wife and mother persona and then only relax among friends, still demanding that level of respect be present but not, a more freewheeling way to let my hair down, to uncoil my strung-up nerves and embrace my enthusiasm for making mistakes.

I'll be the first one to go, I've made so many. Let me just walk the plank and when I get to the end you can give me a hard push and blow me a kiss goodbye.

Loch is coming out for the weekend. Under the guise of seeing the children and catching up, but really because he and Jacob have been at odds for too long now and we promised, all of us, that this would not destroy any more friendships. This being my supreme unraveling, and all that has passed in the last year.

And honestly I told him I wish he would stay away. Curse these single guys with disposable incomes who can spend thousands of dollars on last-minute flights in order to conduct arguments in person.

But don't curse Loch because he has been there through twenty-five years (or more) of me. Uptight and not uptight at all.

Damn, he should get a medal.

Barry, Robin, Maurice and Jake.

All evidence of normal brain activity has been suspended because I have fallen in love. With the man who woke me up singing the Bee Gees this morning while I stirred oh so slowly in his arms.

Aw man, you know how everyone has guilty pleasures? Like all my uptight friends who love my pornographic entries? Or how people will duck into a store and eat a caramilk bar and then lie about it? (shhh, I've NEVER done that.)

One of Bridget's guilty pleasures would be hauling out the Bee Gees vinyl, baby. But only for one song. And this all was gloriously remembered last night when we were debating the value of whether or not I embarrassed Jacob with telling people he does yoga. For the record, he's not the least bit embarrassed. All the hockey players here do yoga, it's more manly than girly. Go figure.

So it's a bit of a blessing and a curse when people know these things about us, isn't it? A funny existence when those close to you know you can love the sweeter and the hardcore music all at once. I still remember the night he made this discovery, I was playing the song and cleaning up from a party. I thought he had left but he had forgotten his jacket and so there I was singing How Deep Is Your Love at the top of my lungs. He watched until I was done and then clapped. Cole rolled his eyes but Jacob was fascinated.

I thought you were Metallica all the way.

No, it's Tool, actually.

That's not Tool.

No, it's not.

You're so busted, Bridget.

Please. This is a masterpiece.

It's a piece of something all right.

Admit it, you like this song.

I can do that.

Aha!

When I was ten I was going to be a Bee Gee.

You would have made a great fourth.

Yeah. Funny how things work out.

It is.

But did he make fun of me? Or make it into a joke this morning?

Oh, no, he gave it his all. He sang with his characteristic passion, since that's what he does. And I have asked him to sing it every morning to me for the rest of my life.

    I know your eyes in the morning sun
    I feel you touch me in the pouring rain
    And the moment that you wander far from me
    I wanna feel you in my arms again

    And you come to me on a summer breeze
    Keep me warm in your love and then softly leave
    And its me you need to show

    How deep is your love
    I really need to learn
    cause were living in a world of fools
    Breaking us down
    When they all should let us be
    We belong to you and me

Pokey the possum girl.

Sometimes late at night Jacob will come in to where I am ensconced cozily on the couch with a blanket and a movie and a fire crackling and he'll sit on the edge in front of me and watch a few minutes of whatever movie I have found. Sometimes he'll repeatedly turn around and give me terrifically comical what the fuck? expressions while I enjoy Ichi the Killer or Thirteen Ghosts, or sometimes he'll wind up engrossed in the movie too (like The Great Escape). I have found when he sits in front of me I keep watching the movie but my fingers will start to poke their way into his sweater, through the stitches to gently needle his back. He loves it. Like a massage conducted by a possum, he says.

I've never seen a possum, Jacob.

Me neither, Bridge.

Then how do you know?

I don't. But I'm guessing that must be what they would feel like.

We're weird, aren't we?

Yes, princess. But it's a good weird.

The very best kind.

Postscript.

And CAKE!

I didn't even tell you there's a cake here.

And it looks very yummy.

You're still thinking about the yoga stud, aren't you?

Naughty.

Parables of Bridget.

Good morning planet.

Bridget is happy today.

With one eyebrow up as the polite boyfight continues. You should see the restrained emails and phonecalls between Lochlan and Jacob as they both struggle to point out how much they are helping me. Me? I refuse to get involved because that choice I will never make. Loch's been near forever and he's never going anywhere unless it's his choice and so he feels very comfortable making his opinions known. Jacob is being so gracious, he's more familiar with the territory, i.e. Bridget's mental health and is nicely deflecting the opinionated rants. Loch's being a tad childish, life isn't that simple and he knows it, I think, no, I know he misses my presence in his life as much as I miss him. So he takes it out on Jake. Which is not fair, but understood.

But for once I'm happy for a little hands-off, and the distance that prevents Jacob and Loch from going down swinging with each other, though Jacob insists he doesn't do that, please. They are boys, and boys fight.

Even when they grow up and know better.

But hey! I have happy news of the most decadent kind.

Therapies that I will talk about, healing engineered to reduce me to jellyfish texture and prevent me from being capable of feeling poorly about fuck-all. Healing that relaxes me, and is good for me in a way that gives instant gratification. Jacob says I leave these with a smile on my face that makes him fall to his knees to thank God for one small light, me and a happiest version of me. Not the hesitant fluttering skeletal elf who flits through his world with barely a murmur.

Because, yeah that was a painful but strangely apt description made at one point.

We're doing co-ed yoga too. Which helps in a surprising way. In a room that feels like a sauna. With about eight other couples who all appear very well-adjusted and in some kind of competition to see who is the crunchiest, earthiest of us all, but I just close my eyes and breathe and work through the classes and every now and then I steal a glimpse of my husband who, like the other guys, have taken to attending in just baggy yoga pants. No shirt, bare feet. In a room that's forty degrees. Flexing every muscle he has and there are a lot of them.

Shall I give you a moment alone with that image?

Yes, I thought so. Snort.

That alone makes it a worthwhile endeavour. If I could take a picture I would but my phone stays home because it would steam up anyhow.

And the massages, though those are only once a week. Those leave me slipping out of my chair and barely able to think past feeeeels sooo goooood. Sort of an all-day orgasm of the most beautiful sort.

And the best part is that all of it is indefinite, a schedule blissfully permanent as Jacob continues to let go of his work obligations, having gone from fifteen meetings a week to about four, and putting us before everything else, and me at home before me in some sort of inpatient treatment, which was where I was headed headlong, running at full-speed into self-destruction.

And it's not working because he spoils me. Lord knows, I spoil him too and by the grace of God he's a very happy man, when most would have run screaming for the hills after deliberating choosing a life with someone like me.

It's working because we're taking our time again. Everything works better when you give things time to work. When you slow life down and start with the basics, only adding things in as you can handle them. As Bridget feels ready, has become the mantra.

There are still days of total despair when I write about marshmallows and poets and you know something is wrong but I won't admit it and days when I'd like to point out the pills sometimes aren't working and sometimes I'm tired of people and industrial places and hearing aids and appointments and days where it's very difficult to get out bed but I'm pushed out anyways and I land on the floor with a thud and Jacob laughs and helps me through the hard parts and he says that I reward him daily not with a smile or a kiss or a promise but with a continued and welcomed effort into getting better. For us, for me.

    So familiar and overwhelmingly warm
    This one, this form I hold now.
    Embracing you, this reality here,
    This one, this form I hold now, so
    Wide eyed and hopeful.

    Wide eyed and hopefully wild.
    We barely remember what came before this precious moment,
    Choosing to be here right now. Hold on, stay inside...
    This body holding me, reminding me that I am not alone in
    This body makes me feel eternal.
    All this pain is an illusion.