Drive-thru girl.

In an effort not to be outdone by Loch, I present to you Duncan, your friendly neighborhood Irish Beat Poet. At first I laughed, but it's really freaking cool:

    Down dusty roads choked with cars
    a ribbon edged in black
    traces the path your life has taken
    like the map of your soul's travels

    This path is marked with milestones
    names and symbols you come
    to recognize easily
    before you are old enough to read

    Which hunger are you filling, drive-thru girl?

    Sometimes there's a passenger
    slouched in the backseat
    His name is deadly homesickness
    and you wish he would go

    Sometimes he likes to go away
    while you take your repast.
    food your mouth knows, your brain remembers
    You feel less alone.

    Littered beside the dusty road
    like abandoned boxes
    like empty houses
    the drive-thrus tempt your hunger

    Which hunger are you filling, drive-thru girl?

    Sliding glass smeared with fingerprints
    dirty dollar bills exchanged
    a crumpled bag is handed out
    and you are on your way

    The window a link to your past
    the road ahead a map of your future
    your blood sugar a reluctant hostage
    in your quest for miles before dark.

    And once you have left
    and eaten your fare
    your belly is quiet, your thoughts are spare
    and you know, in five hundred miles you'll do it again.

    What hunger was that that you were filling again, drive-thru girl?

Woozles.

What's with the Piglet nickname again?

I like it, it suits you.

Gee, thanks alot.

Well, not only is Piglet Pooh's best friend and constant companion, but we have to work together to capture all of your woozles and heffalumps.

Oh, I see. Pooh?

Yes, Piglet?

Nothing, I just wanted to be sure of you.

Man, you know more of these quotes than I do, princess.

Oh, thank heavens. I thought you forgot my real name.

It isn't princ-

Oh, yes it is.

Okay, Bridget the Saltwater Piglet.

Take that back!

No way, baby girl. I am the giver of nicknames.

Um.....

Yes?

You'll pay for this, Jacob.

Can't come up with anything?

Nope. I got nothing.

Record smashed.

Jacob was home in time to offer to take us out for dinner with his characteristic wry smile at our argument. We had sort of made up on the phone but when he came home things were still a bit tense. Over dinner we worked out our remaining issues on the subject that caused our turmoil and then came home to get the kids in bed and warm up to each other. We called it a night at 9:30 and went to bed hand in hand.

And I swear I don't pick fights for this reason, but I would, in a heartbeat. Epic make-up sex.

Last night in his hurry to touch, Jacob managed to rip five buttons off my shirt, one off my skirt and two off his Levi 501s. I'm not sure how he managed that feat considering how tough those buttons are but he did it. It was a new record for us.

We didn't care much about the buttons. He gathered me up into his arms and into his lap and then turned me inside out and pushed me so far into the bed I had to talk him into slowing down. He's proving me wrong on so many levels it's positively joyful.

Afterwards I was lying across the foot of the bed watching him pick buttons up off the floor by candlelight, and I told him I loved him.

He laughed and stopped his button-hunt and sat down beside me on the edge of the bed, and he ran his hand down my back and rubbed the back of my thigh and said,

You drive me right up the wall, piglet, and I love you so very, very much.

Rebobinage.

Why are you here reading about me? It's a beautiful spring day and we should all be outside. I'm headed there now with a fresh cup of coffee and I'm going to try to reel in my crazy head and salvage the day. Because what's worse than going to bed angry is waking up still angry and then going off to spend the day angry and Bridget at home wishing she could learn to shut her mouth but it's hard when her feet are in it and everything spills out. I'm learning there's a fine, most unwelcome line between being able to share your darkest fears with your best friend and not alienating your husband in the process. Especially when they are one in the same.

Friday love letters.

Here, a post stolen directly from Jacob's newest journal, a pretty coffee-brown moleskin number I bought for him and in return he had to let me post entry number one, written three days ago, in which he explains the upcoming trip.

Sorry, I have nothing to add to this, walking with knees this weak is so much harder than I once hoped it might be.

    Tuesday, April 24, 2007

    I expected in my lifetime to find someone I would be comfortable with. I would love a girl and in return she would love me too. I would always have a date to the movies. I would have a permanent dinner and travel partner. I would end each night lying beside someone who knew me well and someone I cared for greatly. Bridget is none of those things. She took my definition of marriage, of love itself and turned it inside out. She's the walking epitome of what it means to be in love. She falls asleep on my shoulder at the movies, every time. It's as if the dark room and the loud music signifies a rest for her little head. It's hard to get her to eat, she'd rather sit and watch me and talk. We haven't traveled much. I hope I can change that. Mostly at night I fall asleep not just beside Bridget but holding her so close in my arms that we breathe in unison. I become a cage around her, a human shield to keep her safe so that she can sleep, defender of her life against her nightmares and terrors. It isn't the comfort of being beside someone. It's the outpouring of emotions from within that have humbled me. I never expected to find such depth and breadth in love. I never expected to want to spend every moment-waking or asleep-with another person. She's like fire contained within her skin. She embodies every aspect of life in her beauty, in her lust for what she loves, her honest love for me, it defies measurement-it could bring down a mountain, a kingdom even. When I wake up in the morning I feel her skin in my hands, when I open my eyes I look into hers and my throat catches and I can do nothing except pause and let love overwhelm me. I say my thanks to God for her very presence in my life but this is more than I could have hoped for. I tell her I love her but it's never enough. "I love you." is not descriptive or encompassing enough for what I feel for my wife. She is the world-she is my world. When she chose me I expected to find a balance, to have a partner but coming up for air is a task I'd rather not undertake at this time. It's too beautiful being here with her, consumed by these feelings. I am a lucky man. If Bridget woke up tomorrow, changed her mind, crushed my heart and took me for everything I had to give her I would still love her forever. My heart is at her mercy, as is my soul. I'm taking her home next week. She needs a break, needs to get away and breathe some sea breezes and let the salt soak into her skin and claim her invisible crown that waits for her afloat in the waves, weaving seaweed through her hair and trying to hide the scales of her mermaid fin. When she has all that she can hold I'll bring her back and we'll continue on. She's doing very well and it's a good time for good things. Someday I'll learn how to hold the ocean in my hands and give it to her on my knees but until that day comes I must be content to take her to the very edge and see that smile that I only see when she's up to her knees in the saltwater and she turns to thank me without saying a word. She can't because it won't come out. I try to say it for her and then I can't speak. We smile at each other in silence because life is perfect now with my princess.
Two peas, one pod. One very sentimental pod.

And Jacob, honey, one more thing. Paragraphs, they are your friends.

(Edit: Since re-reading it a hundred times I've come to the conclusion that this was an extra-special entry heavy on the sweet because he knew I would share it. He's wicked that way, and I am a little slow on the draw. Not like I care much, the part about him learning to hold the ocean in his hands to give to me on his knees? That kind of thing is what makes him tick. Hopefully he'll figure out how to pull it off.)

More, because it's here.

I don't talk about therapy much anymore, do I? It's too hard. It's an increasingly productive rhythm now. I'm a very good patient when I try. When I don't try I'm a holy terror but I've been trying and it shows.

But I still don't think I'll talk about it for a bit. It seems to work better when I don't. My apologies, for those who come to pick my carcass.

Instead I'm going to bore you and feed the sweet people, the ones who care about me. You know who you are.

Jacob asked me to sing Landslide while he played it late last night after everyone left. Never mind that some nights the guitar comes to bed with him because he likes to lie down and play it with his back against the headboard and fiddle with new tunings and new songs.

Landslide.

I love that song. I used to think it was about an adult who suddenly realized she was an adult. Making her life her own.

    I took my love and I took it down
    Climbed a mountain and turned around
    And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
    Until the landslide brought it down
    Oh, mirror in the sky -What is love?
    Can the child within my heart rise above?
    Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
    Can I handle the seasons of my life?
    Well I've been afraid of changing
    because I've built my life around you
    But time makes you bolder, even children get older
    And I'm getting older too
    So, take my love take it down
    Climb a mountain and turn around
    and if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
    well the landslide will bring it down
    The landslide will bring it down

And woog. Another epiphany, just like that.

Hi. I'm Bridget. Nice to meet me, slowpoke.

Rainstorming.

Let's begin with a wax and end with an epiphany, shall we?

Lying in the hammock reading existentialist prose this morning in the vague darkness of a rainy day, drinking strong tea, a firm shadow on the floor beneath me where previously one would glimpse only a fleeting wisp of movement and light. Birdy Nam Nam reverberates from the stereo, packing sound into every nook and cranny in the whole house and spilling out around the edges, under windowsills and through rippled glass only to be cut off by the roar of the rain.

And so there are no lyrics today, but the next lapdance will be Escape. I never heard a song more in need of Stoli and a strobe light. At least that's what Jacob had to say about it.

A new chapter has begun in this novel.

Redefined lives, new boundaries and fresh hopes. New routines, renewed faith and an ache of experiences passed like tests in grade school.

I keep telling myself this over and over again. I keep breaking out into spontaneous smiles. I haven't done it in such a long time that Jacob has spent much of recent history on his knees praying his thanks,

One life lived and one more to go, on the cusp I tingle with anticipation, expectations I won't make in favor of just...seeing what happens. Just like the sunrise disintegrates into day only to be reborn in fire and fury at twilight. The stars push their way to the forefront of the sky's stage to silence us with awe.

I am a star, and I will light the way to the moon, my angel boy. To the moon.

I've got an Air Canada itinerary in my hands. But it isn't for the moon. It's for the coast. If the moon had a coast, I would be there, believe me. I'll talk about the trip shortly, but not today. Today I got a very short and distant email from Ben thanking me for not castrating him with my words here. I have no use for that. No, honestly had I written that entry the day after he cut me loose it might have been vastly different. You can tell when I'm not rational through what I write, and you can tell when the edge has been taken off what I'm saying. We seem to have returned to our adult ways, adult reactions and adult expectations. People come and go. Sometimes friendships are irreparably broken, like marriages, like homes, and like hearts.

It's life. It happens. Bridget's learning to roll with it, instead of being steamrolled by it.

There's nothing left to steamroll, maybe. No, probably not. The good news is I am good. Hearing aids, check. Medication-free, check. Rested, check. No longer grieving, check. No longer scared, check. No longer afraid to say things are good for fear of jinxing myself or appearing to pretend.

Bridget's not pretending nothing anymore.

She's also lost her ability to form sentences this morning. Blame it on an epic back massage in the big hammock. Blame it on naming tropical fish after impressionist painters and late night dim sum for eight. Blame it on bad weather clearing up a dusty fleeting city-spring and a very lovely dead tree in the backyard that I'm loathe to see cut down because it likes me. Or rather, I like it. It's dark and ugly in a sea of fresh green life. I named it Bridget's emo tree.

Snort.

No mind, Jacob promised I could have my giant angel statue where the tree used to be. The one Cole wouldn't go for.

Poetic justice, baby. Cole didn't want any life-sized angels in my sightlines. And now that's all I see.

And I ran today.

It was a short run, but a good one nonetheless.

Can't you tell?

Olive blush.

I'm sure it was well-meant.

On the other hand, I still think it was a bit rude.

Jacob took me to the Olive Garden for lunch today and just as we sat down a woman breezed to our table and picked up a lock of my hair and put her hand on Jacob's head, running her fingers through his hair (which made him cringe and made me laugh and cringe too) and began to loudly ask if our hair colors were natural (they are) and if I had extensions (I don't) and how bloody glorious our hair was and how lucky we were because people wished for hair like ours. Were we Scandinavian? (no, Irish) Did we know we would be great in TV commercials? (um, what?) She wouldn't let us answer a single question.

Lovely. Very complimentary. Nice even, that she commented instead of just staring.

But right in the middle of a private moment to cause a scene in front of a restaurant full of people at three hundred decibels? Unusual, to say the least.

Jacob politely thanked her and wished her a good lunch and she finally, mercilessly left us and we both struggled not to do the eye-rolling thing and be gracious, because the whole white-blonde straight shiny flippy wavy hair is a golden gift people wish for, and they were still staring. I could feel it.

Then Jacob grinned wickedly at me, winked and spoke very loudly.

Do you think we should have told her that we're both blonde all over?

And once again I spent an entire meal trying, and failing, to eat without laughing, choking and generally making a bigger spectacle of us than we already were. Next time I'm just going to save myself the effort and crawl under the table to hide.

And yeah, now everybody knows! May as well put it on the internet as well.

Dear God. I needed to be cheered up but seriously.

Don't make me prove it.

Today is heavy on the Salt. And fucked. Up.

I used to sit in the park with Ben, his head in my lap and I would stroke his hair and sing him Veruca Salt songs. It was our quiet time, downtime, when everything got loud and busy we would usually happen upon each other somewhere slightly removed from the fray and embrace it together because he was a quiet wild man. Perverted as all get out, but quiet nonetheless. We had a lot in common and were so close at one time. So close.

    Take me away, I know
    I could use the rest.
    I wanna clear up this mess.
    I need a few days with my good sense.
    I need a few good days.
    Benjamin, no. Benjamin, no.
    where did you go?

    When you were falling from my tree, I was not scared.
    I thought you'd meet me back up there.
    It never dawned on me you were home free.
    It never dawned on me, no.
    Benjamin, no. Benjamin, no.
    where did you go?

    You said that I could tie you down
    Take me away, I know
    I could use the rest.

He beat me to the finish line and it still smarts, and I am sad. It's been a week.

Ben is moving in with his girlfriend, they're doing well, having been together for what, twelve weeks? Maybe sixteen. They're doing great, and life is good for Ben again. He seems to have found his direction, more importantly he seems to have found love.

Most of the guys eventually forgave him for his indiscretions concerning me, as I did and encouraged them to, he and Jacob were even hanging out a little bit together, probably a mutual parasitic relationship in which Ben could utilize Jacob's uncharacteristic expertise at motorcycle repair and his brawn for moving furniture and Jacob, well, Jacob could keep an eye on Ben.

Because Jacob forgives so easily sometimes, as very good people often do, but don't fool yourself into thinking he ever forgets anything. He never trusted Ben one hundred percent. I did. I still do.

Ben has even brought his girlfriend over a few times for some group dinners and she is wonderful, sweet and has him wrapped. She's so beautiful, dark hair and eyes and skin, tall and graceful, with a wardrobe from a magazine and a flair for putting the guys in their places. She's everything I am not
On the basis of doing everything he can to make his relationship work, Ben requested a private meeting, just me and him, no chaperones, no husbands or well-meaning friends. He was barely granted it, Jacob conceding to letting him close the porch door so we could have a private conversation while he and the other guys were out back having a beer. Of course, I didn't know that Jacob knew the reason behind the meeting, but Ben was smart enough to think ahead so that I would once again have support around me right when I fell. And I'm sorry, but everyone other than Jacob is going to find out here because for once in my life I haven't talked about it at all.

Ben told me he wouldn't be coming around anymore. Ever. Including group activities, if I was going to be present he would skip it. In order for him to give his relationship a fighting chance, he doesn't want to be distracted. He doesn't want my presence in his life because I make him have doubts, I make his mind wander and I make it difficult for him to concentrate on the one he should be with.

Nothing was ever the same between Ben and I when I left Cole. He tried to find his own common ground and be friends with both of us, and he remained close when Cole died and he no longer had to choose who to call first. We stumbled and he went as nuts as I did, understandably, it was a stressful period. There were a lot of dumb moves made by everyone, we all reeled. It wasn't just about me. Things came out during that time period that knocked everyone flat. Ben caused a lot of problems but he helped make a lot of things better.

Maybe I should have written more about the good things Ben did.

I won't even forget some of the memories between us, the times he took up the cause of Cole being a family man and tore a strip off of Loch the night that Loch and Cole drove all night after drinking and Loch wrapped the car around a tree. Ben couldn't believe he could be so stupid to put Cole, a husband, a father in that amount of peril. Uncharacteristic, Ben's driven like that idiotically often in the past and we all gave him hell, but he said, no way, this is Bridget's husband you're taking chances with. They've got kids. I heard Ben's voice echoing in my ears that night long after the police came and removed him from the emergency room for causing a disturbance, he was so far into Loch's face Loch pressed the button for assistance. Luckily, Cole walked away with few scratches and Loch's result was over fifty stitches and a DUI charge.

Ben spending hours with then four-year old Ruthie and two-year old Henry making ice cream from scratch because he said it would blow their tiny little minds. It didn't work but they had a blast. They proceeded to waste a lot of time doing that for the next three summers and never got a decent batch.

Approximately twelve hundred fistfights in front of my eyes because Ben always left his corner swinging at some perceived atrocity, whether he was in hockey gear or not, whether it was his fight or not. He had everyone's back. He was all heart.

And Ben taking time off work to help look after me and the kids and Jacob, who was struggling to keep it all together under a massive workload and a life-altering spring, a wounded and threatened girlfriend, two children who were suddenly his sole responsibility and a best friend turned worst enemy. I remember one morning about three or four days afterward I was struggling to get into a sweater with my sling on and I was so frustrated I had started to cry and Ben went and got one of Jacob's big zip-up fleece sweaters and he put it on me over everything and zipped it up and even left my hair inside the collar like I like it and he sat with me for hours, bored out of his mind while I stared out the window in shock. He made dumb jokes and gently forced me outside for walks as soon as I was ready and he dropped everything to help out until I was healed. He stole every sprig of lilac bloom he could find off the neighbors' trees because he knew they cheered me up. He did intimate things he had no business doing in life but things that caregivers do every day when someone is hurt or unable and I marvelled at his objectivity. It was the one time he skipped the jokes and was serious. I met a version of Ben last May that I didn't know before.

He was one of my favorite people and now he's kissed me off, written me out of his life in favor of a different one, probably a calmer one, one that is full of love without tension, and without history weighing down the days. Friendship without pain. Breathing without coveting Bridget. Moving on already.

I can't blame him, but I'm allowing it to hurt. I bet it felt good for him. I wrote him out more than one over the past year out of necessity and maybe payback makes it okay. I know this isn't a temporary exclusion, it's permanent and it involves Jacob too. Ben has asked that I include him in the long-distance email updates I send out when the kids reach certain milestones and so I added his address to that group and removed it from everything else. His number is gone from my phone, all of his books, DVDs and orphaned sports gear have been collected and returned.

Unlike everyone else who has drifted or moved away, Ben didn't tell me that if I ever needed anything to call him, he knows that role has been filled many times over. He told me he would always love me but now it was time for him to go and find his own new untainted happiness, just for him, and that I fucked him up hard, and he wished that he had never met me.

I can see what you're saying
But I don't hear you at all.

It wasn't a gracious exit and it was intended to cause pain. It did, some of what he said being positively unprintable in his need to twist until I bled.

I didn't cry until he was gone. And then I think I cried for the rest of that day and some of the next.

It was a predictable finish to a fucked-up friendship and though we found each other a few times, it still hurts to lose a friend. It hurts a whole hell of a lot. I did love him. I think I always will.

Now everyone in my world is going to nod and proclaim that this is good, that Ben and I were so bad for each other (yeah, at one point our nickname was the toxic twins and we liked it.) and should have gone our separate ways a long time ago. I don't have a lot of friends, and I can't make new ones, for I don't know quite how to keep them at arms length. It's becoming a trend, can't you see it?

I always hold just a little too tight, just a little too long. It wasn't Ben, it was Bridget.

It's me.

    Decembers all alone and he's calling me on the phone
    But he sounds so cold
    He says he loves me so
    But how would I ever know?
    Certain words grow old
    Its a vicious kind of catch
    It sides me blind now
    I'm out of my mind
    I want to scream
    Don't you want to be happy with me?

    I'm afraid if you don't come around soon
    I'll turn sadder than you ever were
    And you'll learn loneliness is worse

I will always love you, Ben.

Ledded coffee.

Hallo. Short and sweet entry, just like your Bridget. Ah, but I am not yours. Or am I?

    Tangerine, tangerine
    Living reflection from a dream
    I was her love, she was my queen
    And now a thousand years between

Hi! I'm positive. I really am. I have fresh Sumatra beans here to grind, some cake in the fridge, a Monday off from life and a list of house projects a mile long and my thighs ache this morning and I don't have to tell you about that because if you were here with me much of the weekend catching up on my entries you already know why.

Perverts. I love you, seriously.

I think sometimes Jacob lets me take life out on him there, or he uses good, crazy sex to distract me from everything else. It keeps me in my dreamworld and makes it easier to gloss when Bridget needs to gloss over . I can't delve too deeply into feeling blue about things that will conspire to pull me right down off my high. I really can't.

Not now.

I also have long bangs cut again and the world's cutest camouflage pants on and I swear to God I'm not fourteen, in fact I'm almost two weeks away from turning 36. Holy fucking shit.