A most pathetic exchange.

My extra-long, extra-soft weekend is just about over. I think I'm all favored-out, I'm peopled-out and I'm not thinking very hard today, I'm trying to close the holes in my own armor before today's first visit with Joel at the helm. Dr. Important Joel, who is probably the kind of man who writes PhD. after his name when he signs the guestbook at a wedding, and I'm guessing he practices shooting his cuffs in mirrors as some men do because it appears to be a studied talent. No less devastating to Bridget, who likes that sort of thing, but far too practiced to be natural.

Sometime this morning while I talk with Joel and Jacob exhausts the nearby bookstore, Loch will make his exit. I told him it was time to go, that he didn't come out for me, he came out for him. I lost him yesterday and by nine o'clock I assumed he was visiting friends or checking out old haunts until I went out to get the lights and there he was, sitting in a chair with an empty case of beer at his feet.

Loch is hardcore, whereas a case of beer would have buried Jacob somewhere in the hundred acre wood, wiping every last trace of Flogging Molly lyrics from his brain forever, Loch simply gets sweeter and a little slower and usually a lot more open. He isn't an open kind of guy otherwise. I was about to be treated to his slurred confession, the likes of which he rarely ventures into.

He smiled at me in the dark.

Oh Loch, you're fuckered, aren't you?

Not anymore. I've just about come out the other side.

What in the hell is going on?

Come and sit with me, Bridgie. Just for a while.

Okay. Tell me what's going on.

Are things okay?

No, but they will be.

What about Jake?

What about him?

You love him.

So much.

Then what was the rush for?

We were tired of waiting. You know this story. Come on, it's time for bed.

You should have had more time to play around, more time to have fun.

Please don't, Loch.

Maybe we should have had another go-round, princess.

Loch. Enough.

Like we did just before you got engaged to Cole. My God, it was better than high school.

Stop it. That was sixteen years ago.

It should be a prerequisite when you get engaged.

No it shouldn't.

What's this?
There was Jacob, poking his head out the door.

Loch's had too much and he's nostalgic.

No, Jake, I've had too much and I'm wistful.

About?

Sleeping with your lovely wife. I was hoping for a crack at every year or more.

Loch, you'll get a crack alright. Across the head. Maybe you need to get some sleep.

And maybe you should stay out of this, preacher man.

Yeah, I think I will.

Jacob actually went back inside. I was stunned. He trusts us both.

Bridgie, I wanted a life like this. With you. I was the first one to love you. I taught you things.

A million years ago. What the hell happened to everyone just being my friends?
 
I never fell out of love with you.

No, don't.

You make it impossible not to. The little blonde, so pretty and bubbly and fragile, who has worked her way into everyone's heart. Everyone cares about you.

Then why can't it stay caring?

I don't know. How do you steal everyone's hearts?

I don't. I wanted one and I took it.

Bridgie, he's rebound guy. You two are too intense, everyone's simply waiting and holding their breath.

They can stop. I love Jake. There's no rebound here.

If things don't work out, do you have a plan?

Yeah, I die alone. There won't ever be another man like Jacob for me. He's extraordinary.

He must be.

He is, Loch.

But if it doesn't work?

Hey, Loch, did you know I had this conversation with Ben already?

Ben's a fucking pervert. He just wants inside you.

And you?

I want the whole package. You and me, we have always belonged together.

And here I thought we had platonic down to a science now.

You did. I just kept quiet.

This is the last thing I need right now, Loch. I need your friendship, I'm running out of friends.

With all due respect, Bridge, you don't have any friends.

Stop it.

We all want the same thing. You wonder why Chris and PJ are well into their thirties and single? Oh and in the summer when you dress so sparingly spending time with you is like winning the lottery. You don't think they whack off to your face at night in their dreams? You have no friends. Just a line up.

Just then the screen door banged open again.

That's enough, Loch.

Jake, you see it.

We'll talk tomorrow. Jesus, Loch.

Jacob waited for Loch to go inside and stagger slightly down the hall to the guest room and then he locked up behind us. We went to bed in silence upstairs and I lay in Jacob's arms and cried.

Friendless.

An inevitable truth, because not once did Jacob deny it. He knows. Hell, I imagine I knew too and just refused to let the idea bloom in my head because my boys have been such huge helps to me and such comfort and fun over the years. I was hoping that hidden agendas weren't so rampant. I was convinced men and women can be friends. Loch was the last person I would have expected this from, the very last and I don't want to lose him but after an admission like that things are never going to be the same. Things have never been the same anyway. This is not my life anymore.

Now I just have to get everyone else shitfaced and throttle the truth out of them too.

A hole where my heart should be.

Things have quieted down. The sleep, comforts of my friends, time to talk and do little else, as chores and errands and babysitting was divided and conquered easily leaves me on sure footing. Which is good, I need my wits about me, Loch's presence puts a kink in Jacob's armor as they unwittingly try to pull rank on each other-Loch for time served as my friend, and Jacob for his role as my husband. They only thing they seemingly agree on is that they both want to help me get back. For now it's just the way things are but having Loch drop his plans and fly in for a week and hearing about his sudden change of heart and apathy towards any personal relationships outside of us is disheartening and weird. I just can't deal with it today and he won't say much so for now it's comfortably strained, if that makes sense.

Claus opened his office to Jacob and I on Saturday afternoon and we talked to death. I put the rest of it out there, the remaining horrors I had kept. Claus is here for Jacob to lean on as much as he's for me. He's well-paid and over-qualified and no bullshit. He's also on the verge of retirement which is where Joel comes in. Joel's too young. I don't trust him, but Claus is hoping for a long and slow, successful transition because he said this time I'm not going to orchestrate my progress.

I've been put on a meal plan. Which is interesting. My weight has dipped amazingly low. (The number I posted here has been removed, fuck you). My periods stopped. A lot of things stopped. I am still going, however. Such a fucking mess. I can go escape with headphones and being held and then I really don't want to face anything else. I feel ashamed and weak. I feel sad and fucking tired. I feel guilty.

And love, I feel love when there shouldn't be any. Jacob's here. I tried to break him on Saturday and he didn't budge an inch though I know his soul is screaming for anything but some of the things he had to hear. Continuing to let it out in bits and fragments isn't helping. Claus wants us empty, clean slates to work towards substance and strength. He is amazed and I'm so buoyed by his pride in my progress but at who's expense, Jacob's? Is that fair? Is it right? Is it time?

Attempt, if you will, to remain positive like I must.

Jacob has been nothing but loving and reassuring and so protective. He's sad that he didn't try to look past me and see for himself, instead he chose to trust me and I was so untrustworthy. He's sick over it and I already dealt with the shock, years ago. Alone. And that might make me stronger than I thought overall but it still leaves me mind-breakingly weak. His words, when pressed for a reaction, gently, Jacob looked up with his eyes so drained and he said we had just progressed from heart-breaking to mind-breaking and that he's just...stunned by the admissions and by the memories I keep, right under his nose. And the worst part is I shut it off, I shut it down to keep him safe. Again.

Claus is surprised I am not worse. Joel thinks I'm still holding out. He's right and that's why I have trouble with him. Jacob thinks I'm a wounded bird, and Loch, well, Loch thinks life should start over.

I will only worry about my Jacob, the rest of them can take care of themselves.

Best friends forever.

I've had a lot of time this weekend to study Jacob while he's awake and while he's asleep. Maybe it's because I'm spending a lot of time sitting and listening or just thinking or being caught-up on sleep and awake early in the mornings. I have more time to watch him, to enjoy how he does things, or listen to his words. A passive, undetected observer of a phenomenal man.

Part of what has always drawn me to Jacob is the conviction with which he talks, how he says what's on his mind, exactly what he feels, without any fear of reprisal or reproach. He just lets it out, he always has and it's beautiful. He has a way of putting things into a perspective that can gild ashes and turn sand into castles. It's rapturific.

Instead of keeping his mouth shut a million years ago he simply smiled at me in that pained way he gets and he said I love you. I think you should be with me. Even though I was already married. He didn't care, he was telling me how he felt.

This weekend I listened as he told Lisabeth a bit of our history, how he fell in love with me in one night and then we settled into being close friends with a remarkable tension that smothered us alive and it was a long, arduous test with spectacular results, because being able to marry his best friend has been his greatest joy. He regarded me with pride and I was digging my nails into my hands to prevent the unpreventable tears he moved me to.

Call it a love-in, call it cheesy, he's absolutely right. It is the most amazing feeling in the world to marry someone you know so well, having gotten to know them in a personal sense with a closeness free of the romantic attachments, free of the expectations of being in love. Oh, shoot, I know we were in love anyway, I know it wasn't fair to Cole and I know we teetered on the edge of right and wrong, taking turns waiting for each other to slip so we could make our very own oops-moments. I know he wanted me. I know I wanted him and I also know that we made incredibly good friends too, and that's what we fall back on when sometimes we suffocate each other with the love part.

We could steal each other's popcorn at the movies without asking, he's always given me his corduroy jacket before I told him I was cold, we'd feel like skating or going to the bookstore at the same times when no one else would. I knew all the foods he liked and all of his embarrassing teenage secrets. He knew of my still-raging unrequited teacher-crush from junior high, my fear of live lobsters and secret fear of heights and he was one of the few people I ever told that I was being hurt.

All of this gives us our foundation in a new marriage where we thought we were starting on the first block and had nothing to fall back on. We keep forgetting but not forgetting, if it makes any sense at all, how well we do know each other and how caring for each other as friends has made us slower to take offense and harder to rile as lovers.

We've learned to argue, at last. Just in the past two days, finally. Somehow. My God.

Jacob has just about caught up on his own sleep, finally letting go of his penchant for lying awake at night gazing at me with loving worry while I slumber carelessly in his arms. Aware of his concern every waking moment but right now my sleep is of the dead variety. Hard and long, drugged and stupefied. With vividly fucked-up dreams and nightmares I wouldn't wish on people who most definitely deserve them. When I wake up he's there, murmuring his shushes with his lips on my skin, arms keeping me safe and grounded on earth with no danger of bad thoughts carrying me away. Not complaining or deferring when I want more than a hush from his lips, when our needs take over us again and again.

By being my friend, Jacob knows without a doubt not to take it personally that I have issues about wanting to be on earth. Issues with knowing how to grieve, issues with change and issues with him having to coexist in the headspace I occupy. It's a tall order and of everyone I have ever known he would be the one I choose, because he is so strong. Because he tells me how he feels. He has never done that with anyone other than me and it means something incredible.

And watching him sleep, shower and make love to me gives me an appreciation for and a thorough thrill fed by a decade of coveting his magnificent body, since I had already captured his heart and his mind. His muscles were the icing on the cake, if icing came in packs of eight.

Being in love with Jacob is an endless gift. Not only because he can support my entire weight in the palm of one of his hands but that he can support my soul with the strength of his heart, a visible feat since he wears it on his sleeve for me and I carry it safely with me when I leave his arms.

Sitting beside him while he speaks of his love for me, occasionally raising my hand in his to kiss it or playing with my earring, I can hear it, I can see it and I feel it. It's captivating, having moved several of our friends into appreciative silence over the past few days.

I let him in, finally. I trust him. I told him everything I've been keeping from him, in some misguided fashion to make myself appear better to him in hopes that I would be worthy of him. Instead I had left him with questions that made me seem unworthy and now those questions are gone and he sees me. All of Bridget. Everything, good and bad and painful and difficult and wonderful and he's still here and still in love and confirmed as a permanent fixture. Cogs I left in our gears out of fear that were destructive have been removed, and he sees all of me now.

He told me that all of it would have helped if I had just gotten it out sooner, and he was concerned that I would willingly make myself out to be a monster when I clearly wasn't one, for his benefit. Touched that I wanted to be perfect in his eyes when he tells me I have been nothing but perfect, always and forever to him. He's relieved, again, that the rest of my past is on the table because it's one step closer to our future, our own history with our own memories, none of which are stolen or forbidden or the least bit disgraceful.

Okay, maybe some of them will be disgraceful but that's sanctioned disgrace. Because I married him, after all. And somehow I fell in love with him all over again, just now.

And the thing where he traces his thumb along my bottom lip? He still does it, possibly at least once every day or so, and it still knocks me fucking flat. Breathless.

Afterglows and farkles.

    So sacrifice yourself
    And let me have what's left
    I know that I can find
    The fire in your eyes
    I'm going all the way
    Get away please

    You take the breath right out of me
    You left a hole where my heart should be
    You got to fight just to make it through
    Cause I will be the death of you

The steel horses have arrived. And on them the unlikeliest group of city-cowboys ever. They went to the grocery store as a group and I can only imagine the looks they got as they milled around picking up steaks and ice cream, Ruth and Henry passed from shoulder to shoulder and zoomed up and down the aisles.

That would be Jacob, Loch, Sam and Ben with the kids, while Lisabeth, Erin and I stayed home and pondered the lilacs and looked at photo albums.

It's not a sunny long weekend, oh no. It was a spare three degrees this morning when Jacob turned me from spooning with him onto my back, pulling me underneath him for some quiet and gentle love, holding my head so hard against his shoulder when I started quiet-screaming that I left a mark. Later on he got up and went downstairs to hurriedly build a fire in the woodstove and then came back upstairs and we had a long hot shower together. When we came downstairs again the whole house was warm and Erin was making pancakes and bacon.

So cozy. I wish I could keep her but she has a life, a very good and stable one.

I'm waiting now for Jacob to decide he needs a motorcycle. He's the last holdout, even Sam rides. I'm betting cash money that over dinner the topic will turn to bikes (again) and he'll give me that sly grin that confirms my suspicion. I thought the return of the old truck would keep stars in his eyes for a while but I may have been wrong.

In any event, it's really nice to have some happy times. Some quietly happy, no-dark-allowed times with my friends, who are my family. The whole wild bunch of them.

Long weekend at home.

Oh, busy weekend and Bridget's on drugs. Having a hard time with labels.

Erin stays until Monday, bless her heart for coming back on a hairpin turn. Loch flies in tomorrow. Squee! (sorry, it had to be done). Ben (!) asked if he could stop by tomorrow. Duncan and Mark will be by on Sunday. Monday has brought requests from Sam and Lisabeth and possibly even Christian and PJ as long as they don't have to work. Have Claus tomorrow and Dr. Important Joel first thing Tuesday. Jacob is not leaving my side and there is something to be said for sticking my face into the neck of his flannel shirt and not opening my eyes unless I absolutely must. I can feel the vibrations in his throat when he talks. His hair and the fledgling beard tickle my skin. His arms around me comfortably, tight, but every now and then he gestures and then his hands return and stroke my hair, my cheek, my ears. He's warm. He's strong. He's here.

We're going to listen to happy music (freeeeeeebiiiiiiiiiiird!) and plant sunflowers and be present.

And it's Queen Victoria's birthday. So there will be cake.

And possibly only good things to be thought, written, spoken and then some.

The gift of a Never poem.

My talented and introspective friend Christian wrote me a poem. Did I tell you I have a weakness for poetry? I've mentioned him previously here and his site is my first link down to the left here on the page. He really has a radiant soul and I cried, not only because the poetry is so graceful but because secretly I've always hoped that he would use me for inspiration. What I like most is how he took a low moment and turned it into something beautiful. Which is exactly what we're trying to do with our life here.

Enjoy. And thank you, Chris.

    Bridget and Jacob

    He is not the answer
    she thought

    But she
    was always the question
    an unfinished sentence
    lying on the tip of the tongue
    inches from articulation
    and a million miles
    beyond explanations

    In an embrace made by one for two
    they slid down the wall

    Dissolved to
    mercury liquid dissolution
    seen running
    a silver shining across the floor
    beneath the closed doors of misinterpretations
    shying away from disinclination

    Together,
    they flowed into the predawn morning

    surged upon the lawn
    and waited for day

    Within me
    I will find you
    he whisper sang
    to her eyes
    avoiding the falling stars
    and runaway cars
    careening from her lips

    And I will run
    she cried

    as she was always running

    Away from
    and straight into
    a shifting desire
    for softer days
    when the pain
    was not so keen

    not so enticing

    all consuming

    Nothing is forever
    she told him
    and kissed his fear
    and lost boy smile

    But she was wrong

    As the sun struck them
    they melded together
    a silver disc in the shape of Gods eye

    Fused

    no longer confused

    A script of passion running
    round the rim of their skin

    A history
    written in need

    A medallion to continuance
    beyond the raw nerve touch
    of the past

I wrote this while we were away in anticipation of today.

    Dear Cole,

    Had we remained together, today would have been the twentieth anniversary of a love that took root early in high school and grew steadily through the next two decades before we caught on that it was rotting and diseased and doomed to die. Twenty years is a long time to spend with someone, when no one gives anything a fighting chance anymore but we did, you and I, we fought for each other and for us that we realized we were still fighting long after it became abundantly clear that what we were fighting for was long gone.

    I betrayed you. Magnificently. Perfectly. Exactly how it should have been done after so many years of being your doormat girl, your disposable spouse and your poisonous playtoy. I learned things I should never know at your hands, and did things I will never speak of, not even to my new husband, who would never dare tread in the dark places that you found comfort in. You threw me away and in the end I slapped you in the face and walked away first and I'm so proud of myself for that, and I know you were proud too.

    I know that you were relieved.

    I realize you were messed up. That you had problems no one could fix, not even me or you. I know life was hard for you and your genius laced with madness took you down long before your body had the final word. And I hope you're in a place now that brings little of that intense pain that you lived with and that your mind is at rest now because I don't think it ever once was when you were alive.

    And the little nuclear family you created out of us is thriving at last. Despite your last-minute attempts to dismantle it. On our former anniversary and out of the blue. Thank you for making May 17 a day to remember that I survived you trying to kill me, and the day that Jacob thwarted your final fucked-up plans to get me back for winning our stupid, juvenile hurtfest and not a day to remember that we still loved each other once upon a time even as we caressed our murderous dreams.

    I'm not going to mark this day next year or ever again after today. I'm letting it go like I let you go because I want life to be good. I want life to be fun and beautiful and predictable and sweet. I want it to be full of love and respect and caring and patience. I don't want any sick games or any twisted definitions, all of it is now laid out in plainspeak on a clean sheet of brightly-lit white paper for us to check off on our way to happily ever after.

    And you know what? That is something you'll never have. But besides Ruth and Henry and a healthy respect for your rage there is something else you left me with that's been swimming around in my psyche for a year now that I didn't know was there at first and then when I noticed it and tried to catch it it would slip through my hands over and over again, like a jellyfish. My hands got stung and pain laced through my fingers every time I touched it but I knew if I didn't grasp it soon it would fade away and disappear. You knew it was there and you forced me to find it.

    It was my strength. Strength built from learning how to withstand you, to live with and love you and to stay with you even when I should have left. I knew I stuck around for something, and I finally caught it.

    Thank you for giving me strength.

    I have strength. You have nothing.

    Happy anniversary, baby. And peace, I hope you've got some peace in death.

    Not yours anymore,

    B.

Bridget's army.

Jacob got his proverbial tranquilizer gun and I've been shot in the ass with a dart and I've slept. Oh have I slept. And he has too, thanks to a network that stretches far beyond my wildest dreams. I really had no idea how strong and how many people deep it was until Tuesday when Bridget exploded and a few hours passed with what appeared to be several key scenes from The Exorcist being reenacted.

I won't go into much detail, suffice it to say it began with sliding down that wall and ended two hours later with Claus (housecall Claus!) charging into the bathroom with a needle full of sleep and the last thing I remember is Jacob was still holding me, whispering something but I never heard him, I was still screaming when the lights went out for this princess.

I was up briefly last night. Snuggling with the kids, getting reassurance that Jacob does not want a raincheck on this life after all. I ate and went back to sleep while people came and went and now Erin is here to help and keep the kids busy for a few days because Jacob is so tired and because we need help but we're stubborn. All this help means I stay home, you know. Embrace it, fragile miss B.

I met Dr. Important Joel, who aside from rhyming with Cole, is going to work with Claus to get a better handle on medicated-girl. I'm singing Nirvana songs and hearing talk of polar bears, or polar girls, or maybe it was something similar but today I'm not fighting anything anymore. I'm just going to go back to sleep.

When I get up Jacob promised he would play Dust in the Wind, so I can practice the violin solo. It's a much better song than Lithium. I just deleted that one anyway.

And hey, a year ago today Cole tried to kill me. Fucking fitting, isn't it?

The freefall.

I walked up to the gate, showed them my lifer bracelet (unlimited rides, you know) and was summarily locked into my seat. The man took my green flip-flops and put them in a pile by the entrance and I let my bare toes relish the light summer breeze. I failed to notice the mechanism had begun to move and I was going up slowly. I ascended without caring, too busy finding shapes in the clouds, chasing the high that had long since deserted me in favor of luckier prospects or perhaps brightest shores. A jolt and a metallic clang disrupted that daydream and when it was gone...

...it was gone forever.

And then all my hair stood on end as the switch was thrown and the platform I was strapped to took 3 seconds to drop three hundred feet. I threw up. I wished I could die. I pushed Jacob out of my way and recoiled in a massive attempt to disappear to prevent any more of that kind of hideous, destructive fear.

    Here it comes and there it goes
    Another day of getting up to fight
    In a world called catastrophe, my native tongue is blasphemy
    So it's the one I'll write
    And baby can you hear it?
    Don't it make you want to wake up and open your eyes?


I woke up this morning screaming and drenched in sweat, every nerve ending in my entire body on edge, every joint and muscle tense and we didn't get very far before it was clear that this wasn't even my normal. While Jacob was calling for help before he felt the gravity coming I was pulling things off shelves in the bathroom looking for razor blades that would never be found in my house anyway. Jacob uses an electric razor and I use wax because of this. I had an epiphany-knives-and went tearing down the stairs toward the kitchen just as Jacob realized that's where I was headed. He grabbed me just inside the kitchen door, pulling my shoulders to him so hard my head snapped back and banged on the door.

Leave it.

I can't do this.

I know you feel that way but you can. We made it, you just need to get better. Baby. please.

It's too hard. I'm so scared, Jake, I don't want to feel like this.

I know, baby, so am I. We can do this. The kids are depending on you, they need you. Bridget, I need you. I want you here, with me. I've never wanted anything different.

They'll be fine. Everyone will be fine. Better even.

None of us will be better without you. We'll die without you.
We won't bother with creative therapies anymore. This time they'll opt for the hospital. Told you I wasn't dumb.

The worst thing is he didn't trust his instincts, even when I warned him that I knew he wasn't listening to himself. His infallible intuition, his perfect logic that has a hand up from higher places that can be uncanny in its perfection. He failed to believe himself when too late he realized I lied.

I have no intentions of keeping any promises I made to be here forever. What's sick is how much comfort I got from knowing that and I know it's wrong and I want it to stop.

Jacob kissed the top of my head and took me into his arms and he backed into a corner and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, holding both of us. Me and him, because he needs comfort too and he's terrified and was shaking like a leaf and I'm sorry honey. He left me there while he went and got the kids off to school and then he got them out the door with the neighbors and he started making those goddamed phonecalls because he knows people and now they're all going to work together to save my life once more.

I may be gone for a while. I really have no idea what they have planned but I don't care as long as it works this time. It has to work. I just have to go and get better and hope he will someday forgive me.

Not well at all.

I can feel my eyeballs move when I look up to see if he is looking at me while I write about him. Not like I care, if he wants to watch he can. He's fascinated by my words, by how it comes out here, how things I have said to him in person, replete with the tears and batty eyelashes and biting the lip that can tear his heart from his chest but then he reads it here and it's a cold, flat diatribe that holds none of the same depth. A scary cold.

He is confused by that. Hey, we all are, you aren't special.

Well, you are, but maybe not when it comes to having all the answers, just most of them. I need those last final ones. I needed to know how it all turns out because when I go to sleep at night my hope starts to slide away and when I wake up it's such a fight every day to clamber back over to it and drag it closer only to repeat my actions. I'm exhausted. It wasn't there today anyways.

Bridget isn't well and she can only account for why about half the time. It's an easy pill to swallow when things are at rock bottom and we are struggling just to hold on to each other and everything else suddenly is deemed unimportant. What's so fucking hard is when things start going good, routine settles in, daily life blooms around us and yet nothing is different. He still doesn't know who he'll wake up with. He doesn't like this one facet, this bland anger with no cause, this uncaring, unemotional void that leaves me just...living but for nothing. And all day long I can not react or smile or cry even, there's just nothing but the anger, and a constant stream of chatter that runs through my skull telling me I shouldn't be here, I am not worth anything and no one would be the worse for wear if I vanished. That scares me too because it won't shut off.

Times like these I wish for medication. Really strong medication and a room with nothing sharp and nothing I can use for anything, a room with nothing to do and maybe even no one to talk to so that I don't make them feel bad because I don't feel like talking. I just feel like pouring myself into a corner right now and hanging on for dear life so that I might someday be allowed to enjoy it. I'm not dumb enough but I'm dumb enough and that's the promise I can give. Bridget's been suicidal for a long time but no one knows she still is. He doesn't really know. He doesn't get it.

If you ever wanted a realistic portrait of mental illness in this day and age maybe I would be it. A perfect study of debilitating chemical nonsense existing in a space where a Stepford wife would be expected. Just enough ability to get through the goddamned day, just enough conviction to push away those who tell me I can't do it while I prove that I can, and so they back off and take away their butterfly net they ran in with to catch me, and then I have to go looking for them with bloody hands and tears in my eyes asking for help because I might have really fucked up bad this time and I don't know why I keep fucking up but it just KEEPS HAPPENING.

He doesn't understand. And as much as he can be here just when I need him the most why do I feel he's always slightly out of reach? He isn't out of reach, he's taken care of me, he's taken care of everything, he's cleared off his timetable in one generous wide gesture to help me and he can't help me. Maybe that's the frustrating part, he can only do so much, and I can only do so much and it's going to ruin everything. I'm going to ruin everything. I didn't want to end up this way, playing a waiting game. And none of it feels like it used to. All of this used to be wrapped in fear. It was justified, ignored. I was on my own so much I didn't have a chance to notice that it would follow me even when things were good. Fear kept me going because I'm stubborn and somehow it always seemed like it was going to come down to Cole or me. And I 'm here but so is the fear again. And the pain and the hopeless nothingness.

We're not going to make it. And I wanted this so, so badly. I love Jacob like no one could have ever measured and I didn't want to ruin him. He's so sweet and kind and beautiful. He deserves so much better than this.