Please just collect them.

The abject comparisons. I can't take them anymore. Take with it the reciprocal altruism, if you would. I know what it means. I know that it's real and it's waiting for me and that's why I can't move.

Once upon a time in a rare and fleeting show of confidence I could bring Cole to a standstill with my contempt for his cataclysmic lack of demonstrative emotional skills.

He would cave, he would fall apart trying to make me talk to him when he crossed a verbal line. He was never sorry for his physical missteps but he watched his words. He hated my disparagement of myself. He hated when I shut him out, he would joke and chide and try to draw me out, almost as if he wanted me to forgive him on the spot or he'd die miserably.

Ironic. Both the emotional eruptions and his death even. It still reels me right out over a ledge.

I never gave him the silent treatment. I would just process whatever he said and just think about it. I go quiet. I learned a lifetime ago not to beat things to death verbally and now it's something I do every day. More comparisons in living with night and day, moon and sun, dark and now light. Jacob likes to put words on everything. He draws me back out agonizingly to talk even though sometimes we leave it. Cole would go insane leaving it. Jacob has more patience and more confidence in his relationship with me. Something he never had until Cole was gone. Cole was his shadow in love and his rival in life. It's as freeing for him as it is for me to be out from under that intense scrutiny.

Emerging as the winner in a close race is my one private, final question for Cole. One question I asked him constantly and never got an answer to, one bit of closure and peace of mind he took with him to the grave in a rare show of secrecy that leaves me devastated forever. Simply devastated.

He never once gave me an answer. Jacob, with his heart in my hands will run out of breath giving me answers, epic ones, silly ones. The moon will rise and our eyes will grow so heavy and he'll be slurring reasons as he falls into sleep but I know when he wakes up he'll have thought of more ways.

Life is day from night. Light years and lifetimes different from before. Beautiful. Loving, so loving and passionate and overwhelming compared to before and so why would I keep this particular question in my heart? Why did it become more important than maybe asking why he had to be so quietly cruel?

Maybe because he answered that one, with laughter and spite. Otherwise, whatever answers he knew, he kept to himself. Maybe because he didn't know why. Because I was there. Because I loved him enough for both of us, maybe he didn't understand how that worked. He always came back to me even when he hated me, when there were better girls, when he had more fun without me.

Somehow my love was enough to spread across many hearts. So one would remain in the dark and the other would grow toward the light, eventually becoming too tired to hang on anymore and dropping the other heart down down into the black spiral that wouldn't let go of him long enough to give him to me, or long enough to give me that answer. It was the only thing I ever wanted from him and it would have made all the difference in the world.

Breaking Jake.

Jacob believes in evil. Which isn't a stretch of his imagination, he's a minister. He has seen things and he knows things that humble him, that break life down into basics, and importants and the rest is just gravy, fluff and distractions. He believes in the devil, not as Satan but as evil inside all of us, or more simply, the absence of good.

Oh, and he's a lightweight. This morning he picked Breaking Benjamin for his breakfast-making karaoke in the kitchen and what floors me is how he knows all the words, he can't get through the song. I've been listening to him try and he can't, his voice keeps breaking and so he stops and puts it on again. He's not going to let a few words best him, not when they're lodged firmly in his head. I love that he can't do it, I can't explain it. I love that his faith brings him to his very knees.

    Here I stand, helpless and left for dead
    Close your eyes, so many days go by
    Easy to find what's wrong
    Harder to find what's right

    I believe in you
    I can show you that I can see right through
    All your empty lies, I won't stay long
    In this world so wrong

    Say goodbye,
    As we dance with the devil tonight
    Don't you dare look at him in the eye
    As we dance with the devil tonight

    Trembling, crawling across my skin
    Feeling your cold, dead eyes
    Stealing the life of mine

    I believe in you
    I can show you that I can see right through
    All your empty lies, I won't last long
    In this world so wrong

    Say goodbye,
    As we dance with the devil tonight
    Don't you dare look at him in the eye
    As we dance with the devil tonight

    Hold on
    Hold on

Joel's been fired! YES! The last thing I ever want in my life is any more decaf with that guy. I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a dull spoon and eat them for lunch. It's been a miserable three weeks.

Seeing Claus is enough. Claus is terrific. Maybe moreso now that he stopped tiptoeing around and brought out the heavy meds. Apparently you have to be two steps away from the edge of the roof before people take you seriously. I don't fault him. I have a gift for deception and he mostly sees through it. It's taken almost a year but I have liked him from the get-go. I wish he wasn't retiring.

I wish I didn't need help.

You'll thank me later.

I found my brain, it had been poked full of holes and kicked into the corner. Weee. A lobotomy. Just what I've always wished for. And Jacob found his little wife and pulled her hands off the doorframe where her nails had dug in and forced her to drive downtown with him to attend her stupid session.

Today Joel wanted blood and instead I gave him tears. I went nowhere with anything. I sat in the chair and just held on to my stupid coffee cup for dear life and tried to tune him out. Jacob wasn't there, Claus wasn't there and I didn't want to be there. Every time he asked me to look at him it was as if I was seeing him through a window sheeted in rain and it was miserable and it didn't matter which direction he tried to take me in, I couldn't seem to go and so he stopped it early. He talked about his divorce. He's trying to make me trust him and I don't.

I don't trust anyone, for the record. Absolutely no one.

I came home and there was a message on the machine from Caleb to say hello to the kids and politely pretend that all is still well between everyone. The new neighbors left a bottle of wine on our back step, they make their own and they don't know us well yet and so I brought it inside and Jacob said it looked like it was shaping up to be a long day.

I hope not. But I have such a headache. It must be from the lobotomy.

    And if there's something wrong
    Who would have guessed it
    And I have left alone
    Everything that I own
    To make you feel like
    It's not too late
    It's never too late

    Even if I say
    It'll be alright


If I type really quietly maybe he won't find me in time to go to to counseling. I'd really rather not go.

Don'twanttogodon'twanttogo.

FUCK.

Ruthless thirst.

    You let me violate you.
    You let me desecrate you.
    You let me penetrate you.
    You let me complicate you.

Payback for Jacob's serenade waltz wasn't nearly so highbrow, because I'm not like that. I gave him what I have, I gave him what he wants. I put Closer on the stereo and he knew I was coming from three rooms away, late last night, circa eleven or so. I should have been in bed but I wanted him so bad everything hurt. Not a safe place for me to be.

He was so excited he met me at the door.

The fleeting realization that my nemesis, the chair with wheels was eventually repaired and is still being used because we haven't bothered to shop for a new one fluttered through my head. It would have to do.

It didn't do.

I didn't wear the cowboy hat either. I stuck to tried and true sweet lingerie because that's what Jacob likes best, things he buys for me.

He smiled at me.

I bit my lip.

And I got no chance to remember my lap dance, no chance to grind out on him, no chance to tease, as he simply took me by the wrists and pushed me down to the floor. And the song turned to mush in my head and my bracelet was broken and my hair pulled and oh God my head banged so hard on the floor at one point I had stars to keep me company while I tried to pick his apologies and kisses out of thin air. Because I don't like gentle sometimes, and the stars went well with the loud music and his relentless assault, his fingers in my ears and his thumbs in my mouth and his voice in my ear as he said things that made me smile, as he cried out more than once.

It sent me so far over the edge I was still falling when I woke up this morning. Everything is on fire. He is the perfect match, he just likes to pretend I'm not going to get away with anything, because he takes it first.

Which pretty much means payback was less something I could control. I have no concept of control. And he has more than just a romantic bent to him, a twist I won't even name but it's just dark enough to make Bridget so happy.

And we like it that way.

Today I have to add the errand of dropping my bracelet off to be fixed and Jacob has been struggling all morning to remember his name and wipe the smile off his face. So far he's been successful with neither.

It's okay, though. I can't find my brain.

Best Monday.

Sorry for the lateness of today's entry, I'm having a hard time putting this sort of morning into words because I'm speechless again and it's all Jacob's fault. But oh, do I feel it, the love that he holds for me.

Remember how I told you he is good at planning things right under my nose?

Remember how I said he told me he wanted our life together to be unforgettable?

Remember how much I said I dreaded Mondays (and Wednesdays and Fridays and most days that end in Y) because I find therapy difficult, Joel difficult and the neverending quest for mediocrity completely unreachable?

I didn't tell you how deeply offended Jacob gets when I seek out 'boring' and 'average'. That's the last thing he wants and he's taken those wishes of mine and worn them personally as insults.

And while he wore them he planned the next phase in his quest to keep his King of Romance crown. Because the last thing we're going to have is a boring, average marriage. I think he missed the point of my wish but that's okay.

It's more than okay.

You're SO not ready for this. I wasn't ready. Hell, I'm still not ready.

This morning I endured therapy, after a promise offered from Jacob that if I wore my prettiest summer dress he would take me out for breakfast afterward. I endured Joel and his false cheer and his professional overt familiarity and his stupid imported decaf and his awful habit of addressing Jacob when I'm sitting right there and so I attempted repeatedly to just ignore Joel and talked to Claus instead, as if Joel wasn't even in the room. I was quickly found out and suitably chided for my usual obstructions of justice. Same old same old. Let's just fast forward to when I could leave, stripped raw for yet another morning. Stick a fork in her, she's done.

While we were on our way to our late breakfast Jacob said he had a quick errand at one of the hotels, someone had left a package for him from one of the university conferences held there on the weekend. He said it might take a few minutes to track it down and I should come in and I can wander a bit in the shops in the lobby so I don't have to sit outside and breathe exhaust fumes (translation: I don't leave you alone anymore, ever. Which is okay, I was happy to keep him company).

Okay.

He poked around a bit, I suggested twice that he just go to the reception desk and ask, but he winked at me and went and poked his head in the piano bar that this hotel is famous for.

Oh, yeah, here it is. Just a minute, Bridge.

I turned to study some pretty blown glass in a window and then I heard him again,

Hey, princess, can you come in here for a second? I want you to see something.

Sure.

I followed him into the bar. It was empty, save for four people in the corner with instruments, I registered a drum kit, piano, saxophone, guitar. They nodded and smiled politely and I smiled in return.

Jake! There's a band practicing. Maybe we shouldn't be in here.

They're here for us, princess.

They started playing and Jacob asked for my hand and then I noticed the song was familiar. I was just about to tell him I knew it was Billy Joel when he started to sing.

Because this extraordinary man doesn't have a lick of self-consciousness in him, I didn't miss a word. He sings beautifully, nice and loud. He should have been a rock star.

    Don't go changing, to try and please me,
    You never let me down before,
    Don't imagine you're too familiar,
    And I don't see you anymore.

    I would not leave you in times of trouble,
    We never could have come this far,
    I took the good times, I'll take the bad times,
    I'll take you just the way you are.

    Don't go trying some new fashion,
    Don't change the colour of your hair,
    You always have my unspoken passion,
    Although I might not seem to care.

    I don't want clever conversation,
    I never want to work that hard,
    I just want someone that I can talk to,
    I want you just the way you are.

    I need to know that you will always be
    The same old someone that I knew,
    What will it take till you believe in me,
    The way that I believe in you?

    I said I love you, and that's forever,
    And this I promise from the heart,
    I couldn't love you any better,
    I love you just the way you are.

    I don't want clever conversation,
    I never want to work that hard,
    I just want someone that I can talk to,
    I want you just the way you are.

The absence of any self-consciousness failed to prevent his voice breaking on the very last two lines and so he whisper-sang them again, which I have come to love more than anything in the world and we stopped and shared a long, very sweet kiss before turning to applaud the band who bowed and then politely clapped for us.

We wound up doing bagels on the run, as we ran out of time and had to head back to pick up the children for lunch. I, of course, had the crow-flavored bagel, bested once again by Jacob, who puts my petulance in perspective against the Big Picture with his gentle demonstrations of how much he loves me and how much faith he has in us.

I think any doubts I had remaining got carried away this morning on the lilting notes of the saxophone. That or they simply vanished into thin air when I slid my hands down until they rested on Jacob's marble biceps and I rested my head against his chest so that I could feel his voice, being oh so careful not to disrupt his heart, which beats on his sleeve for me and is the strongest, most delicate work of art ever made by God. Completely unprotected and yet completely safe, like his iron wings. We're a study in contrasts and he's asking for so little and I make it so complicated. That stops here.

    I just want someone that I can talk to,
    I want you just the way you are.

Now please don't pinch me, I'm keeping this feeling.

Keeping it.

Forever.

Evenings on the front steps.

Firstly, JT (I don't call him this but I've heard it so much as of late it's starting to seep in) here has glasses for reading. Which is sexy but I cringe thinking that because I recall saying something similar a few years back when Cole got his glasses. These boys, their eyes are all shot by the time they're 36 or 37 years old, it's a rite of passage. In any event, Jacob picked out the neatest coppery-gold perfectly round frames. He looks scholarly already.

He looks good and I feel naked today. I miss the eight inches of hair I had cut off a few hours ago. My hair is better long but sometimes you just need to start over.

And for people who asked recently about our old tradition of Jacob reading aloud to me in the evenings, he still does, two nights a week or so, especially now that we have the time again. It's a calming ritual and quaint too, old-fashioned and peaceful. You have to be incredibly comfortable with someone to be able to listen to them read aloud for hours on end, you have to have confidence to read in the first place and every now and then we'll find a conversation or share a laugh or a nice moment and talk a little before he resumes reading from the page.

We've slogged through most of Hemingway now and a couple of Stevensons, some random poetry collections and now we're reading Right Away Monday by Joel Thomas Hynes. It's funny and sad and touching and just about puts me on the floor with the antics of Clayton Reid, a character if I ever heard of one. He's a Newfie and the book is written in the first person, complete with the accent, and that accent is written so thickly that you can just about hear it out loud.

And I thought Ballads was rollicking.

Especially when Jacob reads it. Jacob speaking his native tongue without hesitation gives me warm fuzzies, as he's been off the rock so long he's begun to pick up his h's again, and he's even started to use my instead of me in the possessive sense. One of his most endearing qualities is the fact that sometimes he'll get very excited talking and no one can understand a word. It's awesome.

Exactly like the book.

I hope that never changes.

And Clayton? Could be any one of Jacob's friends from back home. He's sweet and awful and impossible and you feel for him and you'll fall for him too.

I can't wait to see what happens next, I'm headed out to the porch now with a pitcher of iced tea and the book as we speak. I hope Jacob has his glasses all polished up and is ready to begin.

She's mine.
I wants her.
She's the One.
-Clayton Reid.

Onlyness and alwrong aren't words, you know.

    Save my love through loneliness
    Save my love through sorrow
    I give you my onlyness
    Give me your tomorrow

This morning I'm mourning things like Jacob choosing teaching over carpentry because carpentry isn't a steady job but watching him build new stairs into the yard yesterday and him covered with sawdust and dirt has proven to be how I like to see him best. It's uncomplicated, hands-on and instantly productive. It's peaceful, without politics, without overcomplicating what should should come so easy but doesn't. He is happy, though and looking forward to the fall, to the routine and to all the new ideas he'll be able to exchange, to the ways he'll be able to steer his deep philosophical, spiritual discussions with a fresh set of faces each semester.

He says when he retires he'll pick up more carpentry but for now he's only going to be shaking the sawdust out of his hair when time permits, and he's got a lot of work planned for the next two months on the yard, the house and on helping things back to as normal as we ever knew, or something akin to level.

If you place a level across my soul it tilts crazily to the left and the bubble all but disappears. Which used to be funny but it isn't anymore.

I want my bubble in the middle.

This morning went well. Therapy is therapy, though I think watching other people drink real coffee while I had decaf, still with caffeine but less put me in my chair with a tiny chip on my shoulder and I had to be dragged out of my head several times. They're all so proud though that instead of the instant progress I would fake in the past after a bad time today I just spoke of slowly getting back to a good place because...well, eh. the apathy. I hate this apathy but I'm possibly almost conditioned to accept it now as part of the process.

Mostly because trying to get around it, well, we all know how well that worked.

Yesterday I wrote you a goodbye letter, internet, but I didn't post it. I didn't delete it either, I just left it saved with a million other half-hearted entries never written. Some contain too much info, some contain nothing at all, all of them abandoned as I change my mind like the weather here, where a new set of circumstances roll in from the west across the sky in huge roiling waves and suddenly you're forced to rethink your plans and your wardrobe.

This post isn't a keeper, it's going nowhere and I'm just going to keep typing until whatever wants to come out will come out. Or not.

I had a cigarette this morning.

We made it all the way to Freebird on Guitar Hero. Jacob used to sing that to me before he would leave on a long trip. Well, he'd play it at the table, we'd always have everyone over for a big dinner before he'd take off for remote corners of the world and he'd sing it to me, directed at me, about us. Such an awesome song. This is why over thirty years after that song coming out, people still yell for it to be played at shows. No matter who the band is.

We got a dog at Christmas but I didn't bother telling you.

I'm feeling good about the house changes but a little stressed because all of our money goes to therapy which I keep sabotaging anyway so what little is left over should go to house things but we keep doing other things. And also, major renovations while we're living in the house mean a mess. I get stressed out over messes, even as I have mellowed in recent months as to what is important and a spotless house isn't nearly as high on the list as it was when I was trapped and had little else to worry my days away with.

I haven't run in like, forever.

Jacob looks good driving the suburban. I missed the truck but not as much as he did. His dad was thrilled to take over the big red beast of a Ram that Jacob sent out and feels so much less conspicuous now and also, parking, so much easier. He wasn't meant to be part of the consumptive class.

There is one month of school left now. Hard to believe soon we'll be sleeping in a bit and running around in the sun instead of waking to alarms and hurrying to get a warm breakfast and clothes on and walking the beaten path to the school three blocks over. It means I won't see the church every day but that's alright. Jacob is home so I get what I wanted. I always get what I want, eventually. Kind of like Jacob. Thankfully we want the same thing, the happily ever after. Even if we have to kill each other in the process.

I'm not sure what else I can pull out of my recent stream of consciousness today, so maybe I'll just end it pointing out that the rain, thunderstorms and tornado warnings continue and we have been working to keep warm and dry and up. Because Bridget needs to be up. I'd feel up right now if I cared, but I don't. Today is a just a very quiet, very stable morning and just riddled with soft places to fall should I have any negative thoughts but really there's nothing in my little head today except Tim Hardin lyrics and some foggy memories I can't quite reach without trying and I'm not going to try, because this is better than whatever they would try to bring.

And now if you'll excuse me I had an offer of a quick nap in Jacob's arms and I think I'll take it.

Holding faith in four hands.

For an end to all further pointless arguments on what's good for me and what is not, I would pay a king's ransom.

For an open-minded understanding of loving sad music and writing sad stories I would give my whole heart, except that it doesn't belong to me anymore.

I didn't last so long yesterday. His voice, raised in anger admittedly leaves me shaken and afraid and I turn inward and I don't talk and I don't want to sort it out and I just want to be away-away. The silence scares him.

The absence scared me more so I went and sought him out.

It was a first!

(I am a slow learner.)

I opened the door of the den, hesitantly. It's a quiet door, he did a beautiful job. I took one step out and looked toward the kitchen, I didn't hear anything and I looked toward the back door and he was there, at my feet. Sitting on the floor with his back up against the wall turning a key over and over again in his fingers.

What are you doing?

Trying to not hover.

What is that?

It's a key to the den.

You have a key?

I didn't want any repeats of the last time you locked me out.

So why didn't you come right in?

I'm trying to give you what you want, Bridge.

Do you even know what I want?

No. I don't. We never seem to get that far.

I want time.

Oh God. Time alone?

No, just time. Less help. No rushing. Just time.

I want you to be happy. That's all I want. I don't want you to wake up scared, or fall asleep scared, or ever be caught in this place you're in now. And I'm sorry for what I said. I didn't mean to point out the sacrifices I had made, I meant to point out that you take the first place in my life and everything else can wait because you are what matters to me. I didn't mean anything else by it.

I know. I didn't mean to tell you you could leave.

Yes you did.

Maybe I did. Sometimes I think you should. You'd be so much happier away from this, Jacob.

Then you have no idea how in love with you I am, princess.

Okay, now, hey! Look! Boundaries. I'm stopping right there, but know that much aw-ing and kissing ensued and I wound up back in the cage of arms that he keeps for me and I felt like less of a lunatic for much of the remainder of the day and possibly like butter by this morning because of his attentions and I know we're fixing fuck-all with sex but for the affection whore that I am it's exactly what I needed.

Tomorrow I have to go eat crow with Joel for breakfast but he will have a fight on his hands. What he's done is prepare, with my help, a positive-outlook plan full of lists and instructions and all kinds of wonderful things I am to do for distraction. Which is where the drive to eliminate miserable writing and painful songs came in. Constant daily reminders and exercises in being a Happy Bridget. Ways to get my hooks in to prevent my chemicals from drowning me with their ineptitudes, a way to circumvent history. Blowing up Pandora's box and changing my history as it happens. It's work and I keep trying to coast without actually doing any of it. I keep fighting it, we both get discouraged. Why do I fight it if I want to have a better life? Because that's what people like me do.

And I can do this.

What keeps me humble is looking into Jacob's pale blue eyes and knowing that he alone isn't enough to do it. Coming to terms with the fact that all the love in the world and all these huge romantic gestures and the effort he has put into living with me, which must be next to impossible and yet he does it anyway, isn't going to magically erase all the bad things about me.

Knowing that he still wants to be here, even as I test him and bend him and shut him out and try so hard to let him in and he never knows which end is up and yet he's gone hands off and he feels helpless and vulnerable and yet he's a stone soldier for me, he doesn't yield. Ever. His love is so strong for me.

It hurts like hell to know all this and try to love him as much as I possibly can and wondering if he'll ever understand how much that is and how much more I wish I could give him or how that love will surpass any description I could ever make for it, in this lifetime, with my useless, pointless words.

This morning as I hung in the crook of his elbow on the edge of the bed that he had taken up the entirety of with his tormented sleep I thought about everything we have shared in the past year and how that very first night we spent together we peeled back the layers you keep intact for friends and we stood naked, unprotected and exposed in front of each other and put our trust in being able to move from friends to lovers with no bullshit or we wouldn't move a muscle any further. I needed to know I wouldn't be hurt again and Jacob needed to have something real. We made a promise to each other and then we exchanged hearts for good measure, and we agreed to raise my children together.

We became the Unsinkable Reilly Family.

Only this time I figured out how to rescue myself.

Which, according to Claus, is really remarkable. That's as excited as Claus ever gets, so it's something, for sure.