Cold hard light.

It's Thursday and I can't work so I'm stalling. I can't think. I can't play music and so I can't write.

I've been on the phone all afternoon apologizing to the boys, one by one, for the screaming, the silence, the stubbornness, and the snot and tears I have oozed into their collars and their arms. I apologized for being such a fucking bitch and for driving yet another of their friends out of our lives.

Bless their hearts, they refused to accept my offers on the basis that I am to react however the hell I please and they can take it. Because no one else could and I keep picking the ones who snap.

Most were gruff and offered me whatever I need, whenever I need it even though they know they'll get stuck with middle of the night phone calls and weird requests to do things like come and clean the drain gutter over the kitchen window so it doesn't pour out the middle from that glut of leaves stuck up there.

Joel told me that sometimes when under extreme stress people break, and that Jacob must be confused and overwhelmed and his soothing talk read like a page from the letter Jacob left for me and I agreed before pointing out that what makes me so angry is that he dropped everything to help me, why wouldn't he let me help him? Why leave without a goodbye? Why not stay and fight for this?

Joel said simply that Jacob never looked at me as an equal but only as a precious gift that he no longer feels he deserves.

I asked Joel very slowly how Jacob was doing. Joel said he didn't know, that he got a letter from him asking for help with me and nothing about the future. Just a brief explanation with no answers.

He offered to show me but I don't need to see it. I have one just like it. Only it doesn't say take care of yourself, it says I will always love you.

He's not coming back for me. It's time to face reality.

Frost in the dark.

It's been a week and it feels like a year. I keep reading the letter he wrote to me, the finality of his thoughts on paper, the sureness with which he gave up everything. Insisting it wasn't me that drove him away but something deep within himself.

Do I believe that?

Sometimes.

I wish he'd come back so I could be with him and I wish he'd come back so that I can scream at him.

Instead, I opted this morning to leave Chris to his coffee and the internet while I took a run with Joel and we bickered all the way to the river and back. Joel doesn't like the safeguards I have in place, he doesn't approve of the network of friends expected to fill in and watch for leaks in the dam, he doesn't think it's fair for that pressure to be on them, or safe for me to be alone with the kids so much while waiting to panic when the rage runs dry.

He thinks I should have Bailey come and watch the kids while I check myself back into the little posh facility where they whisper and where famous people go to get their heads on straight. A place where people looked at me in the hall and tried to figure out exactly who I was, if I was anyone at all.

Obviously I am no one. With not even enough value to make Cole not want to share me or to make Jacob stick around for more than eighteen months.

I told Joel to go fuck himself and I turned and ran back in the dark through the city and refused to acknowledge that he ran thirty feet behind me the whole way back to my door.

Samhain snow.

    Hold me down
    Better in the end

Jacob left because Bridget is evil. Don't tell me to meditate, doctor. Your deep breaths won't help me. And thanks for the literature on not killing myself. I've read it all, been reading it since you were in high school. I found a better way to temporarily relieve the pain and I told you I cut my thigh and rendered you silent because you wanted to ask me to prove it. I'm better at this than you are and soon enough you'll transfer me on down the line because I make you uncomfortable.

Fuck you. He left because of me. Because he wanted cement and I am sand. He tried to mix and mix and his arms got too tired and I blew all over the place. Jacob is tired. Tired of gathering me up only to have me scatter again. I have a wager that says he'll move to Quebec, get his vasectomy reversed and remarry Sophie because she's concrete. Then he can be the flighty enigmatic hippie in her circles and work his magic and not have to compete on charm or cuteness like he did with me in our circles. Big always wins. They can have a few kids, he'll be a wonderful father and life will be awesome for Jacob. Jacob deserves awesome. Don't you think? Gosh, their kids will be so tall.

Moving on, equally awesome is my news.

Last night after I hummed and hawed on the phone one minute too long, Ben had the Land Rover I was looking at sent over for me.

Because honestly? Judging by how slowly I can move sometimes I probably never would have just gone and bought the thing, even though I was in love with this vehicle before my hand touched the door handle. And then I drove it and loved it more but quietly deferred because I don't want to make any hasty financial decisions. It's not a new one or anything spendy, this one is four years old. I love it.

Ben asked me if I was going to get the black one and I said yes, if I did decide to get it and poof. They drove up to my front door in the middle of dinner and rang the bell.

Wow.

In case you think Ben is trying to somehow win me over with expensive gifts he gave me the bill so I can transfer the money into his account sometime in the next few days. He did say he's give me a price break in exchange for sexual favors and I laughed until I cried.

And then I asked by how much?

He offered to pay me and we laughed some more.

Because this is ludicrous. Because he is crazy and because I am pathetic. But I'm pathetic on wheels now. It's a very cool truck. I won't get stuck in the snow with it, it's safe for the kids. It's all mine.

The only other giant expenditure I'm going to make is to have the house painted in the spring. I have chosen a dark charcoal black for the wood siding and pure white for the gingerbread, porch and trim. Then the outside will match the majesty of the inside of this big old gothic Victorian. I'm also considering a taller wrought iron fence for the front, but judging by the prices these fences must be filled with gold. Then I'll probably sell it. I don't know. The only thing I see in it is abject beauty, and stability for the kids. I'm giving Ruth the big summer bedroom with the 'bug lights' and I'm going to take her bedroom on the front of the house.

Christian is taking the kids trick or treating tonight on the three streets on this side of the church and I'll give out treats and then I promised him we could order a pizza late and watch scary movies from under a warm blanket. I asked him if he'd stay in the guest room overnight and he twitched before he said yes.

It's a old habit I can't fault him for. Cole's girl and all. Don't fucking touch her or bad things could happen to you. Maybe Jake got out just in time. Or maybe I'm just rambling.

Have a safe night.

I wonder if 'Abandoned' will be my next tattoo?

Life has been divided into two camps here. Those who are angry and unwilling to think too hard past their clenched fists, and those who are mired in disbelief. Most of my friends fall into the angry camp while Jacob's closest and dearest are in the disbelief camp.

For the record, I have a foot in each camp and had no idea I could do the splits. Well, I did but I don't like to advertise it and I know, sad humor isn't it?

Sam is up to his eyeballs in shock and has phoned me no less than twenty three times in five days pointing out EVERY SINGLE TIME that God doesn't ask that His servants abandon their young families to show some sort of allegiance to Him. God doesn't not want to be put first at the expense of loved ones.

Sam is telling me things I already know. Life is so black and white for everyone and so many millions of shades of grey for Jacob right now I can't begin to try to reassure Sam that Jacob hasn't lost his mind because I'm nowhere near convinced that he didn't have some sort of mental break from reality based on all this stress. He's always been a strange one in that you think things have gotten better and he tries to process it as history and gets overwhelmed and takes the fuck off.

The difference here is that he gave up the kids. He wouldn't have done that on a temporary freak out. Even if he was going for three months he wouldn't have done that. That was the part that keeps me in this anger and it's the best place I could ever be because once I lose my grip on rage and slide down into hopelessness things will get worse and right now I just need to get through each day one foot in front of the other and as long as I can do that then everything's going to be okay.

It isn't but humor me again, please.

And if Sam says the word 'abandon' to my face one more time I'm going to make him regret it.

Run like hell.

I can't reply to emails yet, my heart is spread dangerously thin. I'm the thinnest ice at the edge of the lake in spring, the translucent kind that cracks if you walk on it, the kind that will drown you so please, just stay away from the edge.

I'm still alive. The second hand moves, time goes on, Bridget can exist forever in shock. As long as I stay here, I won't fall through the ice.

Jacob had asked me to meet him at church late last Wednesday evening, to get PJ to come over to the house to be there since the kids were sleeping and that it would be only for an hour or two. Sometimes he liked to talk there. Big long talks about life.

What's on your mind, Jake?

Self-preservation, Princess.

And then he told he was leaving me, leaving us, leaving everything behind.

That I was stronger than he was. That he had engineered just about every fall I took, organizing my setbacks and that Cole and Caleb's behavior fell into step perfectly. That he took me away from everything that was familiar on purpose. That he resented me for consuming his every breath for ten years.

That he was obsessed with me, that I was not God and I was not supposed to come first.

That I was killing him. Because he loved me too much. Because it made him sick to touch me knowing how badly I've been hurt before and he wanted to kill people who hurt me and that scared him. Because I'm too fragile for him to ever treat any differently. Because he couldn't stem his jealousy and he knew I could never choose between him and my friends and he worked so hard to try and make me completely dependent on him and he had failed and in the end he became completely dependent on me.

And now he had to go. Because I messed him up. Because he cannot breathe without me in his arms and I always felt the same way and I told him it didn't matter, that when you're in love you don't breathe normal air and he looked at me and shook his head and told me that I wasn't understanding him, that I was killing him, I was destroying him, because he loved me too much. Me. And because I do better when he isn't around. I function, I don't lean. I'm healthier.

How do you love someone too much?

He gave me a card that had a time written on it, an appointment already made with our lawyer and he told me not to miss it, that it was incredibly important that I go.

He said he would be gone the next day and oh, how he loved me, how he loved us and he always would but it was time for him to run now and he won't be coming back.

He wept. He put his arms around me and held me so tight and he wept for failing to succeed at the one thing he ever wanted because he told me he was a coward and a weakling and a failure.

Yeah. You fucking are. and I still love you. So, so much.

I walked out on him. I came back to the house and PJ asked me what was wrong and I lied to him and he went home and I sat in the corner all night, eyes wide open, letting panic wash over me like cold saltwater. I looked at my wedding ring and I realized that there would be no changing Jacob's mind because he was running from me for good, no do-overs and no chance to work this one out. That he had fooled me and ruined me too and that we would never see each other again. Right at that moment my heart stopped beating for good, I think. I won't ever live again like the way I did when I thought that Jacob loved me the way you're supposed to love the one you're with.

Early the next morning Jacob called and asked me with a broken voice just to leave long enough for him to get his things. That he couldn't see me. That he loved me. I didn't go back to the house at all that day. I took the kids and told PJ what happened and we stayed at PJ's mom's house overnight and then I went back to the house the next day alone after taking the kids to school and almost everything of Jacob's was gone except for a few books and clothing, his ring and a letter for me. He took the truck.

He went to Sam and told him he was quitting, and he disappeared from our lives in one day.

He didn't say goodbye.

I kept the appointment and went to see the lawyers who gravely asked me to sit down and then began to pass papers across the table that spelled out the finality of my love and the destruction of dreams Jacob had painted for me. Some of the papers I had to sign. The adoptions have been revoked, our separation underway, the house is in my name alone suddenly, and all of the money transferred back to me. I went underwater while the voices droned on and on in a soothing hum, ending with a no worries tone that made me want to smash the pretty glass doors on that office until they understood that I don't care about the money. Fuck the money, I want my Jacob.

There is no waking up from this.

There will be no mending of this heart. There is no consoling of the children. At first I told them he had to take a long trip but he would be back. I lied to them because it seemed like the safest thing to do because they were asking questions and I couldn't wait for the counselor to return my calls. I waited until weekend family therapy and with help I told them what he had really done.

I wish he would just come home, but I know this time it's vastly different. He isn't coming back. This isn't fixable. I know how he gets when the world crowds in and he runs. Maybe we were doomed from the start. We both said we were, everyone else said we were and it was a marriage masquerading as a ticking time bomb, a spoiled carton of milk with an expiry date long passed and I thought I remembered asking for the kind that keeps forever.

How in the fuck can you love someone too much? He loved me, of that I've never been more sure. The one thing he left me with is the knowledge that I have experienced life on a higher level and lived a love deeper than I ever thought possible.

Chris told me to treat him like he's dead. They're all scared to death that I'm going to sit here and just wait out the rest of my life for Jacob to return. Bless their hearts, they have stepped in, kept the kids busy and been here, but I haven't broken down, I haven't done much of anything except sleep on borrowed medicine and hope that I'd wake up to find Jacob here where he belongs.

I would still take him back. I don't care if everyone hates him, I don't care if none of it works or if I struggle for the rest of my life, I wanted him in it. I fell in love with his heart first and then the rest of him, against the best advice and the biggest obstacles.

And he gave up on me because it got too hard. Because he had guilt. Because when it came down to choosing between Bridget and God, God must win. Don't you see that? If he picks Bridget he gives up everything he stands for and everything he is and he can't figure out how to exist peacefully loving both of us. Because God is not as tough a customer as Bridget. He rarely talks back and he's predictable and benign and all-forgiving.

And easier. God is easier. No one ever becomes obsessed with God, but everyone seems to be obsessed with Bridget. I am my own religion. The cult people run screaming from.

I'm doing okay. I find myself double-booked for therapy for the coming week, PJ is playing dispenser and has taken every last pill, all the climbing ropes and everything but the smallest paring knife out of the house and everyone is wonderful. Ben had to fly out tonight but he'll be home for good in a couple more weeks, and really as long as the shock holds out I can function, maybe because it still feels unreal. Kind of like when Cole died only this time I know Jacob's out there somewhere and just doesn't want to be with me. It's harder than death.

Nights are the worst but I've got my phone and I've got my boys who are a call away and I've got sleep that is broken but sometimes full of wonderful dreams and in each and everyone one of them Jacob is still here and that's what keeps me going. It's all I have left.

The leafs won.

Joel was gone by 8:45 pm, just before the Rangers pulled their goalie in a fruitless effort to come back.

And God has forsaken me.

I've written volumes since Wednesday.

I've posted nothing.

I'm still thinking. I'm still veering wildly between shock and rage. This is a good thing, trust me. I don't know what comes after this and I don't want to. I'm so not ready to talk about Jacob breaking promises that he should have kept. I will never be ready to be alone like this.

Luckily tonight I don't have to be alone. I just put the kids to bed (shesstillfunctioningwow) and put the Leafs game on TV and Joel is bringing over Portuguese deli and Jack Daniels. We're going to stuff our faces and watch the game and split the bottle and lament the effort people foolishly invest in love. With any luck I'll be asleep drunk by nine.

Oh, but we're not bitter.

(I think he might be bitter, I don't know what I am yet, it's entirely too soon.)

I wonder how many people get to share an evening like this with their former psychoanalyst.

There's a key under the ivy pot.

When I woke up this morning Ben was lying on my bed, fully clothed, watching me sleep.

I started to tell him to leave, that I didn't need him being here and instead I started sobbing. He pulled me into his arms and just hung on, so I wouldn't blow away in the storm I was making. So that I wouldn't slip any deeper into my rabbit hole. So that I wouldn't have to be in the dark alone.

He said nothing. He didn't point out he knew how this would unfold. He didn't tell me that I was better off, he just told me he was here for the day.

He waited me out until I decided I was done crying and then I apologized and he cut me off, telling me to get my morning stuff done, he'd go down and make some coffee. I got the kids up and off to school and when I came home he had made potato omelets for us for breakfast.

I pointed out I am poor company right now and Ben told me that wasn't important, that I've always been vaguely shitty company but since he is not complaining I should shut the fuck up and drink my coffee and then we'll go car shopping.

Because I don't have a car.

Numb.

Remember, princess, his first nickname wasn't Preacher, it was Freebird.

He had stopped doing that.

You never expected him to stay.

I thought he had changed. You don't get this deeply involved and then just walk away.

Yeah, some people do.

Well, then they should be crucified.

No, but you knew somehow. Deep down.

If I knew I wouldn't be this medicated now would I?

Go back to sleep. I'll get the kids off to school.

PJ?

Yeah, Bridge?

I don't blame him.

Well, you'll be alone with that statement.

Don't leave me alone, PJ.

I had no intentions of it, princess.

Make him come back.

I would if I could.

Melt.

Crazier seemed to be a temporary affliction today. I, okay, we lived through it with no less than a concentrated heroic effort on my part to let him in. Because I don't. Because I can be rather cold and more than a little uptight. Because I can pretend until those cows arrive and then pretend a little more.

Instead I did what I have learned to do, I asked him for help long before everything went too far gone to rescue me and I put aside my coldness and I told Jacob I was really unhappy and out of sorts and not at all well today or this week even and I didn't like it and what do I do?

He talked me out of it, talked me down, gently reassured me and soon I felt like me again, a little tired but not as bad as usual.

He's a shaman. He bent a spoon while he told me stories from when he and August shared a house in California. All three weeks of it before Jacob realized he couldn't stand another moment of it. He said none of it was real. He had a beer one day at a restaurant and Clint Eastwood was eating at the next table. He said it was weird and unnatural and contrived, all of it. August had soaked it up but agreed it was weird and he was going to embrace the weirdness of it.

He unbent the spoon by hand, because he promised me he wouldn't permanently alter the cutlery anymore and he held me forever. Letting me cop out on life for a little while until I felt stronger, letting me try and match his heartbeat with my own, allowing me the comforts that keep me warm so I don't grow cold and distant and uncomfortable with only myself to talk to.

It's one of the things I love most about Jacob. He has as much time as is needed for me to feel better. He has answers for questions that mystify me. He has time. He has built-in nurturing that he pulls off effortlessly. He keeps me close. He worries about me, telling me as long as I stay warm to him he can rest easy. It sounds so simply but I work at it tirelessly just to squeak through.

Tonight he's working from home for a bit but has a church meeting in an hour, I just brought him a cup of hot tea and he smiled and put down his pen and asked me if I wanted to come down to the church after his meeting for a bit to keep him company, and he would call PJ to come over to keep house since the kids are already in bed.

I might just do that.

    Hold your light, Eleven.
    Lead me through each gentle step by step
    By inch, by loaded memory
    'till one and one are one, eleven,
    So glow, child, glow.