Show me how defenseless you really are.

I have no one to talk to.

Love by default.

    Looking for some hope
    Polished off the whiskey tonight
    You turned a man to stone
    For looking at you straight in the eyes

    So I'll drive away with all my things
    Though I've a faint belief in everything

    I wished your love away

I suppose that it would be too much to ask that the universe align tomorrow and send Jacob home for his birthday? I baked a cake this morning. If he doesn't come home I'll give it to the neighbors. If he does we can have a food fight because I'd probably throw it at him at this point.

Today is a day of petty frustrations. The zipper on my waterproof winter coat (the warm one) broke. My awesome new hikers? Worn copiously without breaking them in and lightweight, not so much. My feet hurt and I'm back to my oldest running shoes. Butterfield got the shortest walk in the world earlier as a result and I limped home from the school this morning. I won't be running for a couple of days but I don't feel like it anyway. The endorphins seem just out of my reach, I don't stretch enough, I don't get warm enough and Joel, my only running buddy now, is indulging in mutual annoyance with me. We don't get along. He overstepped and he doesn't get it and neither do I but I'm not the world's best limit-setter so I have to push him away.

Ben isn't faring much better.

He sat at the table last night singing along with Cary Brothers on the stereo after the kids went to bed while we sipped tea and didn't even talk, just sitting and listening. He put up all the storm windows in the piano windows on the south side of the house that I always forget about. He reminded me to eat a little more and to call him if I need anything, and that after next week he's back in town for good and on four-day weeks for the rest of the year so he can be handy. I didn't say much. Then he started getting his stuff together to go back to the hotel and finally he asked if I wanted him to stay.

I told him no, that I was fine, that it was a bad idea and for the sake of my sanity never to offer something like that again.

He left and once again we weren't on speaking terms but he called this morning from the airport and told me to call him, that he'd be back for a day at the end of the week and again, he loves me. I told him I loved him too. We always say that. We're close enough to say it and not have it bear the kind of weight that it should.

Sometimes that's half the problem. By default I dilute my love and spread it around, trying to give everyone attention and a place in my life and sometimes lines that seem so clear to me are not to everyone else. Sometimes I get caught up and distracted, sometimes I get thrown off my position and can't figure out where the lines are anymore. And Jacob left because I didn't erase all those lines for his benefit.

Oh, and sometimes too I just pick the most temperamental/flightiest/biggest longshots in the world to fall in love with. Which means Jacob left because he always planned to and he held on long enough to make sure we were okay. Sometimes I pick the sweet ones who don't have a clue the kind of hurt they can cause.

I need to not do that anymore. Both things.

Songs that aren't safe to hear.

    Look for the girl with the broken smile
    Ask her if she wants to stay awhile
    And she will be loved

The beauty of the small moments, stolen a few at a time or rarely, as an unexpected delight do and will outnumber the long stretches of misery. The joy on Henry's face as he ventures out into the First Official Snowstorm of the season, Ruth's thrill of having her friends call out her name and run to the fence as we arrive at school. The feeling of my dead heart lurching when Ben turned and smiled at me on the doorstep with the promise of a day of company, a surprise I wasn't expecting until Thursday. The tentative long term plans for Bridget, talked about for the first time in terms of reality, no longer pipe dreams, for I need to make decisions now.

I have a forced freedom now. I'm responsible for me and not beholden to anyone's good graces. I'm in charge of the direction I run in, I'm spinning the compass with abandon. I'm coming to terms incredibly slowly with the fact that Jacob doesn't want me anymore. I have ideas, all of which I have to turn over in my head and savor for a while before acting on, all of which have the potential to make life worth living again someday, or at the very least, endurable.

When thrust into the position I am in now, I don't think about checking out, I only think about building strength. I think about living in survival-mode until it becomes easier, helped along the way by these tiny moments, and choking off the air to negative thoughts when my brain begins to wonder if Jacob is seeing snow today too, or if he thinks about me. There isn't any point to destructive thoughts anymore, the worst happened and I wound up alone.

Alone and yet I'm not alone, navigating my day just fine, with my head pounding and my eyes burning, dark circles and a growling belly from ignoring two thirds of every meal, hands shaking from ten cups of coffee so far today and a mosaic heart. I wrapped my long scarf four times around my neck and headed down the road paved with broken promises. I know it leads somewhere. Every road has to.

It doesn't seem to have a Dead End sign. I looked.

Ben and his dumb jokes aside.

Therapy this morning. The hardcore stuff. Good. I didn't wake up in a good place, I woke up on the other side of hell and if the shock is going to wear off now, I'm not in any condition to deal with anything.

And Butterfield has done nothing but sit by the back door twenty-four hours a day on high alert waiting for his master to come home. I know how he feels.

I can't do this.

You thought I was impossible

I don't doubt you can make it on your own, nor am I being noble.

Oh really? What would you call it then?

I'm an opportunist and a predictable pervert, that's all.

And honest to a fault, I see.

Hey, why hide it? I'd love to take you for a spin around my bed.

It's a little soon to be laying it on this thick, Benjamin.

People have called me that too, princess.

In what context?

Any context you can think of, schweetheart.

My God, you're hilarious.

And hopefully first in line this time.

Oh, Benny, that is so not funny right now.

I know. Can I make it up to you?

I think you did already. I love the Rover.

Oh, I meant to let you know, I can still give cash rebates if you put out.

Okay, I have to go now and you have to stop it.

Is that a no?

Goodnight, Ben.

Goodnight, Bridge. I'm really sorry. I just can't help it.

Yeah, I see that. It's okay, really. You make me laugh.

I knew I was good for something.

No, you're good for nothing.

No, I'm just good.

Goodbye, Ben.

Bye, princess.

Hang up now.

Okay, okay.

Leafs trump Habs 3-2

We didn't go to church today. I'm just not ready to go back. I don't know if I'll ever be ready to go back, for the social as well as the spiritual aspects. I might consider scoping out the United church a few streets over, they have a good-sounding Sunday school program and it would remove the gossip angels from at least one aspect of my life.

Joel is not impressed with me and I missed the winning shot in the game last night while I argued with him on the phone. He doesn't believe that it's fair to relay his actions online, especially when I didn't give up the identities of the other two men who made similar offers. I pointed out he should not be ashamed of his generosity or courageousness in offering, and besides, I don't hold anyone to that sort of impulsiveness anyway. I have let him off the hook for what was a sweet but reactive gesture.

Oh and it was Ben (no surprise) and Christian (huge surprise).

I've had four hang-ups on my cellphone in the past six days. I really don't know if it was Jake or a random error. He didn't take all kinds of things. He took his hockey bag with some warm clothes and all of his journals and really everything else is here. He left his corduroy jacket. I have slept in it every night. He left his running clothes and his climbing gear. For all intents and purposes it appears as if he is coming back but I know he isn't. I can't explain it any more than to tell you the letter spells it out quite clearly, so as not to raise my hopes that he might.

We're going to have a quiet, warm day at home. I did laundry, I finished all the mending, and I put all the lawn tools in the basement and brought up all the shovels. I want to do a few chores and then maybe spin a little wool and watch a movie with the kids and go to bed early again. Sleeping kills the time just beautifully.

Jacob's 37th birthday is this week. And this is fucking hard.

Strange days.

    Good morning
    Don't cop out
    You crawled from the cancer to land on your feet

Today has been a rather strange day. Some good things, some bad things, and new boots. I'm about to begin to make dinner, which involves hot chicken sandwiches and peas and gravy. The hockey game starts in a little under two hours, and did I mention I have new boots?

Hard parts of the day included therapy (finding out who the kids truly trust and distrust was difficult), talking to Loch (for the first time since the end of August, boy was that fun) to find out about Keira (who has three weeks to go and is on bedrest), talking to Erin to find out about Jacob (who has Officially Left The Country, even less fun than talking to Loch), talking to Ben (who is fun! and who is coming home at the end of the week for a day and wants to be with us), talking to my father (who doesn't seem to care much as long as I don't embarrass him by going back to the private hospital), talking to Joel (who proposed) and talking to myself a lot to keep from crying.

Did I mention I also bought new boots? Waterproof city hiking boots. Lightweight boots for 'lightweight' hikers, we used to call them, perfect boots for running back and forth to the school when it's -40 because Sorels are lovely and all and durable but they suck to walk in, day in and day out. I'll spend the next eight months in winter boots, I may as well be comfortable. To offset the utilitarian appearance of the hikers (a boy's size 4, no less) I also bought a pair of black knee-high suede platforms with little pompoms that are exactly as impractical as you would imagine. They're cute though. Cute seems to work for me.

Which brings me back to Joel, who didn't surprise me at all, especially since he was the third male friend to propose this week. They have no faith in me being able to handle life all on my own. God love them, it isn't their choice to make. And aside from being rash and impulsive, it's rash and impulsive, so no. Bridget goes it alone.

With her awesome new boots and a tight grip on the virtues she has left. No, not virtues, brain cells, sanity, positive thoughts, whatever. I still have it.

To my dear friends who read and love and worry: I'm sorry. Every day you come and almost every day I come in here and dump out my negative emotions, leaving you with a bad taste but at this point you feel some sort of kinship or obligation even to stick with it to see it through. Or maybe you can appreciate your blessings at my expense, and feel sorry for me. Either way I won't be posting sadness and bitterness forever and I appreciate you hanging in there. It means the world to have company in the dark. No one likes to be alone and I also look forward to the day when happiness outweighs the misery and I hope you're still around to celebrate it with me.

All my positive strengths right now are being funneled into the kids. They will get all of it before anyone else and that's why I'm struggling here and with the boys so. Overall, I honestly can't believe how well I'm doing. Whenever I thought of not being married to Jacob before, my knees would crumble. Maybe I was strong after all. In any case it's a real lovely distraction from my mental problems. Perhaps Jacob was right.

And one final aside, to those emailing me to tell me men suck? They don't suck. People suck, I'm not going to single out half the population. I have a son who will someday be a man and all my friends are male and I've fallen in love enough to know that men can be wonderful. If you're going to comment on someone's behavior, leave it at their behavior and don't lump everyone else in. I believe in people and sometimes even the best people will let you down spectacularly.

Have a nice weekend. I will be posting, as usual.

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.