Out and a doubt.

I expected today to give me something, but I don't understand what I wanted from it. I expected some composure and I let myself down. My hand isn't healing, my heart isn't present, and yet...

I have no questions, really. Maybe that's a good thing. Do I trust that feeling or not?

No idea.

This morning Ben held my hand and watched me. Everyone watched me and I didn't react as much as they expected maybe? I don't. I never do the right thing. He and I still are not speaking but he is there for me. He's mad. He'll get over it.

Right now I feel like you do seconds before the ferris wheel goes back down after going up ever so slowly. I feel like you do in that brief moment of self-doubt before you skydive or spend a whole freaking pile of money you weren't sure you deserved. I feel as if I am poised at the edge of an unfamiliar cliff. I am afraid of heights.

No, maybe it's life. I am afraid of life.

I may be going back for a bit. I'm not all that confident in how together I was coming home in the first place. I mostly faked it, putting out the cold so I could hold my kids but really I'm transparent. They can all see right through me and it's uncomfortable.

Numbly so.

Oh, and Caleb is gone now. He wasn't present this morning, thank god. I was afraid he might but he appears to have figured out where his lines are drawn. I know where they're drawn now too and I never want to see them again.

BTW.

Oh well fuck me then, Ben tells me this journal was never a safe, pretty or comfortable place to read, let alone happy.

That was an aside after a lovely screaming/phone throwing/hang-up-on-each-other-repeatedly conversation in which he finally had the guts to tell me he told me so.

Beware the princess with her head full of words.

Oh and while I think of it, because really, I've been parked here and told to take all the time that I need, which in reality means I can stare out the window all fucking day long if I want to, I'd like to remind readers that this is no longer going to be a safe or comfortable place to read. It's going to be ugly, sad, full of triggers and downright fucking miserable.

Eventually I might even tell you what happened.

But not right now.

Find a happy thing to read. This is not, nor will it ever be it.

I hope some day I will be proven wrong though. You just never know.

If wishes were horses.

I wish everyone would stop asking me questions. I wish everyone would stop gauging my moods by attempting to interpret my facial expressions. I wish I could brush my teeth without thinking through the steps out loud. I wish I could take all this bullshit far away from Ruth and Henry and I wish I could turn back the clock.

I wish everyone would leave. I wish I could write without judgement. I wish I could wake up from this medicated hell. I wish I could have a pair of scissors so I could cut my bangs out of mouth. I wish I could walk for a hundred years until I hit the ocean right now.

I wish I were a happy place but that is no longer the case and sometimes I wish everyone cared less. I was used to people caring less and I made this bed and Jacob burned it down and went away forever and he left me to pick up these pieces and they are too heavy for Bridget and I wished he had kept any of his promises. I can read and read and I don't see where he did.

I wish life was different.

I wish they would all just go. I'm so ungrateful

Wooden puppet.

That is me.

Ben is home now, well, here in the city for good, rather than on the road. That's nice. He stole me away for a late lunch at a hole in the wall Thai place we both like. Pad Thai makes everything better. I was surprised to be out and around like any other person on any other day. Bailey's coming at the end of the week. And Jake's parents are here. They'd like the kids and I to just come back and live with them and fill their house with noise but I think that would hurt too much or maybe it wouldn't hurt at all but how am I supposed to risk everything to find out either way?

I tried to respond to most of your emails but it comes out wooden because it is wooden because I can't feel a thing. That's why I'm responding now, before the feelings come back.

It's okay though. It's a safer place to be right now. Hiding.

Home.

Now I know why Cole bought such a big house. So that it could hold all these people that are here for us, to look after us. It's nice to be home.

Fixed signs.

My first instinct was to come in here and tear down yesterday's histrionics but instead I think I'm just going to leave them there, so I can try to keep a better handle on when the bad times are coming and somehow head them off. Suppertime alone with the kids is usually hard, but last night they chattered about their days and their new library books and we made plans to go to the big library this weekend and I managed to hold everything together pretty good considering.

I didn't want to get up today but my best chance is to just keep on going with routines and one heavy foot in front of the other with the effort of a mighty warrior. Ha. There's a vision. This five foot nothing wisp of blonde is anything but a warrior these days. Maybe someday though!

Birthdays are sacred moments in time to Jacob, I hope he has found a way to mark his 37th in a way that gives it meaning. I just wish I could have shared it too.

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.