No.

Bailey isn't coming out.

I'll be fine though.

With feeling.

Jacob's parents left early this afternoon, back to Newfoundland, back to life as they know it. They've aged since they've been here and the cold didn't help. It was -26 this morning and Jacob's dad gave a colorful curse litany that sounded the same way Jake's used to and I've had a lump in my throat ever since.

They don't blame me. No one blames me and yet I blame myself.

Bailey is coming tomorrow to help with me.

How awful does that sound? I can sit here twenty four hours a day, I don't say much or eat much or take up much room. I go where I'm told and do what I'm told to do and otherwise I mostly sit and think and read and sometimes cry and get mad at myself.

I don't even answer the door, everyone knows where the key is.

Every forty eight hours or less Joel appears and hands me my coat and my bag and drives me downtown to my appointments and then comes back and counts pills and checks the pantry and the fridge and the phone messages and runs interference with Sam. PJ comes and cooks a bit and plays with the kids and walks Butterfield and tries to make me laugh. Christian comes with CDs and tickets and movies for us to watch to keep the inanity in our heads. Ben comes and tries to draw me out, taking me for long walks, lunches, talks, albeit one-sided, and an open invitation for any sort of affection I may wish for or need, whenever I'm ready.

That last part has struck a chord that's pissing everyone off and yet it's possibly the greatest gift anyone could have ever given me. Ben knows me so well and sometimes life is a jostling, snarling ball of testosterone in which everyone tries to outmaneuver each other in order to be closer to me. Sometimes I wish they would stop fighting with each other and just be here. Just be with me. That's what he's offering.

I haven't taken him up on it much. He's too busy being angry at me for how I act, for things I have done recently, for choices I have made in moments where I should have given up my power. I could tell him I was sorry but I'm not sure if I am.

They're growing through their own feelings too, here and for the first time they have finally touched first hand what I went through before and now go through once more. They didn't reel, there was no shock, it was more of a moment when they collectively saw that something was indeed too good to be true, too good to last and now they emerge older, smarter, softer and a little less prepared to stand back and watch things happen. It took a lot to get to this point.

When I talk again I'm going to tell them how proud I am of each and every one of them and how much I love them. In the meantime I'll just quietly sit with them and sometimes freak out just a little when the conversations degenerate and they wind up throwing punches at each other in the living room.

Because some things never change.

The black and white night.

It's dark out now. All the heavy drapes are closed against the night and against the snowy cold. There are two lights on in the whole house, I believe. The one on the nightstand beside me, and one in the guest room downstairs where Jacob's parents are probably still reading and talking quietly, maybe looking at pictures or listening to the radio too.

The furnace just ticked seven times and came on, sending hot air into every room. I can hear that and my own quiet breathing and the ever-present keyboard clicks as I write and delete and write some more. My phone keeps buzzing across the dresser. I know it's Chris or maybe Ben, sometimes August or Tam wanting to say hello and ask me if I need anything. My boys are so sweet.

An hour ago I was a bit of a quiet lunatic. But instead of caving in to the panic I bit hard on the inside of my cheek and splashed some cold water on my face, took my pills and counted my breathing until I could force my mind off the path to ruin and find a distraction, maybe a bit of a story to start or a few lines of poetry toward a holiday card that I can use later this year.

When a full inhale took ten seconds I checked my head again and found that I had outsmarted it thoroughly. Not only was I no longer panicking but I forgot the great story I had thought of only seconds before.

These pills do that, I think. My short term memory has dissolved to the point where I forget the toothpaste on my brush, I put on one mitten and get outside and wonder where the other went, and Butterfield and I got halfway down the drive this evening before I realized he didn't even have his leash on.

There goes the phone again. That was Christian letting me know he has tickets for a concert in the spring. I am noncommittal, spring is eons away. Winter has just begun. He laughs and tells me to look forward to it. As we are hanging up another call comes through on the house phone and for a moment I am juggling receivers and voices and words with a world-weariness suggesting I am used to the cacophony of keeping tabs. I suppose I am.

I am still counting, still at ten seconds. I have to keep my head busy or the slide begins. I refuse to slide. I refuse to be destroyed and I refuse to be fragile anymore.

The furnace has stopped breathing on us and the house once again settles into discomfortable quietudes. Empty houses are curses on the landscape. A blight signifying a failed family, an abandoned life or the end of a dream.

This house will never be empty because I'm not going to fail, I am not cursed and I don't live in a dreamworld. No illusions mark my ideals, no false pretenses color my intentions any longer.

One of the things Jacob always found amazing about me was when push came to shove and he wasn't around I would stand up for myself and fiercely defend my right to a fair and simple existence free from drama and heartache and bullshit. Like I hid away a magic set of girl-armor under my dress and was as brittle as glass until I was the last one fighting for myself and then I became a tiny force to be reckoned with. He said he never wanted to be on the other end of my sheer force of will, that it was something. That it was devastating.

He was right. It is.

I am.

Think I have my tenses wrong.

No, still going, dammit. No slide, Bridget, no slide.

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.