Saturday, 5 January 2008

An update.

I'm home. I'm okay. I get to skip a few pills and rest for a while, my blood pressure was elevated, as were my blood levels and so yes, I need to drink more water and look after myself better. Even when I'm being looked after just wonderfully there are things I need to do that I get lackadaisical about. Ben has harangued me suitably for it, no worries. Overall I am doing well health-wise and surprisingly well emotionally.

Ironic.

The best news of the morning wasn't that I'm okay or that I could reschedule family therapy for later on today. No, the best news?

123 pounds.

Me.

Hahaha.
Canceling therapy due to opening my mouth after being up but not talking to say good morning and slurring it just a little too much. Headed downtown for a blood test instead. I haven't had enough water this week. Will update later. Don't worry. I'm okay.

Setbacks are normal.

This disheartening feeling, normal. Yeah.

Friday, 4 January 2008

Spookyscopes.

    Good times, bad times,
    You know I had my share
    When my woman left home
    With a brown eyed man,
    Well, I still don't seem to care.


Friday night. Godsmack on the stereo. Ice water in tall glasses and a damned good book to read. Ben is on his phone with PJ, who is stuck somewhere, I have no idea, I don't read lips but he was driving back and never appeared and seems to be somewhere in Ontario maybe? August is emailing me horoscopes every ten minutes and Joel called once. Really, it's a lovely super-down quiet night.

Here, have a look at this total spookiness:

    Sagittarius and Taurus:

    Taurus sees an adventure in Sagittarius. These two signs will party, play and be very good friends. There is much to be learned from one another. They will have similar ideas and share common goals. Sagittarius will be instantly attracted to sensual Taurus. Taurus will stick with Sagittarius in sickness and in health. Sagittarius will feel at home with Taurus. Taurus will find Sagittarius independence very attractive. This is a highly rewarding combination that has both long and short term potential. Before they know it, they could fall madly in love. Taurus is serious and sensual. Sagittarius considers Taurus a keeper and friendship will be evident long after the attraction has ended. You will learn more about yourselves in this relationship. Itís worth the insight.

For the record, I'm a Taurus, Ben is a Sagittarius. His birthday was December 2nd. He's not 36 though. He's 39.

No, THIS is Sparta.

See, that's one of the problems. If I begin to tip-toe around my own life for fear of offending anyone, I go back to square one. If I make a stand and choose who I want to spend time with, who gets to take which child out for what fun, who gets my attentions and who become godfathers, feelings are hurt.

At the end of the day it is not lost on me that these guys fancy themselves warriors from the middle ages. Fighting for their way of life, and infighting over perceived atrocities. Putting their women on pedestals and trying to be too tough and too fierce to let anything under their skins. They want food, lots of physical activity and a warm woman in their bed at night. They don't want to be nagged or bothered or hindered by complications. They joke around a lot but mostly they have forged a brotherhood that has withstood just about everything that has been thrown at it and it means everything to them.

Instead of a queen, they fight in the name of their princess. Instead of leather garments and armor they were jeans. Instead of swords they use fists to conquer their enemies and awful words exchanged with fervor and instead of sending word via messengers they use their blackberries. Few of them ever shave and their horses are metal, trucks in the winter. You hear them coming from the bottom step and as a group they are impenetrable.

They have a war cry, a secret handshake (shhhhh) and devotion. They have a creed. They have honor. They, so they have told me, have better bodies than the painted-on muscles of the guys in 300. I've seen most of them, I can vouch for that.

They have heart.

But I won't stand for being the one thing that divides them. They tell me I can't, it won't, but I do and it has. A million times over, every last argument and problem and concern has been because of me.

Thursday, 3 January 2008

Humble apologies for the hurt that I have caused.

(Thursdays at five, Ben shows up and stays with us for three days straight. It's wonderful.)

Oh. Well, just shit.

I hit a nerve. I hit several.

Way back when I started writing this journal, Ben started reading it with a vested interest. He left comments, dissected my entries and began his own blog, which he stopped using and all but erased after writing some less than stellar entries about me and getting grief for it, most likely in retaliation for me writing about him. I closed my comments. He took down his Flickr account too. It was just easier to write without the immediate feedback and without pictures of me all over the web. Sometimes I don't feel very self-assured. I even check the email for the site only when I feel like I won't be skinned alive for what I've put down here. I don't talk about this place with my friends. They read, they usually keep their feelings about it to themselves.

And it didn't seem to matter what I shared over the past two years. I kept a lot private though. Mostly for Ben's own privacy issues and some because, contrary to popular belief, my life isn't an open book. You don't know the half of it. All of it I hid under the guise of his double life. So he could have a quiet life when he is home and not on the road.

In any event, he's never had a problem with my honesty or my verbal spillage until tonight, when he reads that he 'gets to play Dad without recourse or responsibility', which he took as a full-on insult, personally. That he plays with our lives and doesn't have to answer for it. That he might be shallow or flippant and not interested in an investment.

Ben would now like me to tell the internet that he most definitely will take on whatever responsibilities we can throw at him and he will gladly be on the hook. In his world, there is much recourse and he wants it. Greedily so, but he's been very good with not pressuring me and I've been REALLY FREAKING GREAT at not molesting Christian and Joel in return.

Yeah. What a pair.

In any event, should I pass his involvement off as lightweight any time ever again, his Flickr account goes back up. It's extortion of a different kind, though I pointed out I don't want to see pictures from dinners and barbecues and sports events and camping trips. I don't want to see Jacob smiling and happy. Or me, for that matter.

Ben corrects me still and reminds me of the wardrobe malfunctions, the epic number of sticking-my-tongue-out replies to his request for photos and the few truly awful candids he feels belong on the internet for all to see.

I'm doomed.

So, yes, this is my convoluted apology and my comeuppance, all rolled into one bedtime snack of crow. I spoke out of turn. These boys are gold and I never forget it for a second. Ever. I would be lost without them. Possibly dead but I'll get shit on for saying that, so I'll just say thank you instead.

And that it goes both ways. If I had a nickel for every photo I took of a drunken Ben I'd be...well, just nevermind. His account stays empty and I will never cheapen their roles in our lives again.

Let there be more light. And more words.

Of course there's more. I'm so unsettled this morning. I stopped running. I've got nowhere to put all this endless energy and yet to look at me you'd tell me to go lie down, that I look worn out.

I did finish replying to all the emails here. And I'm sorry, I couldn't write a decent email to save my soul. They're just awkward and cold somehow. Kind of like Bridget.

What pisses me off is to watch the kids with the boys. They gravitate to them for odd things, like bedtime stories, help with piano practice or sledding. Help opening boxes or building Lego. Talk over cookies. Not even deep talks, just random stream of consciousness-type conversations about harmonicas and marshmallows, or about school and the weather. They crave male influence almost as much as I do. Part of me wants to be everything for them now and the other part smartly knows I never will be, that I can't be.

Every night they ask me if whoever is here can put them to bed, tuck them in and start their music boxes and leave their doors cracked open just so the nightlight in the hall spills in enough to keep them from fearing the dark. Every night I say yes and Joel or Chris or Ben or John or August or whoever is here takes the most important and solemn of honorable tasks and sends them off in comfort to their dreams, playing dad with no recourse or responsibility.

I don't know why it makes me angry but it does. It's one thing for me to deal with all of this, some that I caused, some that I didn't, but for the kids to have to manage life in a quiet uproar, missing people they loved so much, well, it just isn't fair.

Blue velvet and Becel.

In my early twenties I wore blue velvet for it's cachet.

Sometimes in black comedy movies, there will be a predictable scene where the heroine will be standing in a crowd and she'll throw back her head and scream up to the heavens in frustration while the camera spirals out to show she's just one fish in the sea. Cue laughter, segue into next frame.

I reached that point over the past few days.

I have a cheering section. They're wanting me to go and be happy. I'd like to go and be happy but HELLO, I have this cloud hanging over me that won't go away any time soon. I'm still using the new tub of margarine Jake opened before he died and I'm weirdly skimming the edges. There's a tower of margarine in the middle from where he stuck his knife right in, leaving whole wheat crumbs in it, buttering bread for Henry.

That's dumb. A monument that will soon be used up, though I'll probably just throw it away.

Sleeping in shirts owned by the dead. Living for nothing, blind to a future I can't conjure up in my head no matter how hard I try.

And this. This weird pressure that no one is going to be shocked or sad or disappointed if I step out of my mourning clothes and come back to life and it's a heavy burden. It's a leap I have no courage to make right now and they pat my head and tell me I should just do it anyway and one withdraws into himself and bites his tongue so as not to have an opinion at all even though I squeezed one out of him anyway and it wasn't so bad after all.

I went back to therapy this morning. I sat in the chair and drank their institutional-tasting coffee and we caught up, beginning with how the holidays went and I mostly talked about how leaving the house was better than staying in it and how much of my life is currently conducted around what people might think and why, at this point, I would even care.

I don't. Somehow in the past year I was conditioned to behave in the way a...a...a...minister's wife would behave. Proper. But I've always been proper, because of the way I wanted to be perceived. A cold and high-strung girl who made the right apologies and wrote thank you notes and helped out without being asked and inside was this completely depraved creature who wouldn't know proper if it throttled her breathless.

I managed to separate them even though they'd like to be together and finally when I couldn't name a single person or reason for not giving myself permission to have something I want I realized that maybe it's because I get to call the shots and I'm not ready to give that up quite yet. I was corrected quickly. The submissiveness remains. I pass the reins over without question, I mostly do what I'm told. Sweetly deferring. Always so sweetly so as not to hurt feelings.

Still.

And my mourning clothes are not black.

Instead I wear navy blue, a hue that sucks the sunlight right out of the sky. A hue that makes my eyes wash out and turns my hair to spun gold. A color I was assigned as a child when people died and my brown-haired sister wore black. Blondes had to wear dark blue, because black would wash me out. That was the way it was done.

I have a blue velvet hair ribbon that I tied around my ponytail hastily when Cole died, to cover a pink elastic. When I picked it up again when Jacob died it was still kinked in the middle. Not enough time. I didn't get enough time. I don't want the stupid ribbon.

I have work to do.

I cannot talk about it anymore.

Wednesday, 2 January 2008

Better than paying people to listen to me.

Yesterday I kept charge of two adults, an eight year old, a six year old, a fourteen-month old and a newborn, just this side of four weeks old. The adults were sent home early for infighting, because they kept raising their voices and I refused to let their quiet tension cut through a house full of happy children.

Gabe and Hope were special visitors, with me through the afternoon and into the evening while their parents all enjoyed a little adult visiting time and a dinner out on my urging. Plus it was the first time I've laid eyes on Hope and I wasn't about to let her go until I had sufficient chance to enjoy spending some time with her. She looks like Keira, save for one wild strawberry-blonde curl on top of her head. She mostly slept sweetly and I fed her one bottle and rocked her a bit but she was never awake for long. Gabe on the other hand is walking now, and wanted to run around the house chasing the cat, chasing Henry, touching the baby and anything else he could put his little hands on, and he was fast. I think it took me close to two hours to un-babyproof last night but it was worth it.

Keira and Loch are happy. It's so wonderful I can't even describe it.

I had so much fun. It was a nice break from the usual routine of Being a Widow. In which people come and go briefly but often, checking to see how I am, what I need, and then drifting away again while the darkness crowds back in close. This was like a break. A lungful of air.

When they came back I got a lovely dose of Lochlogic too, something he saves up and unleashes on his poor unsuspecting victims when he wants to make a point and drive it home.

More approval. More confirmations. Solid green lights at every intersection and the road ahead is straight and clear. I asked him why and he said the one person who grew up first, who went and straightened out his shit and came out okay first was Ben. That Ben saw through Jacob first and tried to tell me and I didn't listen and maybe he's less carefree and sees a lot more than people ever gave him credit for. Ben had repeatedly told me Jacob was a control freak, that he was pulling strings I didn't know I had but I was so blind to Jacob's flaws I pushed Ben out of my life but he wouldn't go. He self-destructed under the pressure instead but instead of running away he lingered around the edges while pulling himself back together again.

Looking back over the past week it makes perfect sense to me.

Before they left Loch had one final observation to make. He asked me to consider the idea that maybe my life isn't completely derailed. That maybe Jacob was a detour and it turned out to be a dead end. That maybe I wasn't on the path that was chosen for me and I could find my way back and get on it at any time. That my life was waiting for me as soon as I am willing to get back on the right road, if it isnt the road I started on, with Lochlan.

So far I hadn't considered that possibility at all. I didn't want to. I didn't want to trivialize or minimize Jacob's impact on me or his meaning to me. I won't reduce him.

Loch grimaced, and had one final wisdom that he tossed out and left hanging in front of me, so that I wouldn't forget it.

That's the problem, Bridget. You built him up so big that no one could ever compare to Jacob in life. And now you're doing it in death. He was just a man. He was flawed and he hurt you probably more than Cole ever could, in a way that will forever be harder to forget. Don't give him any more credit. Just don't.

It was something I needed to hear.

Tuesday, 1 January 2008

Babies to hold, lullabies to sing.

Posting resumes tomorrow. So many stories to tell but all of it will have to wait. I have Hope and Gabriel here right now and things are a little hectic. Happy New Year nonetheless.

Monday, 31 December 2007

One final bonus post to kiss this year goodbye.

I shall save you all the drama and just point out that after refusing multiple invitations I couldn't have accepted even if I wanted to, made by those who knew I couldn't accept them but still extended courtesies, we'll just say that Ben is here, he brought Thai food and cake and some sort of non-alcoholic sparkly drink that begins with a number and ends with optimism (that Ruth adores and is hardly ever allowed to have) and we're going to have movie night and then after the kids go to bed we'll break out the whores and liquor.

Of course I'm kidding. If I can't laugh at this point then there is no point.

Happy end of 2007. This might be the first year I don't cry.

Again, kidding.

Poor Ben. He obviously drew the short straw.