Baptized in alcohol.

Hmm. An interesting evening. Skateboard Jesus told me I looked fulfilled and asked where the preacher man was. I said dead and he nodded and said he expected it. I was about to ask him how and instead I was ushered away again. It was dark out. The restaurant beckoned with warm lights and enticing menus framed in the window.

I ate more than I usually do. I stole PJ's roll even. I had one glass of wine and I enjoyed myself. I didn't feel crazy or grief-stricken or abused or ruined or even fragile. I felt like Bridget, who once was a girl before she became this, whatever this is. This soulless bird who flits around perching in everyone's tree looking for a nest that was destroyed in a storm, rebuilt and then destroyed again. Looking for shelter, looking for refuge from future storms.

I don't feel crazy. I can talk about Cole. I can listen to stories about Jacob. I can endure gentle jokes and comments and others pointing out how much both men are missed. I can appreciate the lack of judgement over things they did in their lives that weren't quite right or so terribly wrong and I can revel in small moments where life doesn't hurt quite as much as it has in the past.

But maybe that's because I'm almost just about totally drunk off one forbidden glass of wine, because no one dares deny me that but had I asked for a second I would have been shut out completely. Tomorrow when I'm back to me again I'm sure I'll wake up beside crazy. It's just waiting for the good to wear off again. It stalks me.

And pathetic. Did I mention pathetic? Yeah, that's what I am.

It's a happy-pathetic though, no worries. A kind of wow, what a loser but at least she's doing well pathetic. A beautiful one.

And please for the love of God stop telling me to put the ring on. It's not about the ring. It's about the crystal ball. I have a really big shard of it left and it said my future is...

...uncertain.

But goofier than pathetic. THAT I can assure you. First day without pain of any kind. Tomorrow must be a doozy.

K, so drunk. Bye.

Tell me I could have everything.

So, the Sunday before the new year.

Our walk in the woods out at Nolan's. Snowshoes on for a good hard hike way out to picnic rock, a big flat rock by a rushing stream that was so loud it left me deaf and yet I had what felt like tunnel hearing while Ben talked, laying the ninth marriage proposal of my young life on my head to weigh me down, drowning me in his frustration which came out of nowhere after I dropped a piece of my heart in his lap and then promptly snatched it back. I jumped the gun. I fucked up. I should have left things alone. I was confused. I don't know which end is up and I'm having trouble going on feeling.

Ben's words on our picnic in the snow struck me dumb and have haunted me since. A ring produced and held out in a shaky hand this time. Again, an offering of a life resumed after an interruption and here, here, just take a chance at a real life and it probably won't be so romantic and I wouldn't be blinded with huge sweeping gestures and maybe it'll be so normal it's sick but it will be stable and kind and wonderful and loving and all the things life is supposed to be when the embellishment is stripped away.

Real life. With a real man.

One who is willing to put his money where his mouth is after I failed to take him seriously the first time. One who's alive and not messed up. One who beat his demons and came out victorious. One who knows how to be strong and yet still be an equal. One who can atone for his mistakes and learn from them and grow from them. Now they're just beating me into the ground repeating his good qualities. Making sure I know.

I know.

Here's the tangent I know you want: Nine proposals spanning thirty-three years. Andrew was the first, when we were three. He wanted me to bring my apple and live with him in his tree house. He liked my frog barrettes. Cole was next, with two proposals over two years, I was too young the first time. Then someone else, I haven't talked about him at all. Jacob was next. Then came the disaster that was Christian, Ben and Joel looking to try and help end my misery with promises, nobly so.

And now Ben returns, this time with a ring to show he's not going to give up on me. That he's putting value into his words in a way I never required him to before now. He's offered me half of his heart to replace the one that I broke.

I took the ring and looked at it. It was a simple classic princess cut amethyst on an art-deco band. An antique ring, no less, which he knew I would love. I smiled. He said don't put it on, just to take it home and put it in a box and if I ever wanted to I could put it on and think about his offer.

It wasn't extended lightly. He isn't trying to rescue me. He...he's looking for the rest of his life, in me. I shook my head. It's not fair.

I can't do this.

He wouldn't take it back and so I put it on my chain to keep it safe for the trip home and he smiled tightly, his smile that he wears when he doesn't quite know what his next move is. Ben, aware of my entire history and trying to circumvent it via ignoring it instead of trying to fix everything. Pretending history doesn't exist and living in a moment in a way I've never seen anyone else pull off. Mindfulness. Intensity of a different sort.

I've never had this much trouble with a girl before.

I tried the ring on yesterday for the first time. It's beautiful. I can hear his quiet plea not to make him wait forever. I'm just not sure that his heart is big enough to hold both of us. He may say it is, but really, I'm getting really good at breaking hearts and I can't risk losing another.

Fairweather future.

    Ray: Maybe we should kiss goodbye

    Molly: Just a kiss?

    Ray: We'll leave it at that for this book. I'll reconsider the ending for the movie

    Molly: Here's my kiss. Now remember I'm ready to do anything or be anything you want or need

    Ray: I'll keep that in mind

    Molly: That's where you'll find me

    Ray: Too bad I have to wait a century to meet you

    Molly: Or to be me

    Ray: Yes that too. Actually Molly, there are a few other questions that have occurred to me. What were those limitations that you referred to? What did you say you were anxious about? What are you afraid of? Do you feel pain? What about babies and children? Molly?
Duncan said something interesting to me this morning. He told me No one ever falls out of love with you. I thought for a moment while I sipped on my orange juice and then I reminded him that Loch did and Duncan said No, he didn't. I mentioned another name and he again laughed and corrected me. I asked him about John while John sat across from me getting high off his espresso and Duncan just roared and said he wasn't going to say any more.

They're going to bury me in sweetness.

Except for Mark, who wouldn't cover up my lyrics today. He maintains they are his best lettering work ever and he said I was being rash, that if I still wanted it changed by July he would do it then. I pointed out it's a psychological burden (having gotten it the weekend before Jacob left us) and he laughed and said he told me that when I got it. I said he had a shitty way of doing business and he said it had nothing to do with business and everything to do with friendship.

Ah, okay. I get it now.

Seventy-eight. Stay in love forever.

Today will be quite busy. I've got John watching over me. I have more Christmas thank-you notes to write, and a tattoo to be covered among all the other things. Bright spots, I suppose. John is such a grump today too. He doesn't do mornings so well.

Yesterday was saved by the collar of her sweater. It began with the delivery of food and a fukubukuro (Andrew! rocks!) for the children and ended very late with a halting, painfully awkward quote thrown over a shoulder, a few lines from Baudelaire that warmed me to my toes, and a song played by Ben on a strange guitar, the culmination of an incredibly weird few weeks, distorted with an offer, made impossible with an expectation. One that remained unvoiced until yesterday.

Which I will explain tomorrow. Ha! Cliffhangers. Because I'm always the quintessential attention whore for you everyone.

I'm headed to see the lawyer now to look after Jacob's parents, assign guardianship in the event of my death (PJ with a landslide victory over even blood relatives. Which speaks volumes.) and to make sure Ben's ass is covered, living with me and my mental problems, so that he has rights as my tenant if someone misses the next collar that swings by, and I have a lunch date too, Lord knows John will be asleep somewhere by ten. What time is it now? Yes, 9:40, so that's about right.

    She says I'm the one she really wants
    But I'll never be the one that she needs.
    I'm not here to be a creep.
    I'm just feeling incomplete.
    Take me home.

No idea what I'm doing.

I'm just not having any luck with today, so my apologies as I remove three very truncated entries containing mostly song lyrics and a few four-letter words. Literally, there was nothing to read so I got rid of them.

It's been seventy-seven days since he left. I wake up crying every morning. This morning a kiss was stolen from me, I threw a cup of coffee at the wall in therapy and Butterfield ate the chocolate chip muffins I left out for Ben. I tried to talk about my future and got nowhere. I lost a button. I had to coerce the kids into wearing snowpants because it got very cold again and I listened to Nine Inch Nails a lot.

I cried a little more and the stereo was turned off on my behalf.

I helped clean up the coffee and put Sam Roberts on the stereo this afternoon instead. I tried to win back this day but it just isn't coming. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Browns and blues.

Today brings a favorable shift in the winds, I believe.

He stayed in his new digs last night, which aren't so new considering he was spending every weekend here anyway. Only this time the door at the end of the hall stayed unlocked, and open. However we remained on two different floors at the opposite ends of the house from each other because there's nothing going on. Contrary to rumors, contrary to popular belief. Contrary to Rob's countdown to Smurfette giving up her blue. I never laughed so hard. Smurfette? Geez, you guys.

I will admit it's like sleeping on the floor of a cake shop when you're starving but you didn't hear that from me.

I'm human. Am I not human? Every now and then I feel human, so it's a start.

    It's all wonderful
    Living happily
    To lose it all
    Think you have everything

    Stop tell me where you going
    Maybe the one you love isn't there
    You're going under
    But you're over it all so you don't care about all that I had to see
    I'd watch you wait until you come around

I was sitting earlier at coffee, picking lint off the knees of my black tights. Black shoes spattered with slush from melting snow on the sidewalk and icy patches that left me clutching Ben's arm as we went into the coffee shop. Wearing the coat he likes me in. My robin's egg blue one that is his favorite color in the whole world. Not smurf-blue but yeah, I get it.

He took today off to move. Shh. He already moved. Yesterday. There's only some out of season stuff and big pieces of furniture left. Things he doesn't need for a while. Things he'll pick up on the weekend. His goalie gear takes up half the basement. And hockey mirrors life. Jacob was defense but he was also the enforcer, and Ben makes the saves.

Wow. That's a lightbulb moment if ever there was one.

When we picked up our coffees and sat down he whipped the kids' Scholastic catalog out of his pocket and asked which stuff Henry and Ruth would like best. I smiled and said anything would thrill them beyond belief, as usual. We made up a list to order. We do this every month.

Then he asked me what I would like best. Right here, right now.

I said,

This.

Farsighted.

I'm going to be the landlady.

Another afternoon spent arguing with Ben, as he tries to pass off keeping the pictures of me up in spite of his promises to remove them. Pictures of Jake, pictures of the kids. He's known for a very long time how I feel about having a lot of pictures on the web. I don't mind the occasional one, but a whole pageful? Forget it.

He did take it down and then he wrote me off. Again. I did the same.

We've discovered something very interesting. Mondays are rough. He goes back to work. We say goodbye after three close days together and even though he sometimes comes for dinner or the evening during the week, it's not the same. We get tense and stressed out about it, dreading the week ahead and we let our words degenerate into disrespect and ultimatums and finalities. Ben said if I couldn't trust him he'd just go back to his old girlfriend and live with her. At least she was sane and slightly more predictable. Oh and tall.

(Motherfucker.)

He's also been tremendously stressed about his living situation, finding it difficult to find a new apartment to rent. His lease is up at the end of January, it wasn't renewed, the building has been sold. He currently lives three blocks from me and the closest place he can find is a five-minute drive away, closer to twenty blocks and he wasn't keen on being that far.

So cue the fight of the day and we wash our hands of each other. He's getting too old for this, he'll just write me off before he'll back down or indulge in any kind of headgames.

Good. I love him and so I backpedaled all the way to the start.

I asked him to come and live here, with us. That we would draw up an agreement and have it approved by both lawyers and he could be my tenant and the rent that he pays would not only be cheap but it would become the house fund, so repairs or improvements would be paid for out of that and I'd reap some of the benefits of this huge house.

It's a perfect solution, since the guestroom has a bathroom across the hall, has it's own entrance, the side door, and I can close off that whole wing and lock the door at the end of the hall to secure the house. He'll have a key for the side door. He'll have everything he needs, though I seriously doubt I'll be locking the door. I've thought about that for a while now. It doesn't need to be locked anymore. Not with Ben. I do trust him, in spite of my words. I have for a long time now.

I get a live-in companion. He could have his meals with us or not. He can use the washer/dryer and just about anything else his heart desires and I don't have to sit for hours with the guys drawing up a schedule of who gets what night. It takes the pressure off.

It eliminates Monday fights.

It proves trust. In the event that something wonderful happens down the road we don't have to make any huge changes. It gives us both something we want-stability for Ben, and assurances of my faith in him, and companionship for me but a little privacy too, as his own space means he won't spend all his time waiting and watching.

It takes a tiny little bit of time away from the other guys. That's been a bone of contention. He wanted more time and we couldn't figure out how to pull it off and going back and forth is hard, especially in the winter. Especially when everyone is so tense.

He's at his apartment right now. Packing. He and PJ will be back later tonight with most of his things.

I'm really excited. And really tired. What a long day. If none of this makes any sense forgive me.

Joel and I walked Butterfield on the ice today, around and around the outdoor rink. Butters digs in and pulls me around, all I have to do is set my center of gravity just so, so that I won't get pulled off my feet and I bend my knees and get a hell of a fun ride.

Joel thinks that everything is fucked up. He never has anything new to say anymore.

I'm considering moving and just starting over somewhere where no one knows me. Meet someone who knows nothing about me, maybe in the witness protection program. A new name, a new life. A new start without all this. And go back to not saying a word and not listening and not doing much of anything, quietly and somberly, the way I spent my first thirty-five or so years.

Except that everyone would find me. Christ, it took you guys a whole four hours to find that goddamned Flickr page that Ben said he took down and didn't. You guys are relentless. And every time I think I can trust Ben one hundred percent he lies to me.

I can't disappear. It's too late for that. It's too late for everything and whatever brief respite that comes is gone before I can savor it and I'm tired. And THIS is the self-destruction that results, at least it brings feeling of some kind.

Off to therapy, a perfect chance for them to see precisely how un-pulled-together I can really be.

Numbly so.

    Show me that you love me and that we belong together.
    Relax, turn around and take my hand.

    I can help you change tired moments into pleasure.
    Say the word and we'll be well upon our way.
    Blend and balance pain and comfort
    Deep within you until you will not want me any other way.

    But it's not enough.
    I need more.
    Nothing seems to satisfy.
    I said, I don't want it.
    I just need it.
    To breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive.

There are a lot of things in this world that don't make any sense.

And then there is Tool.

I'm going to ignore Caleb and not write about him, as so many of you have suggested now. There isn't a judge left in this city who would grant an order of protection against him now, since I went to him willingly and I take his calls because I'm a masochist and a curious one at that, but I'm not afraid of him in that way. Mentally, maybe but never physically. He wouldn't touch his niece or nephew and the guys have gone out of their collective ways to remind me that they can take care of themselves. I know they can, they shouldn't be in a position where they have to.

Thank you for the emails so far, though sadly it's an experiment I'll never repeat again. You've been kind and beautiful and almost completely unanimous. You sound like everyone here. My cheering squad just grew and I have no idea what I ever did to deserve such beautiful surroundings.

I fear I might have been one of the few holdouts.

I'm going to give you an excerpt from one letter received Sunday morning, very early.


    Dear Bridget,

    You've already gone to great lengths to point out you love him. You've known each other for years. You've fought over stupid things with him but you made up easily. You two are more alike than anyone else you know. He would die for you, he's already proven himself to be protector of your heart. He looks out for you without a single thought as to what might be in it for him. He doesn't try to trick you, making sure that you're aware of his feelings without smothering you with them. He's hurt by the way you pass him over sometimes but he gets over it and aside from one incredibly stupid drunk action that you already forgave him for, he won't hurt you. Ever. Except with a rant because you're so damn frustrating. You should really let him grow on you.

    And he makes really good scallops in linguini if you're up for that for dinner tonight. Oh, and he is soon to be homeless and wants to know if you'll take in a boarder. Oh and he loves the kids as if they were his but of course they aren't because no one has the same glorious plain brown hair/brown eyes thing happening. Oh, and he'll try and stop being so clumsy. Oh and really you should share all the other stuff you leave out so that people see how cool he really is.

    Because I love you even though you're a little pain in the ass.

    Ben
It's sort of like he gave his own closing arguments at a trial, isn't it? Of course it does, because loving me is obviously some sort of death sentence.

Fear nothing.

(Bar the door, PJ. It's all gone to hell.)

A very interesting email came today. Not to me, though.

This one was from Caleb to Ben, offering Ben an incredibly lucrative job, an advancement over what he does now in accounting (by day, mind you), a letter that would buy him a free pass out of the prairies and he would only be beholden to Caleb in some way or another for the rest of his natural life.

Caleb, who first finds your weaknesses and then uses them to destroy you. It's how things are done in his world. This letter went on to say that Ben should cut his losses and just go, that he is not worthy of me, that I am out of his league and I will never get out of my own way for a 'nobody' like him and that he can have anything his heart desires where Caleb is, that Caleb will personally see to it that Ben's life out there surpasses any life he could have hoped to build here.

That Ben will forget me and all the heartache I have caused him.

That if he doesn't go, a veiled threat was made, to be very incredibly aware that Ben swimming in waters with sharks, that I belong to Caleb and anyone who fucks with that is playing with fire.

In spite of Ben's assurances that Caleb can't touch us, that I'm safe as long as I stay away from him, that he's only a guy with a big ego and some good connections, we can just ignore him and continue on, I shook my head.

Caleb originally called Ben to come get me from his hotel room not because Ben is my best friend and he knew he'd look after me while I was fucked up and high but because Caleb mistakenly assumed Ben would help him cover it up. He thought I would be too ashamed to write about it, let alone talk about it.

His ego won't allow for any sort of rationality at this point. His brother's death has become his ax to grind and his sister-in-law is the wheel. His own perversions will supersede any common sense I thought he had left.

He called me a little while ago and told me he could easily take Ben and eliminate him, dangle Ben's favorite forbidden vices in front of him and Ben would soon cave in and then when Ben is ruined and long gone I'll only have Caleb left and if I just maintain the status quo then I can have my cake and eat it too. That I can keep Ben as my friend, at arms' length and Caleb gets to do whatever it is that Caleb does, namely destroy Bridget for kicks. After he's done licking her all over, that is.

I think my choice has been made for me. It's just a door, guys. You can't stop him, and I won't give him Ben.