Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

    Nothing's wrong as far as I can see
    We make it harder than it has to be
    and I can't tell you why
    no, baby, I can't tell you why
The two biggest memories of my childhood I keep are the endless sunburnt hours at the ocean, and the music on the stereo.

Today I've got the Eagles on twelve and I know every word, every backing vocal, every drum beat.

My folks live far away from here. I don't require or seek out their input in my life, I've been living apart from them for longer than I ever lived with them at this point in my life and it's no secret I am the littlest black sheep by far. I am so different from the rest of my family I will always secretly wonder if perhaps I was adopted, or some grand psychological experiment that they agreed to. They let me run off and join the Midway with Lochlan when I was in grade school. They might have their own issues.

And they no longer have the stereo on all day, driving that used to be an excuse to be held hostage by the glorious radio station chock-full of seventies guitar riffs now requires full-concentration and should be carried out in silence and I don't believe they've bought a CD in their entire lives, but the music is something I give them full credit for, and when I left home I took it with me.

One hundred and ten.

    She gets high
    She gets lost
    She gets drowned by the cost
    Twice a day, every week, not a lie

    Oh, Life is waiting for you
    So messed up, but we're alive
    Oh, Life is waiting for you
    So messed up, but we'll survive
    All messed up, but we'll survive

It's a beautiful day. A day for red coats and clear red lipgloss and newly darkened blonde hair and long dog walks and constant phone calls and words that leave me holding on to things that are bolted down lest I float up into the blue sky.

It is day 110, Jacob. Almost a third of a year has passed and I am mostly getting by.

I talked to Sam last night. He doesn't mention it but I know he misses your guidance and your friendship. He doesn't have anyone that is on his wavelength to sound off on and is running into mostly the same obstacles you faced when you tried to improve the administration side of things in the church. I told him to keep fighting and he would eventually wear them down. He told me he was so happy to hear the smile in my voice.

I found your belt yesterday, it had been knocked off the hook on the back of the closet door and fell into my big market bag. I hung it back on the hook, so you could find it easily and then I threw it away because you don't need it anymore.

If we count this week as starting Sunday then I have only cried once for you so far. It gets better. I don't think about you being gone and never coming back, I just pretend you're on a trip and so I finished the blue scarf I was making for you last night. Again, I know you don't need it. I'm just looking for loose ends that I can tie. Everything stays nice and organized and as normal as I can get it.

I wish you were here, Pooh. 110 days is an eternity.

Ben and I had a long talk the other night. We are both sick with Henry's cold now but the weather is warming up so hopefully soon everyone will be feeling better. He looks after me best he can, but he's also a wonderful distraction. He isn't offended or jealous of my feelings, he is happy to finally have a larger role in my life, maybe the one you stole when I met you. He's been terrific and I know you'd want to know that my heart grows back, slowly, steadily.

I will never be the same. I find I'm quieter, more reserved. I keep my sweater drawn around me a little tighter. I've become incredibly selfish with my feelings, you would say it's cold but I know behind it is warmth and I'll get there.

They have told me at some point very soon I'm going to have to deal with everything or risk sliding into a bigger hole and I don't really want to. I don't even know how to begin to face this. Maybe you can help? I don't know if you can help with anything. I don't even know where you went. When Cole died remember how I said I could always feel him around, as if he were watching me? I can't feel that with you, I can't find you, pooh.

And I want to.

I have to go now. You always made me promise to embrace the really good days, and I think this is one of them.

I love you, oh God, how I love you.

Pressure.

For the record, flying with a bad cold is not only a poor idea, it's an agonizing experience people should forgo entirely if they can.

Ben? Staggered down the stairs at arrivals holding his head in both hands and trying to smile for me. He let go of his head long enough to give me a quick hug and then when we got to the truck he let his head roll back on the headrest and swore in a whisper, a string of epithets that I don't think I've ever heard put together in a more creative way.

I got him home, made him a bowl of soup and he gave up halfway through and went to bed. At nine thirty or so last night he came lumbering back out into the kitchen and started making more soup and said he felt better and did I want some food? No, I said but he made enough for two anyway and we each had a bowl and then he asked how I was doing and I said fine and coughed and he laughed and I pointed out I wasn't jet-setting around the continent. He said he had to come back because he owed rent and wanted to make sure he paid in advance. I frowned and he poked me and grinned.

I rubbed the sore spot and he laughed and asked if I thought he was serious. I nodded and stuck out my tongue and he said dead-seriously that he had assumed he was free to pay his rent with sexual favors and if anything, I owed him.

I almost threw the bowl at his head but there was that killer smile once more.

He asked if I was planning to hit the illegal Nyquil (it's only illegal because it doesn't go so well with my medications but when you feel as bad as that sometimes you really don't care) and I said no and he said good because he really needed to take some and if I took advantage of him in his drugged state he'd be really glad.

It never happened. I think we were both asleep before we could make a move. Me crushed into his arms and him on his side, breathing heavily into my hair, still as stone. He doesn't move when he sleeps, not an inch.

He's gone already, loaded up on decongestants and soup for breakfast and the kind of sleep you can only have when you're completely wrapped around someone you love.

Pretty like a rosary pea.

For the record the only medication I stopped was the newest one, which has done nothing but make me so dizzy I wanted to vomit every time I looked down and after three weeks and being told to keep taking it I said fuck that and I stopped a few days ago and I felt a million times better (physically) almost at once.

Emotionally it's been a long, rough week and I said things that are not fair but most certainly true and I warned them, they knew and now everyone panics, freaking out because I shouldn't still be in this place and why didn't anyone notice all this three months ago?

I sent Ben away. Far away from my heart and my troubles and he didn't want to go but I reminded him I'm not fair. I reminded him it wouldn't be easy and maybe we had our brief moment and it was so sweet but in the long run, I'm not the girl for you.

And no, I didn't see Caleb, we've been warring on the phone. The odd part being he's been the most objective, rational person to ever weigh in on a question asked that I have spoken to yet. Very much like Cole with using a dry, straightforward approach. Am I projecting? No, in spite of what you think. I've had a lot of correspondence from Caleb in the past month, he doesn't care as much about what I have on him as he does not putting a permanent rift between himself and his brother's family. That he is considering retiring early as it is (he'll be forty-five next year) and his career doesn't mean as much to him as it once did. That he has had time and therapy to come to terms with how he behaves around me and he wants to make amends, at whatever pace I set for him.

I took it with a grain of salt and a heaping dose of envy, for it must be nice to sort yourself out so quickly. If only it were that easy for the rest of us.

Personally I think he fell under my curse. Or maybe I fell under his. It's pretty difficult to be objective at this point, either way. He just seems so good at it. He always has been.

Especially since I've gone from being locked in my glass turret, knight standing at the ready to standing in a field surrounded by the enemy and down to my hapless wits and wiles to save myself, probably a position I should have taken up long before I even met Jacob. And didn't.

Dammit, I didn't.

What would I like now? I'd like Caleb to be normal, a warm but slightly professional uncle who sends presents and calls the kids regularly, keeps in touch without any of our history in the way. I'd like Ben to not be gone half the time so that we could have a chance because if there is one person who ever resisted a curse and lived to tell about it, that would be Ben. The only guy to ever figure out how to be around me without his own feelings coming between us. We managed to exist as friends for a damn long time before we complicated things. I would have killed for another shot but that's up to him. If I were him, I'd take off at a dead run in the other direction. I wouldn't blame him a bit.

I would like Jacob to burn his trump card and let me grieve for him but in my head I am sorry to admit, yeah, I'm waiting. I am at that awful, horribly painful part where I let my imagination protect my heart and I pretend he's coming back. As if all those awful things never took place. As if nothing else ever mattered but him wanting me. I haven't grieved for him and I don't know how to and I won't and that is what's messing me up.

I'd like for my other friends to keep on going forward. Christian has found some happiness and I daresay it doesn't appear to be a distraction or gapfiller. PJ works so hard and is the best friend and uncle in the universe. Joel has been great, a never-ending asshole to my face and a sweetheart behind my back making sure I have appointments and connections required to stay on top of all this mess. He's going to be making some changes in his life though. He failed one of the most important tests in his career with me and he may switch gears himself. The other guys are doing well, always calling to check in or stopping by, bringing hugs, little funny gifts for the kids or spending an hour with us doing nothing at all. When they leave I get a list of reminders to call me if you need me or just want company, let's make some plans, keep going, you're doing great and then they hold me too long and I let them because I want that.

In other words, hi, my name is poison.

They will tell you different. This is just me rambling at nine in the morning with half a cup of coffee lubricating my brain and a message on my phone that warmed me up much more efficiently than the bad coffee I make for myself:

    I'll see you at 3. Stop it.

Which means Ben isn't going to put much weight in my doubts or my setbacks or my dumb moves and self-sabotage. He's coming home for a night and he's not going to play fair either and for some reason this makes me strangely glad.

Off with her meds.

I did it again.

I didn't go to him, he called and I answered, only because when it hurts I'll do anything for a way out. Sometimes it hurts so much the only answers lie in certain death, deliberate cautiousless actions that take me far from where I'm supposed to be.

I don't have any answers and currently my status is not caring. Unmedicated not caring, that is. Oh shit.

I don't. I don't care. I feel nothing and as long as it stays this way I'm fine. Fine because Caleb says he has answers for me.

Truth and consequences.

If I had a choice, I would take the little copper box with the bluebird and I would carefully pour out the contents, away from the wind and with glue and hope and tears I would make a paste and put him back together and have Jacob back, fucked up or not. Maybe now I see that he loved me whether I was fucked up or fine and if I could pick any one of the men I have loved and get any kind of second or third chance or whatever number we were on, I would pick Jacob in a heartbeat.

I would resurrect him and ignore the ashes in his hair and the powdered bones within his skin and the hollows where his beautiful pale blue eyes once smiled at me and I would love him for the rest of my days.

And this, THIS is why Bridget lying through her teeth to get through things is so much better than just facing them head-on. She is a trainwreck.

Twitter.

An extra-long walk with Butterfield in the bleak snow-swept ravines that run between the train tracks brought some much needed perspective today.

I wish I was the girl in that episode of The Twilight Zone. You know, the one with no mouth. Then I would never have to worry about sending all my misdirected and projected and unprotected words out into the wild blue where they immediately stab those around me with indelible marks of pain, leaving everyone for dead.

That's what I wish for today. An un-do.

Blowing smoke.

Well, shit. Apparently all I had to do was step backwards into the snow to my previous bootprints and whore that I am, receive in trade one single begrudged and forbidden cigarette from Joel in exchange for a hastily scheduled appointment because missing them means you're flung right off the face of the earth, Bridget.

There is a mountain in front of me. I need to either climb it, get around it or erode it little by little until it changes the landscape. Every morning when I wake up I face the mountain and I know there will be a long day of climbing ahead. Some days I wake up and I don't want to climb, but the walk around it is even longer.

Some days I turn my back on it and pretend it isn't there, and some days I go running at it headlong, shovel raised over my head and I dig until I can no longer hold the shovel and I look, and there's a big hole dug out of it and I nod and think, progress. I'll beat you yet.

Some days I just sit at the bottom of it and resign myself to staying right here, with no way over, around or through my mountain, forced to spend the rest of my days in a claustrophobic landlocked valley of shadows I can't keep count of.

And through the nights I dream that on the other side of this mountain, the sea waits for me.

She is so very patient. And I am nothing of the kind.

February stars.

    Hanging on here until I'm gone
    right where I belong
    just hanging on

    Even though I pass this time alone
    somewhere so unknown
    it heals the soul

There are only three writing days in this week. I've cleared them and will be spending them alone, ensconced high in my house in the glass room at the end of the hall. The terrarium. The observatory. Everyone has a different name for it, the creepy glass Victorian half-greenhouse that sticks out the back of the house that I love so. In that room are some plants and a table and a chair. One chair, just for me. From what I understand it was an open balcony at one point and someone glassed it in in the most gothic and wonderful way. This little cold cracked room is why I wanted this house.

Yesterday was a holiday in it's infancy, Friday is a half-day of school for Ruth and Henry and so I have today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow to get some work done.

This morning I put on a long black and white sweater and a pair of incredibly baggy army-green cords, tied a messy bun with a pencil at the nape of my neck, found my mocs and brought up my laptop with me, a huge steaming mug of coffee, a piece of carrot cake and a silent mental lament, why on earth would anyone put cake together with vegetables and I know I'm awful but I actually canceled every last therapy appointment I had this week, mostly because last week there were a few doubles anyway and Joel is always a phone call away, I could bend his ears. He'd prefer it, actually.

Wait until he doesn't see me walk past his office today.

Ben woke me up this morning with a call, his voice sounding rawer by the minute. He asked me how my cold was and I said it was ravaging me beautifully, that I was vaguely foggy-headed and a little drippy and raspy and then I sneezed all over my phone and he laughed softly and suggested I drink tea instead of the coffee today. I asked him how he was feeling and he lied and said fine even though twice he held the phone away and coughed into his sleeve.

He asked if I was wearing the ring and I pointed out that since it was six in the morning that I was wearing absolutely nothing and it was so warm under the blankets I hated to leave them, but I did leave them shortly after we hung up, anxious to catch a shower and get the laundry started before I got the kids up for school so I can have less time running up and down three flights of stairs to the dryer in the basement.

He asked if I would wear the ring when I got dressed. I asked him if that would make him happy. He said only if it was done as an answer to his question. I said I didn't have an answer yet because the man who gave me the ring said he didn't care how long I took and I need a long time. He said he wished he could see into the future and I told him he didn't want to do that.

Reminders. Memories everywhere, covering everything with an inch of heartache and a layer of fresh pain. He stirred all of it up where it was settling. I had backed into a corner and slid down so I was hidden from view, obscured under the leaf of an old, peeling-paint table, sitting on the floor with my knees drawn up, my arms around them, hugging myself so I wouldn't be cold but I would be alone but Ben thinks the curtains should be open and the window up and the lights on and the leaf down so that there are no shadows, nowhere to hide, nothing to keep secret, nowhere to go to get away from life with it's relentless march forward. Not as a way to fix a thing, but just to keep going because if you don't keep going then you are dead.

It's a logic that is simple and flawless and slays every attempt to excuse my behavior. It's a plea. This time for Bridget, taken with a grain of salt as big as the chip on her bony shoulder is a promise that a man will have patience and a generous encouragement to take time that is needed all the while he walks behind me telling me to hurry up, can't he just have everything and he promises it will be awesome just hurry. But Bridget feels the sting of the salt and the grind of the weight of that chip and she knows better. She's touched by the efforts and the passion and the sweetness and even sometimes the haste and she recognizes the pattern and she knows that he won't wait, that he'll sometimes be frustrated and sometimes be angry but she's going to take whatever she needs and do this not to make him happy but to make her better.

Sometimes she is so close and sometimes so far. Sometimes things seem so normal and it's like falling into a trap. But always, always know that now, she knows what to look for and to stand her ground.

I asked Ben if he would not ask about the ring each morning, that soon I was going to resent it and then he would resent me, and that when I was ready I would just put it on and it was so beautiful he wouldn't miss it when I did, but that for now it was going to stay in the box and I might not look at it for five days or five years and if that wasn't okay with him he needed to speak up now before I finished falling, or hiding, or making a mistake because I have to be careful now, I'm operating without a complete heart, so any more heartache would finish me off.

He said fifty years was just fine, as long as I am his.

And I said I was.

And when he sniffed I asked him if he was crying.

And he said only a little. And somehow it's more than enough to warm me as I sit in this little glass room in the sky. A turret for the princess, but oh, such a fragile one. Made of glass and iron. Just like me.

Tall, dark and absent-minded.

    The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it.
    ~Francis Quarles

The phone calls ended Friday afternoon via PJ who acted as the supreme go-between, sandwiching me into a chair and sitting on me while I was forced to hear what I thought was going to be a massive campaign of retribution by Ben but turned out to be two-separate conference calls from a whole bunch of higher-ups that I didn't know but they sure as hell know who I am now and they were incredibly and deeply embarrassed for the behavior of several people who were present at an impromptu party.

Ben's phone was there because he had left it on the table and gone up to his own room and someone's girlfriend got a hold of it and had a little fun. He leaves his phone everywhere.

The apologies were formal and profuse.

Like I said, it's happened before but usually it was one of Ben's girlfriends trying to get her hooks in or increase the odds in her favor. In this case he didn't even know who had his phone until he woke up and went to call me and had to go get it.

Then the shit hit the fan. He quit. They sorted it out. He was equally impressed with the phone call I had received earlier telling me not to expect him back alot, and the whole thing smacked of underhanded trouble-stirring so I took the apologies with a grain of salt, mostly because I really don't feeling like dealing with people I don't even know and also because we've been keeping things private and I'd like them to stay that way. No one save for the guys knew he went out there with a girlfriend at home this time.

When PJ finally got off me and let me breathe, he suggested we find some major distractions for the weekend, as in leave the house, get away, keep the kids busy because honestly, while I believed that what happened was the truth, him being out there is still hard. I don't like it. Fine, I said it.

I woke up Sunday morning and Ben was standing in the door of my room. He was ashen, positively exhausted and looking as if he were about to cry. He didn't say a word, he was waiting for me to go first.

So I did.

My skin isn't thick enough for this, Ben.

He closed his eyes and made a face. He leaned back against the side of the doorway in a physical interpretation of the wind going out of someone's sails.

Keep them away from me.

He nodded, eyes still closed, as if he were afraid that he might see something he didn't want to see. And I don't know if I was just handed the party-line of placating the wives back home 101 or if they meant it when they said that Ben would garner more respect this time out and that they would work harder to keep the riffraff away and keep his personal property secured, which basically means if Mark finds Ben's phone he's to pocket it, but I chose to believe that he didn't know it was happening, corroborated by virtually everyone present and so I chose to forgive him and only him. Because he threatened to abandon what he lived for and breathed for rather than lose me, something he also now seems to live and breathe for. Huh.

I love you.

He cocked one eye open at me and winced.

Seriously?

I never say it lightly anymore, Benny.

Oh, dear God, I love you. How badly did you eviscerate me to everyone?

Thoroughly.

Great.

I'm sorry too, Ben.

Don't be, I wouldn't want to be sitting at home. Well, I would now. I want to be, here, that is.

You will be soon enough.

Not soon enough for me, Bee.

Ben asked me to know that he's working as hard as he can to have a future with the one girl who never turned her heart on him and that he wasn't about to watch me turn it now. That he's never wanted to marry anyone before in his entire life and when the thought of only being with one girl would have given him hives before, now it makes him happy, it gives him something to look forward to while he's out there pretending to be someone he'll never be.

That all he wants is what's in front of him and that now he has to leave again and for fuck's sakes we're going to get this right.

He asked me to keep the ring and the chip and that when he returns things are going to be a lot different. No, before he comes back. Starting now. Starting with trust, getting it, keeping it, invoking it and not needing to worry about it at all. And then he said Happy Valentine's Day and I burst into tears.

He flew out this morning. Here's hoping for that quiet spring I wished for.