Snap-cracker-Bridge.

Christmas crackers are these neat little cardboard tubes covered with pretty paper and gathered at each end with skinny pieces of cardboard protruding from said ends. You grasp the ends and pull, if you're lucky you'll hear a loud snapping noise, and then the cracker will open to reveal your treasures, usually a fortune or joke on a slip of paper, a tissue-paper crown, and a toy or surprise of some kind.

Just like a box of Cracker Jacks, only there is the added bonus of royal wardrobe accessories and cued-up sparkling dinner conversation. Because these are the Holidays.

I already bought a big box of Christmas crackers and that means..well, it means I'm done. It's the final entry on the proverbial list and I am ready for Christmas. Aside from decorating the tree, mailing gifts home to the coast, and picking up Ruth and Henry's presents from Santa, I am ready to roll. All of those things will be accomplished this week.

I'm ready and the holidays are here and I'm not on pills and not fresh off the ward and not holding onto the professionals expecting them to breathe on my behalf because I pay them well and not living just because no one will let me die.

That's progress, considering last year Christmas was done for us and around us and I did so very little, stumbling through the holidays in a daze, on autopilot and attempting to sort out my head and my heart but doing nothing except floating on Jacob's inevitabilities and holding Ben's hand.

The funny part is I didn't have to lift a finger or do all this but I did, methodically keeping lists and starting around Halloween, just to get and stay ahead and be productive and contribute. Breathe on my own. Hold Ben's hand but sometimes skip out in front, instead of lagging behind. Be a good wife. One he can someday be proud of. Secretly buy him presents and hide them away in places he can't reach into but I can fit easily. Places he'll never look. We're equal and he is up to something, conspiring with the children, going off to run errands after dinner, taking one child with him each time and they come home with secretive grins and packages and I have to go somewhere else in the house so they can go to the off-limits room and tuck away their ideas. No one will give up even a single hint, but that's okay because neither will I.

It's rather fun. This far cry from last Christmas and I'm getting excited for when the kids are done school and all jobs are suspended in favor of sitting around the fire and the tree spending time with all the people that I love, telling jokes to each other and wearing our crowns. Trading our toys if they don't seem to be meant for the right people and hearing the sound as we are pulled simultaneously between the present, past and future with an audible snap.

It's a good thing to have Jon Foreman songs stuck in my head.

All along I thought
I was learning how to take
How to bend not how to break
How to live not how to cry
But really
I've been learning how to die

Overnight fear chases sleep from my head and doubts crowd in to choke of the self-confidence I worked so hard to build up over the course of the day, in my constant mental self-nagging to breathe deeply, move slowly, think less.

Fear joins the cold and together they snap a blanket out full and it drifts down over me like a shroud and maybe I am dead and I haven't noticed yet.

No, I'm not.

And if you would prefer, you can stop reading or I can lock you the fuck out and then you'll never have to pass judgement on me. But we both know we're blowing smoke, because I need to write to empty my head, because the cost of keeping it in is greater than the cost of letting it out, and you, well, I guess you just have a sick fetish to keep coming back. It's okay, there is no shame here. If I have none then you don't need to worry about a thing.

There there.

Last night Caleb came over. I may joke around, and call him names and bait him horribly and allow him access to my head and my heart but when all is said and done (that's an oxymoron, it never is) he is trying, just like we all are, to make his way in the world under a cloud of tragedy and he's trying to figure out who he is, who he wants to be.

Just like you, and just like me.

Remember how I told you once that Ben and I were two halves of the same person? We both veer far off course creatively, we're both wildly immature and perverted and we're both incredibly fragile, determined people? Well, believe it or not Caleb and I have a lot in common too. We both loved Cole and miss him terribly, we're both masochists driven to distraction by our needs and we both have an overwhelming desire to protect Ben.

Anyhow, Caleb was over last night to drop off the presents he has for us, because he did that shopping himself, even for the children, which never fails to impress me, and also to apologize for cornering me so brutally on a day when I was losing that sunlit, confident edge. He offered me the rest of the month off and I refused, and he took his forgiveness and wore it like a blue ribbon prize, because he's worked hard to not come across as the villain in the group. (That was Ben's job, remember?) and he's worked hard to try and be closer to us as his family. To watch over us. Sometimes unwelcome assistance, but assistance nevertheless.

He's held back from weighing in on important subjects, and he's overstepped his boundaries on others. He makes mistakes. I'm not going to make excuses for him and he's not going to shove down my throat the mistakes I make.

Mistakes like completely ignoring some of Ben's wishes. Which I'm not going to tell you, because if I thought the hate mail multiplied before, you would lose your minds. And maybe someday I will grant them, but not now because I'm in no condition to go there.

I'm really not.

And I'm okay with that, and frankly, so is Ben, because he isn't ready to face his greatest fears. Not yet. It isn't time. There will be time later, but not now.

Because now, I'm late for brunch. With everyone, Caleb included. I don't ask for readers, you know, so if you don't understand why I need him in my life, I can't help you.

One more thing.

I hope someone sends me one of these. it's been a long time since I looked for one for real.

In it you can write Get a clue, stupid.

Keep her in the dark, I hear she feel safest there.

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
Then I'll follow you into the dark

I think I will stay home again today.

Even though I wasn't home much yesterday, I didn't go to work. My "job" seems to be on an as-needed basis and if I don't show up anything I don't do just gets added to the pile or pawned off on someone else.

I don't like the taste of crow anymore, you know? And yet I eat it every day because everyone is always right and Bridget is always wrong and I know I shouldn't have taken the job with Caleb but I did because I am selfish and I'd like to keep all the men I have loved, in whatever form I can, very close to me, no matter what the cost.

You wouldn't understand.

Wednesday evening at Caleb's loft, after being cornered for the third time and having John not show up to pick me up because he was lied to flat out at Caleb's request, I realized precisely how desperately Caleb is to keep me close to him. He pulled out a little emotional blackmail, found a crack, and drove a very big wedge. He and Cole have the same gifts for making my brain think things that aren't in existence, and making every word seem like the truth in a new light. He makes it very easy.

Wednesday night he talked what he knows about Ben and why Ben drinks and what Ben wants and why I was holding back from giving him what he wants and how things are never going to change because the past is too big and too wide and too crushing to escape. All these things Caleb knows because when Ben was at rock-bottom he told Caleb everything he wants because that's what you do when the devil offers you your wildest dreams.

Caleb drove that wedge deep, because I believed every word he said. Just like I always believed every word Cole ever told me, even the lies, even the blatant attempts to steer me down a path that would leave me lost forever.

I came home but I couldn't talk to Ben. He tried. I tried. Every time I wanted to talk I was afraid I might hurt him or accuse him so I feigned a headache and went to bed. Ben doesn't push, he knows when the cracks are running deep and he just allows space for me to figure it out. I still don't know if that's good or bad but I really wanted him to discount all of the unspoken questions and go kick Caleb's ass and fix it.

Fix it.

Like Jake used to.

Only Ben isn't Jake and WHY does that bother me so much sometimes?

So yesterday morning I got up and went to see Jake to ask him.

Or rather, I went to sit on his bench, which is interesting, I now have the perfect outdoor amphitheater in which to play out my drama, cursing Cole for his evil genetics and need to destroy me and cursing Jacob at the same time for not being here to fix it and cursing Ben for having visible flaws that other people can use to tear both of us apart, separately and together.

I sat there a little too long in the very much too-cold, and they sent in angels again.

Sam, hurrying down the path to me, awkward and convicted. He grabbed my hands, said we were going inside, Bridget, don't argue with me and he drove us to the church where he said if I needed to hide, I had the run of the place.

I hung out there most of the day but I didn't want to talk and everyone seemed satisfied that I was safe and that I would just go home later.

I didn't.

I went to Joel's apartment instead and asked him if he had any dinner and Joel is such a pushover he poured some wine and I haven't had a drink in so long. We had a long talk, then I went home in a taxi and Ben met me at the sidewalk and all of it came out. All of it. Right there in the cold because for some reason with us when the snowflakes start falling so do all the fears and they pile up between us and we shovel and shovel and we can't keep up with it.

He yelled at me. Again, I put him last. I left him out in order to protect him and it hurt him more.
Why didn't I go to him first? Why didn't I lay out Caleb's accusations and proclamations and let Ben answer for them, if I believed them. And if I didn't, they why didn't I come home?

I don't know. If I knew which end was up, would I keep falling?

But Ben can't be any harder on me than I can be on him, and his angry words quickly dissolved into frustrated tears and we were both shaking from the cold. We came inside and I thought we were going to sit and I was going to burn off the wine but instead Ben pulled me into the den and then backed out and closed and locked the door.

Great.

Serves me right.

Sometimes the safest place to be is the saddest. Apart. Alone. So we don't continue to hurt each other with our words and our suspicions and our flaws. Sam's ten-count, only this time it flowed past in hours instead of seconds and early this morning, just before the ghosts could crowd me out of sleep, Ben picked me up off the chair where I slept with my head on the desk and brought me back to bed where it was warm and soft and loved. And he held me really tight and told me that he wasn't ever going to tell me I couldn't do something but that if I was going to keep working for my brother in law I needed to not let my guard down.

Even if I'm tired.

Even if I'm doubtful.

Even if I am Bridget.

Ben called Caleb this morning. Said I wouldn't be in. Said a bunch of other things but he walked all the way down to the other end of the house and I couldn't hear any of it. I'll ask him about it later. For now I just want to get back to where I was before Wednesday, since I thought I was finally doing pretty good outrunning my own mind. I guess I didn't notice when I rounded that corner and it caught up to me. I guess I didn't realize there are no ghosts in heaven and that's okay because that isn't where I am now.

I can hear Caleb's silky voice in my head reminding me that I am always susceptible to evil and what I can't find, I will create. And I see further still that he has his own price to exact for the loss of his brother and I am the only currency that will be accepted.

They want to know what it's going to take and I don't know the answer to that any more than I know the answers to any of the other questions I have today.

Namely, who's lying and who's telling the truth?

You know what I think? I think I have very few friends left who will allow me to be self sdestructive and the rest seem content to just let me be between the ghosts and the real horrors and it ins't very fair at all.

Precious few who witl drinkw th me. Even though its been awhile and really, I'm a hypocrite or something because Ben no longer drinks why should I? Or rather,why should I suffer|?

I still don't know what I'm going to do, I just think that today maybe I should have been left where Iw as found. With Jake because he could put up a wall and keep all you out.

For the record I haven't quit. Yet.

I'm allowed to hide out with Sam, who smartly suggested I do the day-long equivalent of a count to ten, so if you need me just follow the yellow brick road.

The only one that made it.

gone under two times.
I've been struck dumb by a voice that
speaks from deep
beneath the cold black water.
It's twice as clear as heaven,
and twice as loud as reason.
It's deep and rich like silt on a riverbed
and just as undisturbing.

the currents mouth below me opens up around me.
suggests and beckons all while swallowing.
It surrounds and drowns and sweeps me away.

But I'm so comfortable...too comfortable.

shut up shut up shut up shut up
shut up shut up shut up shut up

Mark another X on the calendar with a red pencil, dip my finger in the sugar bowl and then put it in my mouth and smile just a little bit. Reach down to pull up my striped socks that come way up over my knees for warmth. Tuck my keys back into the inside pocket of my corduroy bag and move my coffee cup away from the edge of the table because I can envision it falling even though I'm sure it won't.

I have coffee hiccups and sweet dreams in my head today. Yesterday was fun. It was a spoil-day for Ben in honor of his birthday. He didn't have to do anything he didn't want to do, and we did everything he wanted to do, with great enthusiasm.

Early on, with Daniel up and around and capable enough to be left with uncle duties for the morning, Ben and I dressed warmly and went for a short run. Very short, as in mere blocks, just to top up my state of mind, and warm him up for what was next. A little hockey time in which he skates all over the place really fast and takes shots at an empty goal while I cheer him on and he feels as light as a feather without his usual extra goalie gear. I sat in the penalty box with my hands wrapped around a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine because he nagged me about the amount of coffee I have been drinking lately and I agreed with his observations.

Besides, better coffee awaited at the diner, where we once again found ourselves, just like on Sunday after the service in which I was reminded once again to find a balance between cursing and deifying people who no longer breathe. This after Ben locked us in the empty dressing room in the virtually empty skating rink, him with half his gear still on and me wondering if normal people ever live the kind of life we do and not willing to find out in case I lose my way back to this. To him.

Breakfast was delicious, and then we went to take pictures in the conservatory because they have strung it with lights again and I missed out last year. I won't share the pictures because one or the other or both of us are in all of them and we're smiling easily and the black circles don't make their presence known, or maybe it's just that the light is so bright and natural in there.

Then we headed for record store row, which is a string of tiny hole-in-the-wall places without signs out front, but inside are milk crates stacked all over the place and the light is so bad inside it's a wonder he ever finds anything, but Ben came out with a Zeppelin bootleg and some other assorted vinyl that made him uncharacteristically excited. Afterward we poked around in a used bookstore (with better light) and he would read the backs of romance novels to me in funny voices so that I would laugh. That's when I noticed he wasn't looking fierce and scary and angry today, not even once, the smile drove it all away for me, and it isn't right that it's Ben's birthday but I'm the one having all the fun. He argues this point endlessly as we poke around the stacks.

He bought me the cheesiest book he could find, the cover featuring a black-haired half-vampire, half-pirate, wearing a shirt that is almost ripped off and sporting sinewy pirate-muscles, cradling a helpless blonde woman (in a nightgown!) in his arms and looking as if he will destroy anything that comes within a hundred yards. I can't wait to read it. Ben points out he has had that look before and I said we needed a wind machine so our hair can do that too. He rolled his eyes and said it was a whirlwind romance, that's why they seemed so poofy, and we were definitely not poofy people.

We took an early lunch to stock up on energy before spending the rest of the afternoon with Mark at the tattoo shop. Ben is finishing work on his calves and I had ivy added to the ivy already on me only this time some of it is black, fading to green in the imaginary light that hits my skin and it now wraps from my neck down my shoulder and around my arm and gives the orphan butterfly a place to rest. I'm thrilled with it, all done in Mark's steady free hand. I sat and listened as the boys talked about being sober and being in charge of their lives and their futures and it was the easy, clear talk of men who aren't wrapped around spiritual riddles or caught up in the race of rats. Talk that makes sense without having to think it over even once.

After that we headed home, and sacked out on the couch to play some snowboarding games and give Daniel a reprieve. I walked over alone to get the kids from school and Ben headed out for a meeting. Daniel, bless his heart, went back to bed.

Dinner was mayhem in our house. As per tradition, birthday dinners are long affairs with extra candles and impromptu speeches and gifts passed across dishes full of good foods and there's always extra laughs and thoughtful smiles and it's a chance for the birthday boy to have his worth to all of us soak in for a long while. And I avoid the big birthday dinner like the plague because I'm never sure that I like birthdays when they are mine and much prefer to spoil everyone else instead.

Especially with cake.

Ben loved all of his presents, and all of the words about him and most especially the food. He showed off his new ink, some of the guys played a little guitar and then before we knew it the night was over again and I was washing dishes and not humming in the kitchen while he and Daniel sacked out in front of the fire, each one with a sleeping child, and talked a bit until I was finished because I refused to let either one of them help and then one at a time, Ben carried each child to bed and then came back for me.

His fierce look came back right around the same time, because he gets quiet and serious and profound just as I'm turning flighty and fluttery and he held his arms out for me and showed me how much he loves me, only this time it was in the dark, in the warmth of our bed instead of up against the wall under the bright fluorescent lights of the dressing room at the hockey rink and afterward we compared those facts and laughed in whispers as we fell asleep, fingers laced together, lips on skin before Ben turns away to sleep his still-sleep that scares me, save only for the heat that radiates from his skin when he dreams.

This morning he drove me to work, for just a little more time before we leave the story we want to write in favor of the one that we're just now finishing up, and he kissed me hard in the truck before I got out and he told me to have a good day at work and I said you too, because I know at the end of this day we can leave this fake public existence and go back to the good story.

That one with the hot vampire pirate and the beautiful-but-helpless wench on the cover.

It's a pretty good read, you know.

Bridget can be poofy.

Snort.

Coming into his own.

There is no post today, or rather, this will have to suffice. We both managed to finagle the day off, alone, together, and it starts now.

Happy birthday Benjamin.

You look damn good for a forty-year-old.

And I love you.

Over three thousand.

The number of kilometers that our dinner flew in a suitcase, wrapped in tinfoil and ziploc bags, to be transferred to a hot wok, heated, assembled on our plates and then shoveled breathlessly into our poor coastal food-deprived mouths and hearts, courtesy of a most generous man that I haven't even met yet.

Three words that make this princess so very happy.

King of Donair.

Sigh.

(I'm sure he's my father, this elusive king. Since I am the princess, after all, and I love everything he makes.)

The only way out is letting your guard down.

I stand here all alone
And I can see the bottom

The temperature has now dipped down into the complete frigid zone here, and this morning, I trudged across the nicely shoveled, salted sidewalk and through the door, held open just like the car door, since God forbid I drive a vehicle at twenty-five below.

It was Mike's idea, or so he says.

I came in and Caleb took my coat, lingered on a glance at my outfit and then asked what I wanted for music. I yanked my dress down just in case of static and threw Breaking Benjamin over my shoulder as a order. Because I want loud. Because I like angry and bitter on Monday mornings. He frowned and obliged and then went to pour me a cup of coffee and brought over two cups, still hanging on to that endless glance.

I reached a new low this morning, wearing my (forbidden) doll-shoes for Satan.

I needed these shoes today.

They're six inch stiletto-heeled platform pumps with ribbons that tie in a nice plump bow at the ankle. They are my ridiculous, I'm going to kick your ass shoes, and I felt like being a difficult girl today and so on went the shoes. Unfortunately the only thing the shoes look normal with is a tiny little black dress with puffy short sleeves and a little white collar. Very goth french maid. And my hair would not cooperate between the static and the cold so I have these little wings sticking out in front and in back at my neck and I look like I should possibly be painted on the side of a vintage aircraft from the war or maybe a cheeky soft-core porn calendar from the twenties and maybe it's okay because this is how they like me dressed.

You missed the point and I've gone on a personal tangent as a result. I'll blame you. Were you not paying attention when I pointed out Caleb brought ME a cup of coffee this morning?

Right. I don't get it either. He's covered up the fact that he does not need a personal assistant quite nicely today with a list of things a mile long that I need to do. Namely Christmas shopping. Incredibly decadent, intensive Christmas shopping that puts most people to shame. No, forget people, his budget might put a small principality to shame.

I'm just killing time now waiting for him to change his mind because of the 'cold'.

Only since you're still not paying attention I'll point out he'll give the cold as the reason but the true reason will be so that I am around him today and that he can look at me and my shoes whenever he wants.

I'm going to wear my Converse high-tops tomorrow. The pink camouflage ones. We'll see how long it takes him to take me down a peg for violating his wardrobe requirements.

When it stops being fun I'll quit, I swear.