89, 90, 91.

Right.

So remember the story I've told a few times of how going to a concert when you're deathly ill is one of life's finer ironies, since you buy tickets so far in advance God only knows what shape you'll be in by the time it rolls around? (AKA We saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2006 and I was so sick I leaned against some strange boy the whole time because he was on my side facing the stage? But that's still not as gross a story as the one about the strange boy beside me with the copious nosebleed through the entire Tool show or the story about the very drunk man behind me at Roger Waters last summer that poured his entire new ice cold beer down my back and Jesus, maybe I should stay home from now on?

No, thank you. I was raised in Halifax. Concerts were like Catholic visions. They hardly ever happened. Here we're turning shit down left and right for lack of time, if you can believe it.)

And also the story of the irony of how I really don't like Avenged Sevenfold at all?

So guess what I'm doing tonight!

Yeah. I'm going to see Avenged Sevenfold's The Stage world tour, having seen them a little over six months ago when they opened for Metallica!

Why?

Oh I dunno.

Please.

BREAKING BENJAMIN is opening. And that has been a fifteen-year bucket-list band for me and I don't care if I have to lie down in my seat, I will be there with bells on and my smudged eyeliner since it's raining/snowing quite hard now and I'm taking Henry and his friends but I'm going to quiz them on the drive in (they're all HUGE Breaking Benjamin fans) and if no one wants to stay for Avenged we can leave early.

Cross your fingers that I don't die because so far I feel like I might.

Also cross your fingers that BB have merch other than the new giant-eyeball Ember album cover designs. I don't think I'll look good with a huge third eye on my chest. Then again, maybe I will.

Sons of anergy.

Caleb isn't going to meetings, naw. He told Ben he's near perfect, but sometimes he slides and he'll just stop drinking but be nice too because some people have willpower.

Ben said good luck with that, ducking out from under the shade thrown like a dagger and came home unscathed. Caleb later messaged Ben to apologize and as far as I know it's still unread. That's one of the great tics of the Devil that we've discovered. If you don't open his messages he gets crazy. Ben said he must be hitting the bottle again already to be so sweet and then Ben left his phone on the dresser and hasn't touched it since.

They both said brunch and company were great though. So there's that. There's just a little love lost between them, both of them harboring some slick grudges that sometimes skid away under the furniture and sometimes set it on fire but they get along honestly and without very much posturing, if you can believe it.

I know. It doesn't sound like it, does it?

I'm getting better today. This was a long week of illness and not feeling up to anything at all. I still did as much as I could, and I'll probably pay for that, but the day is looking up already. The sun came out and so PJ served lunch outside. Lemonade, hot chocolate and Hawaiian-flavored pizza pops because we eat like orphaned fifteen-year-olds if left to our own devices, and now I'm back inside with my runny nose and freshly-burned tongue to kill time until Henry gets home from school.

You can tell when he's coming up the stairs, all six-foot-one of him, ducking to get through the door, throwing his backpack on the floor. He'll ask what the smell is.

Burned cheese and the candle I got last week (Coal & Canary's 'Wood Stoves and Fine Merlots' scented one that has a wooden wick that pops and crackles while it burns and I love it. It's like a fire in my pocket though I can't burn it while it's in there because that would be mighty hazardous). Pizza pops for lunch.

Are there any left? Even though he ate lunch two hours ago. He'll always come back for a second meal of equal size. Just like his father.

Sure. Go find PJ. He'll start them for you. 

Thanks, mom. And I smile at him and think, wow. He needs a shave.

Of course I still love you.

And after this world is out of reach
Sober and silent, faded and violent
Hopeless, I fight to fall between
Never surrender, out of the embers
So save a space inside for me

Maybe I didn't say this because it wasn't my place but everyone seems hellbent on trying find out why Caleb went back to being himself instead of the jovial, agreeable man he somehow became over the summer last year, into the fall with very little hint of who he was before that.

It's his nature, his innate self, muted smooth by alcohol, quashed by an endless buzz and once again this is somehow my fault because I didn't blow the whistle on him either.

Would you have?

I didn't think so.

I like him half-lit, honestly. I like him slow and silly and a little bit more enthusiastic, a little more loveable. I like him kind and soft and friendly. I like that fact that his bright intensity was visible without needing something to shield your eyes with before looking.

He decided somewhere at the end of last week to quit, to teetotal, to go dry in order to smarten up, He's very disciplined, very dedicated, very healthy save for that endless drunk and it's more like him to stop then it was to start, frankly. It's not a sustainable existence as we learn over and over again.

I didn't know he stopped cold. He just didn't say or do anything except revert back to being Mr. Intensity, as I said and I thought I had done something wrong. Why do I take the blame for his moods? Years and years of conditioning, grooming to want to please him, that's why.

Ben made the observation before the rest of us saw a thing. Ben's good at this. Ben's taken Caleb out for brunch this morning so they can talk. Would I ever love to be a fly on the wall today. I don't think Ben is in a position to sponsor Caleb of all people but we have to do something to help Caleb as that's what you do when someone asks for it.

Even when they're being a jerk to you.

Blackened fingerprints and Valentine's Day.

A little peptalk from Lochlan and Benjamin and Caleb already made his apologies and joined us for the service this morning so Sam could paint ashes on our foreheads, a reminder that we need to live our lives the best way we know how. We get one chance, use it well and wisely. I rolled my eyes a little in the line as Sam drew a filthy cross on my face, sticking my tongue out at him. He wiped his fingers on it as payback, leaving me coughing and sputtering and licking the arm of Lochlan's peacoat to get the taste out of my mouth for the remainder of the service.

Can't take me anywhere except right to the brink of death and then and only then am I more alive than I've ever been.

Caleb accepted his ashes with a stern look from Sam and was appropriately serious, this time actually repentant, heavy. Jealousy cancels out every ounce of common sense he has. It's always been this way for the two brothers only Caleb is the only one left to carry out this legacy of misery as Cole checked out so spectacularly already.

Sam attempts not to let his amusement distract the congregation from this very major Wednesday service. The room isn't even half-full but he's in his season here and we need to let him bloom. And bloom he has, weirdly pleased, surprised and curious to see Caleb sitting on the other side of Ben. The story they told is that Ben saved Caleb from going over the railing in a fit of desperation but what that means is that as usual, Lochlan did all the talking while Ben held Caleb over that rail threatening to let go.

Because he (Caleb) won't let go.

And I'm fine with that because the brain damage was actually in place a long time ago and I wasn't worried. Love through violence, decades of conditioning, threats and promises and he's done more hurt than any lack of oxygen would ever create. He's done all of this and instead of figuring out how to help me live with it he barges in with his own issues. He wanted to run the world. Lochlan isn't about to let him. In his listening moments he understands the arrangement we made to keep the peace; on days such as yesterday he can't remember shit and runs on fear and feelings.

We're more alike than most people realize, I guess.

But I don't want to live with those threats. I can live with him physically getting out of hand when he's riled up but if he comes to me wearing the vestiges of his former self I can't deal with it. I'm afraid I might blink and when I open my eyes Cole will be behind him. Or be there instead of him. As if Caleb can't be frightening enough on his own.

Instead today I'm surrounded by love. It's Valentine's Day and Lochlan is determined to celebrate love and I'll be right there with him. Ben celebrates love every day, somehow aware of how fleeting life is in a way only I can understand, and I love him for that too. I just can't seem to get any kisses now, as they all saw Sam wipe his fingers on my tongue.

Pancakes and death.

Bury me in this cold light

That line reminds me of Cole. So does this man, shifting from a fury in which he pushed my head underwater yesterday to this repentant, grief-filled and rueful man, average in every way except for any of them, thanks to his good looks and greater fortune which give him a pass far too often, honestly.

When your killer becomes your savior before your very eyes there isn't much left that you're going to trust throughout the run of that day, is there?

Give me up for Lent and I'll make sure I finish the job, Neamhchiontach.

I look at his medium blues. I know you won't.

I can ensure enough brain damage that they wouldn't want you anymore and then you'd wish I had.

Oh. You're back. I was wondering where you went. 

Ruefulness is not Caleb's strong suit, nor does he ever play the sympathy card long enough for me to feel it at all.

Don't deny me, he sang (It's getting better, baby).

The Devil's greatest trick actually wasn't convincing the world he didn't exist.

I remember the smell of your skin
I remember everything
I remember all your moves
I remember you
I remember the nights, you know I still do

So if you're feeling lonely—don't
You're the only one I ever want
I only want to make it good
So if I love you a little more than I should

It's in the way he uses Lochlan's habits (she can be soothed with music) and tries to pass them off as his. Tries to blur the edges. Tries to bend my brain into shapes that hurt now, shapes it no longer bends into.

I put my arms up around my head to protect it, sinking to my knees into the wet sand. It's cold. So cold. My skin pulls in his direction and my heart throws itself into the sea. Blackness, death is better than this feeling but this feeling is exactly what he wants.

I'm not giving it to him.

Not today.

Bridget-

His voice draws me closer still. His hand outstretched, waiting to bring me to him. Waiting to lift me up. Waiting to take credit for saving me or maybe for destroying me. His mouth is turned up, a beautiful, devastating line setting the tone for his face.

Come, now. 

I shake my head and keel forward until I taste grit and salt. I turn my head so my cheek rests against the sand. I make myself into a ball. Maybe I can roll underneath the tide, never to be seen again. Dramatic sure but escape is escape and you don't know this man like I do.

And now he's put Bryan Adams in my head and I can't get him out. So the whole mess is set to a host of beautiful ballads from my formative years in which they raised me only to tear me down, putting the pieces into their pockets, only to spend the rest of their lives fighting over an equal share.

Help me, I ask Jake but his reflection breaks in the surf.

Bryan will help me, if only he'd put down his microphone.

Shouts from beyond my hearing tell me if I wait, if I stay put, everything will be fine.

But in the meantime.

Here it comes.

A wave of cold threats, a promise of death crashes over my head, pulling my knees out from my chest, rolling me into the Pacific only to find she doesn't like the taste and so she spits me back out.

Jesus. Help me, I order Cole, who never helped me a day in his life and isn't about to start. His reflection fades into Caleb's and I scream.

Are you finished? His face is an inch from my own. He isn't an apparition. Too bad.

I wish, I tell him and close my eyes as another wave crashes over us both.

North.

I was about to write but SCORE! Women's hockey just opened up the game against the Russians with their first goal and I can't focus on words because I am glued to the Olympics.

I mean, who wouldn't be? Canada is eating everyone for breakfast and stealing their hearts besides. I always forget the sort of reverence the world seems to have for us out in the wild as I rarely leave the country these days save for quick trips down the coast to Malibu or Tahoe or to New York.

Wow, that sounded precious, didn't it?

Sorry.

I'm actually home sick today so Ben volunteered to shepherd me through the morning instead of God. Sam feels bad because he made me sick with his kisses, clearly. He doesn't kiss anyone else. They're all fine so I can blame him with confidence.

So hockey is on the big screen and Lochlan is making breakfast. He'll insist that I finish my juice even though I hate apple juice and love orange juice but I think we're out because there wasn't any yesterday, unless someone ran out to pick some things up but groceries are my job so probably not.

AHHHHH. We just scored AGAIN! 2-0!

Maybe I will dispatch a list or pop out later during my high point. Or maybe not. The figure skating starts again after lunch and we've had it streaming nonstop. Everyone has dropped what they're doing to watch and we've been blown away. I'm looking forward to the Bobsleigh too and will catch up on snowboarding and freestyle skiing in between. I've got my Olympic mittens on and everything. This is amazing.

Update: HA. Ben knows me well. Canada won in a shutout. 5-0! Which he already knew, as it was the replay of the game played earlier (overnight here, technically) and not live, as he said it was when he turned it on but he also knew I wouldn't stay home even though I was too sick to go to church unless I had a really good distraction. Hockey's always going to be a first pick for me, and I'm glad he didn't spoil the game. He counters that it's as much entertainment for him watching me yell hoarsely at the screen as playing so he got something out of it too.

Also there is Orange Juice. Sam said Jesus loves me. Yes he does.

Asking for so little.

When I woke up this morning Lochlan was tracing flames across his fingertips, his pyrokinetic soul awake just before his physical form. Flat on his back, arms up, he plays with fire the way the most of us will unconsciously trace patterns onto any frosted window we encounter. With flair.

He turns his head. You're awake.

I nod. So sleepy. Yeah. What time is it?

Nine. Sorry if I woke you.

You didn't. 

Last night he called me heaven in his hands, a rare openness that he doesn't show in case I think he's not going to be parental and judgemental and hard on me. He's not worried about spoiling me to cause favoritism, he's just the way he always is until he drops his guard and simply can't pick it up fast enough to keep himself from saying those things that he usually doesn't say. He's affectionate to beyond usual human levels but he's never generous with his words unless he's drunk or caught thoroughly by surprise, and he wasn't drunk last night.

Good, he says. He rubs his hands together and then rolls to his side to pull me in close. Morning breath and wild hair is all the rage these days, and we never have worried much about either. What do you want to do today?

Watch the skating on TV. Maybe get a pizza.

Sounds like heaven. 

That's the second time you've used that word in a single day, Loch.

Because that's what life is these days and I wouldn't trade it for anything. There's only one thing I want still that I haven't really gotten. 

For me to stay put?

Yeah. For you to stay put. He grins and licks my nose. 

I would post but I died of exposure.

Time to go, Bridge, has become the battle cry. Said softly at first and then later on with gusto and even glee as they threw their energy behind it, a healthy way to teach me to temper my reactions to separations with lots of them, announced at regular intervals to the point where instead of crying I either cling with all my might or worse, I simply won't believe you.

Because Rome wasn't built in a day and we all know by now it takes decades (or longer) to fix a Bridget once you break her, and she'll never work quite as well as before, just so it's very clear.

Ben tried to go to a meeting and I climbed all over him to get him to stay. Sam announced our talk was finished and I wanted to lock the library door, and keep him my prisoner. Lochlan had to go chat with Batman for a minute but I wouldn't let go of him. My feet were off the ground and he finally handed me off to PJ bodily with a plea to find August because this isn't working. 

Boy, it sure isn't. If they know anything about me they know that repeated prolonged manifestations of something I can't manage only serves to pound me deeper into the ground and then I'm buried and then I'm basically dead anyway so I tend to retreat to the ghosts altogether. Then it's an even bigger mess than before.

What would have worked? What I requested. Tell me when we'll be back together again. All Schuyler had to say is See you at dinner. All Lochlan has to say is Be home at three or so. All Caleb has to say is Of course you can go home.

(Wait, that last one is a different thing altogether and no, he's not working on it.)

I want promises that you're not gone. That you'll be back. That you won't leave me here alone. That you're still alive.

It's not a healthy way to cope with fear, Bridget. I'm staring in the mirror clinging to myself here. I don't want to hear that from August.

Maybe it is. Depends on who you ask. 

People who are trained to manage and support getting you better. Like me.

Then they and you don't know me at all. 

Maybe we know you better than you think. 

But as I look at the deep black pockets under my eyes that hold the ocean of tears I've cried before they breach and spill into my world, drowning me and everyone around me, I feel like I'm fairly certain they don't.

Paper princess.

No one is even remotely concerned that Schuyler was naked during our exchange (as he was in his own room, his own bed, his own life and he doesn't have to apologize for it but it was technically a PG sleepover, just with tons of cuddles and magnificent scenery).

Instead they are concerned that I cried when he told me it was time to go back to my own life.

It wasn't even the going back to my life part that made me so profoundly sad. It was the fact that he told me it was time to go. I was dismissed, though lovingly. The same way August does it except he's far less loving when I've outstayed my welcome. Fear of abandonment is the biggest obstacle in my head. Bigger than heights or monsters or anything else and it stings so brutally when it pushes its way to the front.

And they know this but they don't ever think they have anything to do with it, that it's between me and my ghosts or me and my Lochlan or me and my oversized, ridiculous imagination.

So they show me the door oh so casually and then get confused when I fall the fuck apart all over them, though I tried to keep it classy (it's Schuyler, after all) and managed to not ugly-cry all over him.

Still, now he feels as if he needs to do damage control, the others are looking for some place to lay their blame down because it gets heavy and someone has to hold it and I feel as if I am transparent, tissue-thin, prone to tear, prone to dissolve.

Sam, Joel, August and Lochlan are wearing their Very Serious faces today.  I don't know how all this gets so big when I am so small but it's so far down and profound and difficult and it makes me even sadder still that such a fun event like a sleepover with my beautiful, accommodating and deliciously unchecked fairy boys can become marred by the sudden certain proclamations that I must be getting worse instead of better. Damage/control are the same things in my life so I don't know how they plan to fix it. Take away a few more rules, love her just a little harder but not too hard because she's so fragile and then those fears will recede back into the dark part of her brain and she won't be able to hear them anymore?

Instead they could just offer to walk me home or give me a kiss on the cheek and suggest the next time. It's just the 'Time to leave' part that I have trouble with, I swear.