Little woman, big waves.

(This post is meta. This is nothing. There are too many footnotes. Sorry.)

Whoa mistletoe
(It's growing cold)
I'm seeing ghosts
(I'm drinking old)
Red water

Caleb has replaced his fur blankets* with the most beautiful finely-knit cashmere and linen bedding from Ireland. The blankets aren't scratchy and the sheets aren't rough. It's a refined, understated switch from the brutal warmth and heavy presence of the former and I don't hate it, like I thought I might, expressing dismay at the abrupt change. The boys tend to be minimalist in nature. Skew viking, skew ancient. Finely woven herringbone is such a massive, progressive departure from all of that. Refined? Who wants refined? I want wild.

Easier to take care of, he said. This is correct. I needed to borrow two extra people to change his bed because I can't lift the blankets and didn't want to drag them across the floor. Why doesn't he do it himself, you ask? We have a system. If he pulls that card for chores he also needs to grab someone to help. If bedding is a two or three person job then maybe the vikings were leaving out a lot of relevant info but they also probably didn't change their bedding on the reg, methinks.

If only I could make a blanket out of waves, I think far too often to be healthy.

Those sorts of thoughts are Alarming but Lochlan worries about all the wrong things. I'm thinking from a beauty standpoint, from a striking distance. Imagine. I can match the colors of my sea but not that visual comfort. I can pull off a lot of things, frankly and this morning I am most proud that not only did Caleb chose Ireland to do his shopping (he used to default to Egypt or Begium for bedding) but he's asked to step in a little harder to make up for Sam's absence. And he asked formally, on his fucking knees, waves threatening to crash over his head, drowning him in hell, darkness and high water for all eternity.

I was so pleased that he asked like that I forgot to say no.

And now I'm fucked.

(That's literal and figurative, if you're keeping score.)

(There's a brain-emptying for your post full moon, Friday the thirteenth. Figures.)

*(The fur bedding has gone to four different wildlife rescue centres in the states. To snuggle up baby animals in need. I'm DYING here. I love that thought.)

Melting our faces off over lunch.

Today we are listening to Skepticism (omg so beautifully slow holy COW PJ), drinking flavoured coffees (found the keurig pods with the GOOD SHIT) and wrapping presents. Both the kids are at work and most of the boys are out so PJ is babysitting.

It's like old times when he would come over to the castle and make us lunch while the kids were in elementary school. He would take very good care of me but Jacob was alive back then and I thought I had it all figured out. Cole was already gone and I thought I found a replacement father and that life would be smooth sailing. I wouldn't have to be sad or afraid any more. I wouldn't have to deal with Caleb. I wouldn't have anything bad happen ever again.

Now the kids are grown, working, cooking, taking trips with their friends, driving and saving money, building credit, being awesome and PJ is ageing but in the way you would expect from a PJ. He has a few wicked streaks of white in his Mark-Morton-would-be-jealous hair and more lines around his eyes now. He quit smoking, is attempting to lose the beer pounds and wears nice button down shirts instead of endless rock tshirts (they are underneath the button downs). He wears sensible walking shoes and has been the rock of my existence, holding me up when I'm a limp noodle, keeping me going when I want to give the fuck up and ensuring my safety at all times. Sometimes I see him when he's having a good hair day and I think damn because he's adorable and handsome all at once.

He's the best best friend a girl could ever have. He's had some benefits over the years and he's lonely but not lonely at all and doesn't wish for change, oddly enough. And he's always quick to remind me that bad things happen and how you react is what matters. It's life. Put on some metal and get the fuck through it and out the other side.

He would have been the perfect husband except for all of the dealbreakers and red flags.

I know, he laughs.

Hey I held out for almost a month so fuck off.

Hope stopped the heart
Lost beaten lie
Cold walk the earth
Love faded white
Gave up the war
I've realized
All will become
All will arise

We sense each other. I'm a tingling-spidey and he's...just the Devil. I could call him something else, as he has asked me too, but it's embedded in his skin and his very being, just like my label, and we're too old to change them now. Grief and time have worn me down, I don't have enough sharp edges to hold onto something new.

I cocked my head and went to the door. Lochlan stirs but only half-wakes as I open the door in time to see Caleb reach the top step. Jeans and a long-sleeve thermal shirt that's a perfect fit. It's a kryptonite of a different sort watching a millionaire try and be 'casual'. He'll never be casual and I'll never feel comfortable in my tattooed skin around him when I probably should be in a ballgown just for tense and context.

(I get it, the song is supremely uninspired and phoned-in so hard it was like someone held up a recorder at a payphone it was playing through. While I will defend them until we're all standing in ashes, you can't deny Ben's (not my Ben) voice doing that thing, that pseudo falsetto he does, like when he sings Heaven please let me through is always fucking beautiful so sorry, not sorry for leaving it on repeat now.)

Caleb looks up and almost goes backwards down the stairs in surprise. Sorry, I-

I know. It's so late though. 

Bridget. 

He doesn't even need to ask further. I turn and hold the door. He may be the Devil but he is ruined and sometimes unable to cope. That's the theme of the Collective, how hard we need to lean on each other to help navigate the damage we have done to each other.

Ironic, but in the dark it's just devastating and now, here we are.

When I wake up it's still dark and he is sleeping peacefully. No more worry lines creasing his face, no more trembling with clenched hands. No more Mr. Evil Guy.

(That's my other fear, that we'll become a parody of ourselves with characters for nicknames, locked in a stereotypical storyline we'll never escape from but one that isn't good enough for a redemption arc or even a re-imagining.)

He is sleeping because he is locked around me and Lochlan is locked around him, a Devil sandwich, already gone bad but still something we crave when we should know better.

Muse ick.

Take it all down, Christmas is over
Do not despair but rather be glad
We had a good year, now let's have another
Remembering all the good times that we had
Oh, no more lights glistening, no more carols to sing
But Christmas, it makes way for spring

Why, yes, if you're asking. A Relient K Christmas continues. I need this music to live through the driving, as both Ruth and Henry are sporting fresh new careers, in and around their post-secondary educations, which thank God are on hold for a few weeks as the semester is over and doesn't resume until early January.

I need to put more music on the Jeep harddrive because bluetooth and I aren't actually friends. We will be as soon as Apple lets me override the notification settings while it's on to default to what I need and in the meantime I wait suspiciously.

Bridget, do you-

Not now, please. I am busy suffering.

For what?

For my art, dumbass. 

I'm coming back in an hour and I expect you to be civilized. Time starts now. And he leaves. I can't count so it's fine. Had no intentions of being civilized until I'm out of champagne, eggnog and REASONS (Champagne is only after all the driving is done).

Come back on January sixth! I throw a rock at his retreating form, missing by a mile, not on purpose.

Sam asked for a barometer (in writing) and so this is what I made. Enjoy.

When February rolls around, I'll roll my eyes
Turn a cold shoulder to these even colder skies
And by the fire, my heart it heaves a sigh
For the green grass waiting on the other side

It's always Winter, but never Christmas
It seems this curse just can't be lifted
Yet in the midst of all this ice and snow
Our hearts stay warm cause they are filled with hope

In spite of August taking over the Christmas playlist with his never-ending love for Kelly Clarkson, who does indeed put out a tremendously emotion-filled Christmas album in comparison to (most of) the others, I pulled rank, since he lives elsewhere and have parked Relient K's Christmas album. The boys are not impressed because I've played In Like A Lion at least fifteen times until PJ stepped in with his rarely-glimpsed impatience. It's profoundly sad and it takes them forever to realize that's why I love it.

Enough, Bridge. I'm going to change it for a little while.

The camper was a cage, walls making up the bars, door never left open lest I fly out and away onto the summer sky to somewhere new. New is a pipe dream and I can't see through to the other side. Freedom is a myth, told around a campfire to a small but eager eight-year-old girl with a sticky face and a reeling head from too much cotton candy after dinner, one who was never sure if a myth is a real thing like history or a dream-story like Treasure Island or Les Miserables. 

(Wait-)

He didn't wake up, didn't budge, didn't move a muscle with me in his arms last night and I'm sick this morning, overheated and under-comfortable. I'm already plotting to go somewhere else, anywhere else because Lochlan's fear is claustrophobic, suffocative, and terrifying in its strength. The eight-year-old is no match for it. The adult who hides her down deep inside even less so, as she had the most precious, incredible gift of ignorance and naivite on her side and I don't. Not anymore.

I can't find enough words to make that fear go away for him. Ben says Lochlan has to get rid out of himself, that I can't do the work for him. That I can't make him dependent on me for that, that he needs to figure it out and until he does, he will take it out on me.

He tells me to go-

I know. He'll figure it out. Just do what you want and it will either be enough or eventually he'll break and then he'll fix it. 

My mind flies out from my skull (bones are bars too) and finds Jake on a rooftop. Jacob couldn't fix it-

Aw fuck, Bridge, that's not what I meant. Loch isn't like that. 

"Like" what? 

But Ben has walked right into my trap. It's a widowmaker and Jesus Fucking Christ, I can't even set it up properly. I just walk in circles in the woods and every now and then I come across it and there's a man in it and the jaws are closed and I act so surprised, as if I had no idea this would happen.

And my brain will say, Oh! A MAN. Whatever shall we do with him? And then I pick his bones clean, cast a spell of resurrection, and we do it all again in the morning because what am I if I'm not some magical, carnivorous bird to sweep into this glorious nest at holiday time and get. fucking. stuffed.

Honey water and sweet sauce.

I'm sorry, I spent today on the drive with King of Donairs because you can't get a real Halifax donair here in Vancouver and oh, don't they know it. But that's okay. I bought an armload and then we sat in the car with copious handfuls of napkins and shitty cans of Diet Pepsi for the full 1987 effect and ate them off our laps, bringing the rest home for later.

(Spoiler alert: 'Later' was as soon as we had our coats off.)

I missed a chance to go to Rosemary Rocksalt (my second favorite love, just kidding, I love everything technically) and now I'm perusing subscription New York bagel deliveries online.

I've had four hours of sleep. I am a fucking mess but a Full and Content mess, fuck you very much and Sam says I'm going to go to hell because I haven't been to church at all and advent is just flying by, picking up speed as it heads downhill.

You should be the one to talk. 

I'll see you there. 

Good, because I've missed you. I give up the fight and let him have it only so he gets my point, shoved deep into his chest. I don't like Matt. I used to love Matt but then he hurt Sam over and over again. Matt is Sam's Cole and someday one of them will die from heartbreak. It can't be Sam. I will shelter him with my spindly arms but he won't be the one. He was meant for a greater life than this.

Or maybe this is the greater life. After all, we have donairs. Real ones. Not ones with lettuce, cheese or chicken. Christ, Vancouver.

Postevil.

I was kidnapped briefly last night for a nightcap. Caleb made us a couple of concords (so good! Violet tea, grape juice, gin and a bunch of other bits and bobs), and had a fire roaring away in the great room off the kitchen. I'm game. I'm always ready. Except he sat down after putting our drinks on the table and patted the space beside him on the big wraparound couch. The lights are off, only the fairy lights and the flames showing me the room, empty save for him. I move to sit next to him and instead he pulls me into his lap. Old dog, old tricks. I anchor my knees against his hips and lean forward for a kiss as he tucks my hair behind my ears.

Up close the fine lines of time melt into a crinkled, delighted grin and he is eighteen again. Up close his fingertips are soft against my head. Up close is the habitual, historical stubble that burns my skin so readily, flaying me open so he can suck the meat right off my bones, leaving me deconstructed, limp on the floor.

I turn and fetch our drinks, twisting at the waist without leaving his arms. A sip confirms it was worth accepting this invitation. He follows my lead, tipping his glass up without taking his eyes off mine.

This is so good. 

You're so good, Neamhchiontach.

I should be asleep. 

Come stay with me tonight. 

I tilt my head, watching him. What's in it for me? I tease him. It's an old tease, going on decades now, but only when things are good.

Whatever you want. 

I want some fresh baked bread. 

I'll head out in the morning. 

Right now. 

Let me make a call. 

I don't actually, I just wanted to see how you were going to pull that off. 

I was going to call the Keg and see if they could do take out. 

Oh my God, I love Keg bread. 

He laughs. You really don't ask for much. 

Have you ever made that offer to anyone else?

His eyes darken. Of course not. Actually, that isn't right. I did make the offer to Lochlan, and to Jacob. 

Were they on your lap? I make the joke before my brain can register the meaning and I want to cry suddenly.

You're worth absolutely any price to me. That has never changed, Bridget. You know this.

I finish the drink in one gulp, putting the glass on the table. His is only half-gone but he does the same. I move to get up from his lap but he holds my wrists, my hands against his heart. I lean in once again and give him a very soft, very light kiss.

Goodnight, Diabhal. 

Don't call me that anymore. 

I shall be my own lyric transcriptionist, and boy is it getting frustrating.

Remember this playlist? I think I've done it again.

When the broken fall alive
Let the light take me too
When the waters turn to fire
Heaven please let me through

Oh. So beautifully done. It's like The Great Divide and Psycho had a baby and named it Far Away. I wondered for a while if it would be a cover of Nickelback's Far Away and that had me a little worried because Jacob LOVED that song but this is new, thank God. And new Breaking Benjamin music is always an amped-up especially-excitable thing to a Bridget.

(If I had Spotify (I don't because industry reasons), my top artist would always read BB, because I default to them constantly. Not sorry.)

None of this is to be confused with anything else in my music catalog, like  Farther Away by Evanescence, Never Far Away by Chris Cornell, Deepfield's So Far Away (this shares a name with Avenged Sevenfold's So Far Away but the second is original while the first is a cover) U2's Stay (Far Away, So Close), So Far Away by David Gilmour (not related to the Deepfield or Avenged Sevenfold songs), Over The Hills and Far Away (Zeppelin, naturally), or Coldplay's Postcards from Far Away.

Intentional blur.

Lochlan looks at me when I come into the kitchen. He waves an imaginary flag. I would have forgiven him but he's playing a beautiful rendition of The Killing Moon and I hate it. Not his version, it's the best I've heard of that song, I just hate that song. It's one he plays this time of year. Sort of like Fairytale of New York, they're two songs that make up part of his fabric and he thinks immersion therapy will make me hate both less.

He is wrong but that's okay. He's not a huge fan of You Give Love A Bad Name and yet he tolerates me blasting it through the house like dynamite.

I can't believe an Irish person hates a song like this, he remarks at least once every time.

Well, believe it. I'll remind him, every time in return.

We actually have made up. He's articulated his lingering issues with Ben and with the fact that people don't change, that none of us have, we're still the same people we've always been, and that while time softens tempers and evens out moods, dulling memories, pulling them out of focus ever so slightly, certain personality traits and prevailing emotions will always be right there, in your face, at the forefront.

He's right. I told him that and his eyes lit up. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight for this anyway, fight to be better than this, fight to put a shine to what we have, fight to sort it all out once and for all. 

You're right, he tells me and that was when I knew the fight was over.

Aggressive Macaroni Penguins.

After Caleb and Lochlan's literal but brief tug of war over me, over their own fears, over all of history, past, present, future and beyond, I left. Ben has been absolved, or has he? What's the point of all this hovering, posturing and lying if everything is fine? Figure it out, you know where I'll be.

I didn't know where I would be when I left. I thought I'll go to the loft but instead my brain walked me down the path to Daniel and Schuyler's, where I apologized to Christian for coughing all over his new shirt but where is Schuyler?

Portland, he says with a frown. He and Daniel went for a quickie romantic weekend. 

But it's Tuesday! I wail and cough some more.

Maybe we can help. Andrew smiles at me and by eleven I am installed in the centre of their big bed, watching documentaries about penguins and drinking the ever elusive, always forbidden red wine. No one at my house lets me drink red wine in bed. Christ. By twelve the wine is taken out of my hand and I am asleep, dreaming of not ever going to the Antarctic because there's virtually nothing there to see and I think I would hear phantom raucous braying all the time after I left.

I am woken up at seven, gently, with orange juice, tea and a croissant and then lovingly sent home to sort my shit out. It's a message in itself. Andrew and and Christian do not have an open door but in a crisis they will step in and I love them for both of those points, frankly, and sometimes wish I did have an aggressive, penguin-demeanor when it comes to organizing my loves.

They did both separately text me later and thank me for the human-hot-water-bottle aspect of my visit, pointing out I may have had a fever.

Still do, actually. Time to slide off an icebank into the sea.