Bye Petunia.

 Nope. Dogs went to someone else. Ben took them to another really good friend who is between dogs because even though they are beautiful girls, I couldn't do it. Have to put my dog (and my fear, apparently) first but Paul understood completely and the girls are safe with our other friend. Just yeah, not a big dog person, probably never will be and the whole 'look at them as small horses' didn't work at all. A dog is nothing like a horse. 

I get credit for trying though and I did welcome the chance to work on the dumber fears. I told that to Ben and he said he'll set a peat fire later.

Dogs of war, Petunia and Poppy.

 Did I mention I'm also afraid of large dogs? So what does Ben's friend do? He decides to go on a wilderness retreat (alone in a cabin that belongs to his family, just north of us) and leaves two of his four dogs with us for the weekend because these two hate car rides. They are three year old Cane Corsos. Both female. Both are supposedly small but they come up to my waist, both outweigh me by about twenty pounds. I didn't like either of them but damn, they love me and when introduced, Paul told them, literally, to 'love' me. 

You love Bridget-No, no, Loooove Bridget. And they would come and lean against me, one on each side and wait for further instructions. 

Meanwhile, I was told to stand still, with treats and once they stopped I could give them each one, with a pat on the back. Good girls. Then I was told to walk forward, and they came WITH ME. 

Another treat, another pat. 

Then they were told to stay (by me) and I walked forward again. Alone. 

I am turned around at the end of the yard. I tell them to come. To love and they both take a side and lean again. I love this so much. 

Leave them here, Paul. 

Right. I'll see you Sunday night. 

No, forever! I laugh. This is amazing. 

My dog pretends he can't hear me when I call him but if I even think about candy or breakfast foods he is right there, bruising my knees with his nose until I share. He is a little asshole but I love him because he sleeps pressed up against my legs at night and he is within sight always. But he's a Shih Tzu. They have hilarious attitudes. He will be safely away from these girls, who might eat him. They will sleep in their pens in the front foyer. Gates closed but not locked. They will not budge until I summon them, which I also love and I'm amazed that they'll be this content in a strange house with strange people. 

We repeat all the rules with Ben this time but not the 'love' guard-part. Just the come and stay parts. We're going to run with them in the snow all weekend. Paul is super happy with the plans. Apparently they vomit all over his truck if he takes them more than a hundred miles. 

Ha. My dog does that at twenty miles. We have to put him on someone's lap with his head out the window. I also get easily carsick and sit up front. Somehow I don't think we are the exceptions but maybe the rule here but weirdly I'm no longer afraid.

Rule 34: Don't ask questions you know the answers to.*

Sam is on deck this morning. When I come downstairs he has coffee ready. He is Ben's workout partner this morning but I get enveloped in a hard warm hug because Ben isn't even up yet. Sam has a key for the main house and he always feeds everyone first so I think I made a mistake in giving them (he and Matt) the boathouse. It would be more productive to have him here but if anyone should have some privacy it's them. 

Not me, I have none. Zip. Zero. 

The hug lingers forever and I lean back and swing gently against his elbow. His face is half an inch from mine. He smells like coffee and shampoo. 

Thought if we have time we can take our coffees out to the gazebo and talk for a bit. 

About?

Anything you want to talk about. 

Sam loads a tray with the cups and two bananas and off we go. I hold the doors. When we get there I crank the heat and close all the doors. The glass lets the light in and keeps the breeze out. He puts the tray down and I pull out two fat pillows and we sit crosslegged, facing each other. I pick up my cup, take a sip and burn my tongue. I peel a banana and take a bite to soothe the pain. 

Did you want to talk this morning? He tries again. I now have a huge mouthful of banana and am studying my cup with interest, trying to keep my mouth closed while I chew. 

Mrpghmw.

I'll take that as a yes. Lochlan is concerned that by scaling back the meds it will just cause a renewal of your anxiety-

Eharkkkr!

I'm sorry?

I finish chewing and swallow another sip of coffee. He's right. 

What do you mean?

Anxiety is my middle name. 

Right so what fears specifically are you dealing with right now?

Peat fires. 

What? 

I'm afraid of peat fires. 

And?

Flowering teas, but you know that one. 

Yeah, that's a weird one. But you can avoid both of those. 

I don't know, peat fires can smolder for AGES underground. Did you see the fog this morning? What if it wasn't cold air against warm air and instead it was-

Peat fires.

RIGHT.

Don't squander these resources, Bridge. 

Don't medicate into someone you'd all like me to be, Sam. 

We're trying to help. 

It's the same old song and dance, Samuel. I say it gently. I can't be fixed. We both, hell, we all know this. Drugs are just easy patient management. I get it. I can try harder but I can't keep doing this. 

Peat fires. 

They're terrifying. Look it up. 

I love you, Bridget. We'll find something that works. 

I know, I lie. I love you too. (That part's true.)

*(Yes, I know what rule 34 is. It's the irony here.)

Go, go, into the night again.

Some music is just for the cold. Or just for the heat. Or for somewhere in between but not for both. A.A. Williams is like that. I feel like when I play Williams' music I conjure wintertide and the trees crowd down close to listen near me, weighted by the snow. Monday marks the end of Yule for us. Though the Christmas adornments are long put away and we are obsessed with the minutes of the sun in attendance (7:54 to 4:48 now, we're getting so close to an acceptable amount), the absolute end of Christmas season is marked for us by Burns Night (this coming Monday) when we kill the power entirely on the main level and cook over the fire (outside if possible), read the poems of Lochlan's favourite Scottish wordsmith and toast, with our whiskeys held high in the firelight, to a simpler, romantic time. It's a fun ritual to mark the end of winterval, what we call it when we are finished with it and ready to move on to spring, ready to move on to a quiet, warm spell where the coyotes and the owls shut the fuck up already and let the birds sing their most beautiful songs. 

I have all my ingredients for the meal this year without scrambling. I'm so proud of myself for remembering but remember I have my big fancy planner and I write everything in it that needs to be done and I'm so organized I should be running the military from this steep crag above the ocean. A semi-benevolent antihero in a dress. The tiny reprobate witch with faltering power. The hopeful romantic.

I would order them to drop their weapons and push the snow clouds away. I would order them to stand at the ready and fix my fears. To keep things running smoothly without these endless cogs in the gears. Sometimes I panic so much I can't breathe. They send me out in the cold with a scout to watch over me, to listen to music in the wind, my orders to feel better tumbling like stones in the surface until they are smooth and ordinary and I can't pick them out from the crowd. It doesn't work but for a little while. 

Then I get caught up in chores or painting or this music and I forget about life for a little while. The small things can be piled into a mountain, for sure and then I look around and realize no one else is standing in front of this mountain, they have views as far as the eyes can see. 

I am blind to that and instead of focusing on the view my eyes are veiled with panic and pressure and surprise and I need to just follow their lead. 

As always.

Follow them up the street. Follow them through the woods. Follow them into the dark. Follow them through the years. Follow their paths, cut through the easy parts so that I can do it. Shadow them close and instructed and things will be okay. They make it seem easy, why isn't it easy for me? It's a white-knuckle insurmountable ride but I seem to be doing it, in spite of the ache in my hands and the fear in my heart, hardly blanketed by the snow that quiets the screams inside my head.

Hey Lochlan. 

Mmmmm?

Did you turn off the fog machine? (<-- That's codespeak for asking if he cut the amount of drugs I'm being given for My Own Benefit, something I have very publically begged them to do.)

Possibly. He winks. Not sure why we celebrate the start of the panic and the emotional tidal waves that just never quit but they sure beat the Nothingness instead. I wish we could somehow fix it down to a thirty-seventy split but this shit is not an exact science and I refuse to be a science experiment.

(Also, in writing this, even as I learned that I'm not all that medicated currently, I worked my way from A.A. Williams down to Bon Jovi and now we are about to sing Bed Of Roses at the top of our lungs. As we always have because it requires a full performance.  God, being twenty-one and having this song hit the radio was just the greatest thing EVER at one point. Awesomely, it still is. 

Music is the drug that works. Trust me on that.

I told you, Ben whispers against my head so hard it hurts. I press back and he kisses my hair. Welcome back, monstergirl. 

Pfft. Wasn't my idea to check out like that.

Maybe they should sell Bridget Care and give me two brain replacements a year.

What a beautiful day. Sunny, ridiculously cold and I was up early and downstairs letting the dog out before anyone was up. The dog usually has to be peeled out of bed around eight but some mornings he just needs to go and so I took him out and puttered around the kitchen while he explored what had to be every single inch of his run. This week alone I have seen one bear, two deer, four escaped chickens, fifteen horses (happily behind their fence) and eight llamas (also fenced). Sadly the bear was in the front yard and the deer were standing right at the edge of the ninety-nine waiting to cross. We wanted to go back and make sure they made it but the last time we returned to check on wildlife it had already ended badly so now I won't go back. 

But animals. Everywhere. It's so cold I've been living in heavy jeans and big sweaters and reaching for my gloves before a mask when we head out. Did I tell you? My hands got cold and I dropped my early Christmas iPhone and now there's a hairline crack across one corner. Guy at the Apple store is like 'Don't worry! Two screen replacements a year!'  and I was like what the fuck I'm still getting a screen protector and all the boys said not to bother but not sure if they noticed it's such a freaking hassle to go to the Apple store and then wait for the phone to be done and half the time they give you a refurb and I don't want a phone someone else dropped so how is this great again and now I have a screen protector and I tell myself there's no crack. 

You really have to look to see it anyway. 

But yes, I've been so cold and I usually am too warm so this is really great. You can always put on a second outfit over the first, turn up the heat, find some arms or crawl into the woodstove, right? But you can't take that last layer off so I'll choose cold any day and that's saying a lot because I lived in the Prairies for eight years and every single winter morning I woke up, looked at the temperature in debelief because I didn't even know you could still carry on as usual when it was that cold and resolved to never live anywhere cold again. 

Regardless, this is a pipe dream because not only is it January in Canada (even on the relatively mild West coast where I am) but as I said, I hate the heat.

I did let the dog back in (he promptly ran back upstairs and went to sleep on the floor near the bed) and had a long hot shower. Then the day got underway. Not so busy but busy enough but I never did get warm and tomorrow we've tossed around the idea of doing some winter kayaking before the snow hits on the weekend and my mind is changing to naw, let's stay in bed and stoke up the fireplace instead but I know fresh air (warm or cold) is really really good for me.

(As I said, some days I try.)

(I mean, if you want me to be picky, I prefer the Sumatra or at least a darker roast, black and God, don't give me so much food but) Out loud a warm thank you (and a big tip) is fine.

Gloves hiding my knuckle tattoos with my pale green wool coat and a boughten coffee today in the cold icy sun as we embark on a little business first and then a little breakfast after and I tried to make butternauts but the butter was too soft to carve properly. Lochlan told me I should ask for cold butter but I wasn't about to do that. That's how the butternauts started and maybe this is how they will end, drowning to their deaths in the tiny square graves of my blueberry waffle, screaming silently until their little helmets melt into their little bodies and we'll never know of their myriads of adventures because they can no longer speak. 

Besides, unless something's really wrong I don't ask for extras, favours, substitutions or something different. That's a pretentious thing to do, I think and so I just don't do it. I worked in food service. People like that suck. I mean, of course I'd like double pickles on my MacDonalds hamburger but I'm not going to ask for them because that wastes their time and it messes things up and seriously I can put more on at home and-

You never did want for much. 

Still don't, I point out helpfully. We are tenuously getting along. It's so wonderful. I forgot how well we work when we're not arguing but also I should point out that things always work best when he is the dad and I am the child. That way no one can argue with him. Except I'm not a child and I found my own voice and my place in this world and goddammit, if I see a double-standard, a bluff or a just-plain-wrong, oh, you're going to hear about it. 

Hence, his attempts to distract me with the temperature of the butter and the unfortunate but completely predictable death of an entire platoon of melty little butternauts. 

Huh. 

Maybe we should have just grabbed a burger, after all.

Old standard.

 Since PJ has been cranky lately (a usual this time of year) and Lochlan and I are at odds, Ben has been sent to play fake guardian angel, keeping the true angels away while I flail through life bouncing off a flannel shirt or eight as I go. Better than an electric fence, I suppose as the zap and subsequent bark from the big black bear wandering out of the driveway kept me rapt in the early hours, between waking up and being allowed to actually leave the room long enough to have a shower. Then I had to wait for Ben to be able to go downstairs and get coffee, and now he is my shadow that blocks the sun. I don't exactly mind. I miss him when he's not around and he parked me within reach for two hours already this morning while he did a workout and ran through his morning routine which involves quashing cravings, healing traumatized brains and retraining short-term memory. 

(For both of us, truth be told. Only he makes real, visible progress and I am so jealous I could cry.)

The reward is a walk on the beach, a scream into the wind (still within reach) and a long talk about how I'm feeling. If you're wondering how that's going it's going great. They are forcing me to take the meds, they don't care if I can't think for myself or feel anything and I'm never alone so no privacy, no quiet time, no lunch being just what I wanted to have without either taking it to a vote or having to make enough for two or three people. I get it, I am a horrible little troll who needs to be babysat and also if I'm not I have a tendency to make ghosts my new best friends and in their place the devil, besides and no one is actually mad at me today. Sam thinks by staying I didn't get hurt worse, Lochlan can't even believe I called his bluff and went in the first place. Ben is mildly irritated that I didn't bring him along for kicks protection but at least he says how he feels upfront and doesn't expect me to fix it for him or do anything different, though I pointed out he was right and I should have and I won't do it again (without him, as if I am not tired enough already). He liked the apology even though he said it wasn't necessary and pointed out it's going to be a better year. 

Besides, more daylight, Bee. What does the sun come up at now? Seven?

Seven-fifty-seven. 

And it doesn't set til like six now? Right?

Four-fifty-four.

You still count down to the minute. 

Yes. 

Why, Bee?

I'm afraid of the dark. It's a frank statement. I am. I wasn't, once, but I am now. 

I think you should stay on these meds. 

This is a death sentence. 

Give your brain time to rest. Go off them later. 

I know. I know the logic. I don't want to live like a zombie.

You're not. 

How do you figure?

You're cranky today. That's a feeling. 

Lochlan said it's an attitude. 

He worries for you. Be comforted in that.

Jesus antlers.

He pressed his thumb against my lips, forcing it in gently until it came to rest against my front teeth. A smile spread across his face so slowly it poured like golden molasses in the late-morning hazy sunrise. 

Skip Jesus today. Please, Neamhchiontach.

What's in it for me, I mumble around his fingers. Christ. Hobble me and I'm yours. Easy catch. Fish out of water. Fawn in your highbeams, I'm roadkill before I even knew there was a highway underneath my legs.

Satan. Satan's in you. I mean, in it for you. He laughs softly. He leans forward and kisses my cheek. 

Jesus won't be very happy with me. 

I'll run interference for you, he whispers and pulls the blankets up over our heads.

***

I skid into breakfast late. Bedhead. Uh, bitemarks you can't see and they're not deep but they hurt nonetheless and I am chagrinned. I forgot about this. I forgot what day it was other than Sunday and then I started thinking about knowing Sam's sermon because he wrote it when I was present and then I remembered the late brunch we planned with a whole trunk full of mushrooms we got from a forager down in the valley who said we wouldn't regret it for a second so omelettes and a fritatta were planned and I knew last night's invitation was going to cut it too close and I was right. 

Or should I say, he was right. He is always right. Lochlan has never lost an argument in his life. He's abandoned a few of them but everyone still knew he was right. He isn't less than a hundred percent integrity unless he's stealing out of necessity and then it's still absolved via a good deed or a generous gift. His karma is straight up, level and replenished easily. 

And boy, is he mad. 

I throw myself into my chair. The plates are already on the table.

You're in rough shape-

I'm fine. 

He stabs his eggs with a fork. Sam needs to baptize you again, I bet and then you need a swim to heal those bites. I could see the way you were moving from the second floor landing. Before you checked yourself. 

He didn't mean to-

It doesn't matter what he meant to do. 

I asked for-

BRIDGET. 

I bite my lip. 

Just don't say anything. Do I need to look at the marks? He's not looking at me as he asks. It only serves to make me feel worse. He's never going to ask me to stop. If he did I just might. 

No. They're fine. Nothing's bleeding. (Except my heart. My heart is always the exception here.) 

We eat in stony silence. Jesus does not fill the space. Of course Lochlan didn't go to church. He stays home and works himself into a lather if I'm with Caleb. But he won't tell me not to go these days. Instead he nails himself to the floor and blames me for it. I have nothing to do with this. This is between the three of them: Caleb, Lochlan and Jesus.

La Moldau, though. Damn.

Moved. 

(Plus it's easier to talk about music than anything else. Ben taught me that.)

Something about playing piano before eight in the morning is beautiful. I think I've sat down with my coffee cup at hand every day for the past ten days and tried to bang out something or other. This morning was Merry Go Round of Life from Howl's Moving Castle. A gorgeous, upbeat piece, almost reminiscent of Vivaldi without the freneticism. Like Brahms without the jumpscares. More sophisticated somehow and less jarring. Always and forever flows better, and yet has a simple optimism that keeps you engaged right through to the end. 

It's like going to a museum Hemingway-style. Hungry. 

Half-awake Bridget appreciates things without perspicacity very early, before the day throws itself on me, making me bitter, picky.

It almost cured my headache so now I've moved on to some Debussy with a little of the quieter Dvorak sprinkled throughout. 

Okay, now Dvorak takes the fuck over.

A second cup of coffee, the first long forgotten and ice-cold poured out and replaced with a fresh hot cup and some toast would do me well right now even as the pain in my head is almost drowned out by the trumpets I can hear only on the inside as I play along.  Dvorak is king.  This is beautiful. The resonating strings-

Fuck this. Going to get my violin so I can do that beautiful climb. Maybe I just need a classical soundtrack to give me momentum because holy shit this works. 

(You know you loved it when you grieve at the end, because it's finished.)

No net no net no net no net oh there's the net.

 You know what happens to a candle when you find out it's counterfeit wax as in there's a birthday candle rolled in super-cheap wax. The middle burns down and the rest doesn't budge and eventually it smoothers itself because the melted wax has nowhere to go and so it eats the flame? 

That's me on drugs. 

And I can't do it. I can't write. I can't sing. I can't paint. I can't settle enough to read a book or kayak. I just float around like a shell, a breathing ghost. The cheap wax on the outside. Have you seen the past few weeks? Paralyzed by stationery, indifferent to ghosts and the living alike? It's almost better to feel everything than nothing. It's better to suffer for this art of a life, it's better to not be immune, untouchable and hard. A jar of hearts won't help me like this. Lochlan hates it but feels desperate. Caleb can just buy better. PJ can't even be in the same room with me, he says it's a stranger, but he doesn't say that to me directly, just to them. Ben tells me to shhhh, that it's necessary to stabilize everything and then maybe we can see about trying tiny changes but to leave it for now because they can't have me standing on the edge of a proverbial, figurative cliff 24/7, that they are tired. 

That they worry. 

That they can't control the ghost without the pills. 

It makes me laugh. 

Jacob is not a ghost. He's real and it's my dreams trying to clue me in. It's my intuition, feeling him near. It's some magnificent attempt to drive Lochlan away for good to pay him back for being a scared teenager. It's a wish for a do-over and had Jacob even come near me I would have shouted for him to stop, shielding my eyes, hand up as if I could physically keep him away. 

If I could go back I would and I never would have met him and Caleb can't BUY that but oh what if he could, instead of golden rings and glass houses and other mens' loyalties? 

Thanks to my metabolism for medications this casual, chemical lobotomy isn't going to be enough. My brain is four minutes into Everglow, my brain is down the block screaming so loud you can't even hear it from here. My fingers are back to fluttering and I am not at peace right now, I don't care what your eyes are telling you. 

I look at Sam, sitting at the table writing sermons in his field notebook, his favourite stubby little Kaweco pen glowing warm from overuse and I want to scream in his face but I haven't come back from down the block yet. 

I need my outlets-

Right now you need peace of mind, he says gently. 

Lochlan nods. It will all come back. 

And in the meantime?

Bounce off the walls, Peanut. I'll catch you.