Sigh. Not a public platform, no duty to do anything here but write letters into the wind, folks.

(I didn't come here to write about this. I had something I wanted to put down but I made the mistake of logging in email first and saw all of them and well, here we are. No post for you today, I guess, and definitely no post for me.)

Here goes (I'll say it once): 

Whenever a public figure/musician/person is 'metoo'd' people ask me if I'm ever going to 'talk about it'. 

Talk about what? 

I'm kidding. Yes, I know a lot of musicians and even some who have been cancelled. Personally. As such, since I saw the paper last night I am aware that Matthew Good is being cancelled as we speak. And I swear if I open my mouth about it, well, you'll never hear the end of it so I'm not going to talk about it. I will most likely continue to fight Lochlan to listen to an MG song the whole way through even though they murder me fully, and Lochlan will continue to try to skip the track to save my dear ruined mind. 

Yes, that's what I'm going to do. 

If I address these kinds of subjects, I can only speak to my own experiences and those I know directly. I may have met Matthew Good once or twice and if anything he seemed introverted, shy and awkward but also bitter and detached but that doesn't mean I have anything to say about this, because I wasn't physically there and opinions are always best left to those with actual insight. 

Anything else is ignorance, arrogance and assumption.

Stuck inside our own machine.

Six in the morning and Lochlan is very quietly covering Nelly Furtado's Try on his acoustic guitar by the woodstove, feet up, coffee within reach, his light falsetto making short work of the bridge. The lights are all on and the wind is positively howling outside. We're still facing down a week or so of minor snow but any snow is-

Oh, my. He has moved on to Neil Finn's Song of the Lonely Mountain. He's going through what I call my Quiet playlist, learning the songs as they are inoffensive and beautiful and heartbreaking each and I couldn't cull this down if I tried so he's got his work cut out for him for the next fifty years or so. 

This is so nice. Ben and Caleb are at their favourite points on the big couch, on their phones. Caleb picking stocks, most likely, and Ben fretting for the state of some of his friends who failed to diversify which works when there is a functioning music industry but not when there isn't and so if I could I would take Caleb's resources and pour them into Ben's friends to keep everyone afloat until this ends. 

Lochlan presses skip on the next song. Apparitions. He can sing it but you can watch me dissolve in realtime as I listen. Matthew Good is my spirit animal, my kryptonite and my certain destruction, I make no airs about that. 

All your faults in meeeee-

Bridge-

Loch doesn't want a vocal accompaniment, I guess. But now it's in my head. Ha. I can't outrun this. My psyche plucks out my hippocampus and my heart (thrown overhand, no less) in it's arms and comes running after me, flat out. 

But for now, I am faster still.

Back from the brink of the world.

(Hey, so yesterday's post is literally just an old war wound I needed to lick for a second and is not directed at anyone currently living here on the point, so don't assume. You can, however, assume I am fine and dealing with residual anger as it pops up. That's all, and sometimes I use this for a word-dump and I'm sorry if you arrived fresh as a daisy from breakfast and looking for entertainment. 

Also I didn't put a trigger warning on it because I don't do that, the whole site is a trigger warning. Hell, I am a trigger warning but again, thank you for the emails of concern. It's nice to have people out there who care.)

(Also had a week-long nonstop anxiety attack in there that almost did me in completely.)

I'm making an old favourite this morning, cocoa-molasses cookies (a variation on the recipe here) and trying to find a copy of the Violet Evergarden movie to watch, now that I've finished season one, the bonus episode and the special. Gosh, it's right up my alley. She and her gloves and her typewriter and her broken heart. I kind of wish I could whip off my hat and show mechanical ears the way she takes off her gloves to show her prosthetic arms but at the same time maybe not. 

I had a good laugh with Dalton over the fact that every character who carries a bag in these shows always always has an orange messenger bag that's completely nondescript. It's funny because I have an orange messenger bag and everyone comments on it and I love it so much. It's loud and ridiculous and matches nothing I own but it's also exactly something I would carry now that I no longer carry a designer bag. I gave them up and never looked back. I like function over form.

Dalton was a warm heart to curl up against this morning when I came in from running around the yard with the dog, who slept well and had the super-zoomies and wouldn't you know it, so did I and it was four less than zero out and they're calling for all kinds of snow this week upcoming but that's okay. It gets dark at five-thirty at night now and it's bright before I can finish my coffee each morning and I have hope because winters here are easier still than anywhere else. 

Caleb says that's why he moved us here. Easiest winter without leaving the country, or we would live in the Canaries right now, or Monaco or Sicily but since I won't leave Canada this is it, though it may not be forever. Our ten year plan is complete, the new five-year plan is now under way and then some big changes may take place, as that's what we've decided and it's not for sharing now but perhaps later. Ruth and Henry won't live at home forever but while they do everything stays the same so they have that glorious, underrated security and that's the takeaway here. 

Feeling safe.

The imposters were found out immediately but the charade has persisted through the years. Outward perfection. Perceived wealth. Oneupmanship, a sport as revered as any in these circles, where family tragedy was to be quashed down into a manageable, historical denial and the hype train rattles on. There's horror underneath every fresh coat of paint, and the lights we shine upon the hard parts are fuelled with gas. Designer labels and the exhausting pretense has left me cold, as I realized so early on that it was all so horribly wrong.

No, actually it left me angry, not cold. Learning how to reverse engineer support, belief, warmth and encouragement is an impossible task now and the efforts to try and escape the quicksand of compulsive perfection and ultimately endless failure is a gift that should not be wished upon anyone, ever. All of it could have been fixed with simple acknowledgement or extra effort but back then one didn't look inward, you didn't look behind you as you ran (something I always do, no matter what, even if it means landing on my face) and you certainly aren't going to go and talk to anyone about the fact that you were the one that found him swinging from the rafters in the garage when you were of such a formative year, were you? 

No, because you can always slap on another coat of paint over that and just carry on, right?

I was already fucked up before you gave me to the wolves and yet that doesn't matter one bit, does it? 

My entire life now dedicates itself to changing history and fixing all of the worn spots, so that this doesn't happen again. Twice as much work for me because you wouldn't do any at all.

Jar of hearts, almost but also I may just get out a jar because it would make so much sense.

There is a glass bowl full of foil-wrapped hearts on the big table in the kitchen. That table is sort of a catch-all. People paint and draw there. I do the budget there. It's where we spill over doing meal prep if we run out of counter space. It's where we dump our bags or personal things after leaving coats and boots and shoes in the front hall. It's where packages that have been delivered are left for their recipients and it's the first area of the house decorated for any upcoming holiday in the form of treats left out for anyone passing by. The table itself is a heavy thick maple with rough-sanded planks and a bench on each side with a wooden armchair at each end. It can sit ten for a meal and looks like a set piece from the top of the wall in game of Thrones. It's probably my favorite piece of furniture just for the variety of use it sees every single day and now it's decorated again for the first time since Christmas. 

One more appointment this afternoon and I have a few days free on the other side of it. I can't wait. There's been like twenty things to look after at the end of January into February and I forgot that I hate being super busy. 

Wish me luck.

Peaking at twelve hundred metres above sea level.

Five kilometres, straight up in the snow. Ridiculous incline. Coffee at the top and then the hard part, coming back down. Up is so easy. The reward of being at the top is so beautiful, I look forward to it. The punishment of my knees on the way down almost crushing. Coffee again at the bottom. The backs of my hands are so cold I am almost crying but the tired I feel is a physical exhaustion and it's such a beautiful change from the emotional (heavy) tiredness I am profoundly grateful. 

Sam baptizes us with snow and then saltwater. He smiles warmly as he does it, grateful also for the change of scenery. It's hard to believe we went straight from this peak back to a mountain of chores, but with all hands on deck we aced that too even as it involved a major bathroom repair, a truckload run across town and some electronics rejigging to make sure all of the property cameras worked, as two had stopped. We walked the dog, celebrated Henry's school victory and now I plan to sleep like the ghosts do tonight because that was incredible.

Pajamas and brandy at seven? Lochlan smiles. He loved today too. 

Hell, yes, I confirm. Who's going to turn that down?

In the quiet.

Not a wailer. I don't cry out loud. I flood into my sadness like a rogue wave, drowning in tears and pain and I try to swallow myself up into a little ball. I don't make a sound. I don't cry out loud. I don't cry out loud. That's either the way I'm built or it's a reaction to early instructions, gun against my temples, told that it would be safer both for me and those I love if I didn't make a sound and so I don't. 

They hate it. I didn't say enough at breakfast and got called out hard. I didn't make enough noise, didn't give a good reaction to a great plan. I sat, holding my triangle of toast with cheese with both hands, staring out the window as Jacob paced on the point. I'm having trouble getting rid of him, as my mind doesn't want him anywhere in our sights but my heart won't let him go so there he is and there he stays. 

Lochlan is having a sleeves-rolled-up, all-business sort of morning, hair tied back in a ponytail, low against his neck, probably wondering how to do battle against the nine-foot ghosts of my past in the bright sunshine of an early Saturday afternoon without the collateral damage of whatever inevitable lobotomy might occur afterwards. I would welcome it, he would not. He said I have a mirth, a light he never ever wants to be without. A tender presence that means his world and he's not going to lose, he said.

He said he'll make the ghosts go away, not because he wants to punish me but because he wants to help. 

Jacob comes up and taps on the window. Time is money. Am I coming out? Am I going to put up with this guy calling the shots? I can infer all sorts of attitude from that one knuckle-rap on the glass. 

I nod. Of course I am. Lochlan is everything and Jacob knows this. The minute Jacob was gone, Lochlan took back over again and he's determined to get it right this time and legally, hierarchically, and reasonably I believe him, and so does everyone else.

Watch over me.

Neither awake nor asleep I am on the steep edge in between, arms out, fairly confident in my balancing abilities, walking the line between dreams and life, as always. 

Jacob slides my bangs away from my eyes with his thumb. 

Morning, Princess. Nice to see you sleep. 

Drugs, I mumble, still clinging to that edge and not ready to pick a side. Issinevitable, Pooh.

Necessary evil. He kisses my knuckles, reading them with a strange look. Not sure in the end that he actually adored my tattoos or simply put up with them. I should show him the big X on my abdomen if he wants to really be surprised. 

Mmmmm. I turn away from him, back toward Lochlan, who is out like a light. 

A kiss bounces off the back of my head as I fall back into a shallow sleep and I forget to pay attention. He is there. I have to acknowledge him but if I don't is he actually there? He can be Schrodinger's Jacob and I can be in denial. I'm not actually crazy if I don't tell anyone I talk to him in the most unscheduled ways now. He just flits in and out of my days or nights like a will o' the wisp and I have to focus or he's gone again. I'm only doing this to remember his voice or the way his eyes crinkle right up when he smiles, right? I'm only doing this so I don't have to acknowledge that he's gone, across the marsh with the geese and into the dim twilight again, flooding me with a homesick cure, burying me alive. 

In the actual morning I wake up, the ledge is far off in the distance, depth of field putting it behind the fog and Lochlan is in front of the ghosts, who bide their time and their directives, left by me in another life but still holding and will never change. I keep my enemies close but my ghosts even closer and Jacob looks concerned but satisfied that Lochlan is jumping through Sam and August's hoops to keep me on track, so I don't go right off the rails. 

Where? (Crap, I'm busted.)

By the stables, just in front of the blackberries. 

And the other? 

On the roof. 

Far enough to be safe. He has his own ideas and I don't understand his any better than he understands mine. 

An open letter and a lot of freezing.

 Dear hearts,

I hope this missive finds you well. I am not dead. Instead I got roasted. Instead of being angry, Caleb was flattered and laughed about it all evening. Too bad, I was looking forward to my overhand flight into the sea but apparently he only gets angry if I act too stupid in front of him or more curiously, not stupid enough.

If you want clarity about the deal, there's a fine line between being crafty and then being shrewd enough to be able to ask open, honest questions that create a need for transparency and hard answers from the other party. They will realize you are smart, but perhaps not sophisticated and so instead of pretending to know everything and play along, it's much better to play confused and call it all out so that it is laid down step by step and there's no chance of ambiguity or coyness later. 

Works for me. *shrug*

Besides, he points out that our age difference is slightly less than a decade and perfectly acceptable so it's not really a 'daddy' thing. 

*'Mkay.*

In other news, I had a fountain pen explode in my hands this morning and spent this afternoon getting a thousand dollars worth of dental work done. I lost a filling a few weeks ago and then part of one of my big baby molars went with it and boy, that was fun. I hurt so I'm going to whine at PJ while he takes dinner shift. Have a good night.

Perpetually and decidedly not yours, 

Toothy Miss B.

Just checking in to say it's been an absolute pleasure. LOL

Caleb got a little too glowy-crowy this afternoon, picking at Lochlan just sharply enough to make me annoyed. That's almost the worst kind of mad for me because I get frustrated and stubborn and easily flustered. So when his phone rang and it was on the table he asked if I could grab it as he was talking to Lochlan (or I should say boasting) and so I did and it was his senior lawyer, the partner just checking in to congratulate him once again. 

I answered Caleb's phone with the name of his holdings company, as one does when you're not the phone owner and it's business. 

Ah. Good afternoon. Bridget, is it? How are you?

I'm fine, thank you for asking. How are you today?

Can't complain. Listen, is Caleb close by? 

Sure thing, just one moment. 

I laid the phone face up on the table and yelled, Daddy! Phone! 

When he's off the phone he's probably going to throw me out to sea.