Overcoffeed already this morning, chewing on the headphone cord while I try and figure out how to clear this fog. I never have energy but I don't sleep and I eat too much sugar. I don't sleep because I worry too much but I can't let go and just give in to the medication, give in to the booze, give in to the endless, constant chronic reassurance that it's all okay, no, life is a goddamned white-knuckle extreme thrill ride and honestly I got every thrill I ever needed from the most basic standard Ferris Wheel and never asked for more. 

I have headphones permanently plugged in to my shitty laptop, an Asus zenbook (never ever buy one) that can be flipped around to become a tablet which still remains useless as fuck, the pencil is useless, the sound is so fucking bad except through headphones but I hate taking my airpods out of my bag because then I forget to put them back and get out somewhere and wish for them dearly. 

I miss the macbook but I have an ipad pro that can almost do everything anyway and Lochlan got me a folio case with a spot for the pencil and a full bluetooth keyboard and the sound and picture is unfucking real from it but I'm going to wear this laptop into the ground first before I go ham on the ipad, though I use it for drawing and for watching movies by the pool or in bed. 

I'm probably going to electrocute myself on this cord at some point but I'm pretty sure the four other times I got blown off my feet by electricity and lived to tell the tale probably explain everything we need to know about my brain, if not everything that came before those events. What can I say? It all goes into the mix, gets stirred up and whatever comes out is pretty much your fault. 

Especially the lower-lip-biting, which was a concentrated, painful reminder to think before I spoke but now serves as some sort of visual heartbreak to everyone. I don't know how that happened but Lochlan just said the cord is the same thing and please stop it. 

Guess I'll go back to just blurting out whatever comes to mind, whether I heard you properly or not.

Little electric nightmare.

Yesterday I think my energies got out of control. I don't know it was leftover dismay at my birthday year or the fact that Schuyler completely unpacked my very being, breaking it all down, taking inventory, and then packing it all back up again. Maybe he forgot to put the lid on, maybe there was an air bubble. In any case, I popped four balloons, three lightbulbs, broke a mug and failed to successfully replant an errant majoram sprig for no freaking reason even though I've been patiently pulling them out of the marconi daisies where they took up residence and moving them to a different section of the garden for the past two weeks and it worked great up until today. It rained like the dickens through dinner and I just bandaged up my hand from where the mug edge cut into my flesh and I took my shitty energies and went to bed alone. The dog joined me and then Lochlan, who slept with his elbow in my face. I had to get up like five times to pee even though I cut out my water at dinner and Ben came up in the single digits and woke me up again, mumbled sorry, turned away and that was that. 

I swear to God, I wish there were magic sleep spices that didn't involve severe tranquilizing. I wish there were vacations. I wish my energies extended to being creative instead of locking down and imploding. Here's hoping today is off the grid though. Yesterday grew exceedingly stressful and I don't want a repeat of it.

On the other hand, fully half the point is being vaccinated this afternoon and there are still like five pieces of birthday cake left and I get to cull favours in exchange for them, which is always fun. Oh yes, and it's Friday! Tomorrow is wiped clean just in case there are effects from the vaccine (it's Pfizer or Moderna, we waited for the government rollout instead of the pharmacy one, which is AZ) and I can watch and plan because I get my shot on Tuesday.

Aftersmash.

Working on big picture stuff, and prioritizing my goals today with Schuyler, from where I am newly jammed in between he and Daniel, all three of us in boxers but I get a warm long-sleeved t-shirt, because I am always cold now, having scones with jam and pretty good coffee. Schuyler likes to check in with people on the day after their birthdays now to help them set goals for the coming year and shed bad habits and old ineffective methods. 

I think you just banned yourself, I take another bite of toast. I try to keep it neat but Schuy leans over my face and steals a huge messy bite. 

Never, he says through his mouthful. This refines you. 

Daniel laughs. He is sleepy but loves having guests, loves watching Schuy play life coach. Loves watching Lochlan nap. Lochlan army-naps. He can sleep anywhere. And I sort of love having a life-coach who knows me. Who doesn't? Schuy is level-headed, organized, successful and retired so he has time to devote to helping those of us who struggle with meaning and whatever our definitions of success might be. I am loathe to realize my entire creative existence was borne out of pressure from my publisher and isn't even under my name and he is loathe to see how much that bothers me, after a fashion. And he isn't some stranger, some counselor brought in to work some sort of textbook program. And that's what I think I love most even though of course again, there is work ahead.

But in the meantime there are scones and semi-naked men. Savage Garden. 

***

It was a blissful birthday. A quiet, dry one. Lochlan outdid himself, right down to the tiny detail of telling Caleb he had already looked after champagne and a drink order and then made pink lemonade, from scratch. Dinner was outside. Pizza, which was awesome, and then ice cream cake inside and hot tea and balloons that burst at random, seemingly and made us shriek and laugh. It was one of the nicest and most wholesome birthdays I think I've ever had and I would do it again every single day if I could. 

We'll go back to being heathens tomorrow, Lochlan said. For tonight I just want to see you smiling like this.

A Joan of Arc (and smart enough to believe this).

Oh ominous place spellbound and unchildproofed
My least favourite chill to bear alone
Compatriots in place they'd cringe if I told you
Our best back-pocket secret our bond full-blown

I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind, I am a pioneer naive enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne 

It's an easy round and even number, somehow comforting and frightening all at once. It is a dividing line, a highway down the centre of the route you thought you were taking until you turn around to look back and realize you've gone off on a tangent, found a detour and you're very near to where you meant to be but you're in a different place altogether at the same time.

(Where are you meant to be, Bridget?)

(We've got to get off the road.) 

I shrug and readjust my pack. Somehow over the years it got heavier and yet somehow, over the years, I figured out how to better carry it. 

I feel established and knowledgeable and experienced. I feel like a scared teenager in a bad situation, one who felt tough right up until he called her bluff. 

I feel like I should fight. 

I'm too tired to fight.

I feel as if today should consist of eating cake and watching good horror movies. Maybe an eight-hour sleep afterwards. In reality today will consist of laundry, more laundry, dishes, bathrooms, vaccuuming (still can't spell it, how old am I again? ) and figuring out dinner as everyone rolls in. Maybe a little horror movie time later. 

There are presents on the table in front of my chair. I was sent to bed at eight last night in order to facilitate a balloon throne, constructed on the spot and these beautifully wrapped presents piled around it which I have to wait twelve hours to open. I did not sleep. I read (chipping away at The Pandora Room. Love me some Ben Walker mysteries) and then I tossed and turned and got up at five and cried. 

Lochlan laughed and reminded me how I tried to comfort him when he turned this age and somehow in his mind I minimized his feelings and for that I'm sorry even though it's been five years since that happened. I didn't know that's what it feels like, saying it's just a number and the numbers don't matter.

He is right. 

It isn't but it doesn't matter either. 

Life is confusing. You want to be taken seriously. You want to be left alone. You want to throw glitter around indoors and dance to music that's so loud it's criminal and then you realize if you get glitter everywhere indoors you will still be finding it on the next perfectly-round, even birthday. 

So don't. 

But consider it. Because you can.

(Destined to reign, destined to roam.)

Find yourself a love who looks at you like Darren Hayes looked into the camera in the nineties.

I'm not watching Savage Garden videos. You are. 

I'm not enjoying the last day of my forties. No sirree. We already got groceries. I'm wearing my tiara. We have cupcakes for later and this is it, boys, there she goes. I'm not looking back. Not going to let it get me. Not going to entertain the ghosts for free when it costs me extra, not going to let fear rule when love does it so much better. Not going to put up with much more bullshit as every single man who walks into the room says something along the lines of not being able to believe that tomorrow is my birthday and it's a really big one. 

A huge one. 

One I can't wrap my brain around but the numbers don't care. They just keep marching like troops in nice solid blocks, in step, in cadence with each other and with the ticking of the clock. 

How do you feel? Lochlan asks, for the dozenth time.

I have no answer for him, yet. This is too new.

Taking a village.

When?

It's for October, possibly November. By then things should be returning to normal. 

We hope. 

We do. If it doesn't work this fall then we'll do it next spring, but I think you need a change of scenery. 

Stop trying to get rid of me. 

On the contrary, Br-

Always your position, isn't it? 

Since I'll be going I can't be getting rid of you, as you say. This would be a break for you. Just a short one.

We'll see. 

That's all I'm asking. 

The Devil is plotting and scheming that if all goes well and the world gets better he would like to show me the Taj Mahal as he went to see it six or eight years ago now and I almost perished from jealousy. I'm aware it's a Stonehenge/pyramids thing in which it looks pristine and singular and in reality it's surrounded by crowds and probably a raging, overhyped tourist trap but I will risk it. Some things you just need to see. 

Hey, if you're bored and looking to spend money you could save Louisbourg.

Speaking of overhyped tourist tr-

It isn't! It's magical there. 

It was dull. 

Sorry we can't all demand high-excitement entertainment, but just the thought that all of those French people just showed up to live and work at a tiny little village at the very tip of the cape, far from home sort of blows my mind. 

You mean like all of us moving here to the point?

And its magical, right?

It is, yes. 

Then it should be saved. 

I say that every single day, Neamhchiontach.

Like all dreamers.

Sunshine.

Bacon.

The mystery of formatting that leaves a space and half between each line. 

Labradorite.

Italian coffee.

Gerbera daisies.

Benevolent ghosts that only want what's best for you.

Clairaudience. Clairsentience. Madness. What's the difference?

Sudden amusement as Save A Prayer starts on the stereo. This is PJ's playlist and he plays it off as an old favourite just for Bridget. Ha. This was the very first song Lochlan and I ever slow-danced to, the entire way through, without stopping. In the camper with the little shitty radio tuned to C100 on a hot summer day in September. I was eleven. He was seventeen now and I asked him what a one-night stand really meant because it was in the song and he told me and I didn't understand what he meant. I couldn't understand how you would want to touch someone you didn't love and he said maybe you love them in that moment and I said that wasn't love and he pulled me close in again. 

Exactly.

Dismantled devices.

 The safest place was never in a fugue state, addled by this haloperidol-haze, nor is it standing behind the Devil, an oddly cold and stark space, all smooth concrete and solid grey walls, lit from somewhere I can't see, perfectly safe and sterile. It isn't at the edge of the cliff and it isn't at the bottom of the dark teal sea. It's certainly not in my mind, they never gave it back and now I fight for every fucking. single. letter that bounces along in slow motion into the space where my dark little twisted mind used to be before they threw it away. It's not necessary. No one, least of all me, needs the thing anymore so take it out, make some room. We're going to stack it up with new memories, or at the very least, nothing at all. 

I had so many song lyrics. Four decades worth of rare beloved tracks, a collection that belonged in the Smithsonian for its vastness and pure attention to detail. I don't know where it is now. Someday someone will come across it and it will make barely a ripple in the news but people who catalogue songs in their brain like I do will understand the value and the significance. 

Oh well. 

Another thing gone. Like Cole. Like Jacob. Like Bridget, who used to live in colour and now exists in monochrome. Monowail. Monodidactic. Monotheistic. Monophone, to be sure.

Almost wrote 'shure'. You see this fight? Can you watch it from there? Should have broadcast live but they don't like that so I don't. Instead I exist here in this safe place I began with and then quickly lost track of. 

Underneath Lochlan's chin. There's just enough room for me to stand here. To sleep here. To wait here and take shelter here. This is comfort, nostalgia and security all in one place. It's the perfect size for me. Throw in a bonus heartbeat and his arms and I want for nothing today, not even words. Not even plans or meetings or emergency triage or saltwater baptisms or chemical lobotomies or long breaks for sleep. 

Just this. 

All these broken souls
Each one more beautiful
They don't, they don't know my heart
They don't know my heart

I'll send out my soul
To worlds more beautiful
But they won't, they won't know my heart
It's the darkest part

Fists clenched under my chin against his chest I can drag the music back line by line but I don't have to see any ghosts. Like I said, it's perfect.

I am yours and yours alone
Forgive me for my wandering on my own

That's the only time I feel better, is when I dream and He's there. 

I have an electrolyte sucker in my hand and a warm cardigan over my far-too-light summer dress. My favourite brown Doc Martens. I'm holding the rope of the swing with one hand and Caleb frowns at my rings. Wearing the whole stack. Heart diamond, simple white gold band, Ben's skull ring (I stole it years ago) and my Claddagh. I can never bend this finger. The sucker is wild orange. It's kind of chemically-tasting and not sugary but it works great and is far better than the IV I had yesterday. My skin is so bruised from it. The younger Russian doctor came by, left a trunk full of pills and checked my vitals as I slept for three days under duress, drugged up the wazoo but also I didn't share before that, at some point late Saturday afternoon I went outside to fuck around in the garden and managed to faint, face-first in the dirt. 

That was not a popular move and they had already booked him to come see me yesterday and so the visit was appreciated. He drew some blood, which I'll have the results for tomorrow, but predicted I am anemic, dehydrated and exhausted. Everett's sheets are barely laundered and I never did get a chance to demonstrate exactly how awful things can get for me even though we got pretty darn close. 

How is your sucker? Caleb is trying to wear me down. More words. More pills. More doctors, a better plan than talking to ghosts after breakfast and the dirt by dinner. He's so desperate to cover this up and somehow redeem himself he doesn't even listen anymore. We've had this talk a million times. I have it with someone just about every week. Am I getting worse? No, I'm the same. Always the same.

It's okay. 

You get so rundown so fast. 

I shrug. A hundred pounds doesn't give one a lot of leeway to bounce back. 

Tell me what to do because what I want to do is find a way to keep you from reverting over and over again. 

You know why and you know what my prognosis is. 

So we find a different doctor.

We've already tried dozens. They all say the same thing, the romantic definition being that I am a hopeless case if every there was one. 

I wish I had never touched you. 

But you did and now this is what's left of her. I bite the sucker in half, put the stick in his hand as I jump off the swing and head back through the orchard to the house. The whole way back toward the moon and away from the sun his shadow towers over me. Fitting, in a way.