Dear.

Yesterday I was refreshing and repainting the mural on the side of the boathouse and so I spent all day on a ladder with two two-hour breaks and now this morning I am all but in traction, a twisted pretzel with aching limbs and core and a blistering headache to boot. I had my big floppy hat with the chin tie and I was in shade for most of it but that still doesn't change the sheer effort, especially since the previous day I cleaned up the entire perimeter of the stables, pulling out endless giant weeds and keeping a quick check somewhat regularly over my shoulder for the bears. I saw three deer up at the top of the glade nearer to the road and they took my breath away and then ran with it back up toward the mountains. I don't even want to think about where or how they cross the highway. I've seen the dead ones and it breaks my already broken heart but there isn't much I can do about it and also sometimes they jump into traffic out of the trees and it's just simply too late. 

I also, without any guilt whatsoever, ate PJ's croissant for breakfast this morning.

And never ever feed him after midnight.

My rules were much the same as Caleb's, truth be told. No alone time unless someone is very nearby. Outside is fine. No trips. No overnights. No lies. No defending the Devil from the actions he takes, only to be excused away by my practised, immature inner voice. She will let him get away with anything. He made sure of it with threats that she once believed and doesn't anymore, but it all happened at such a young age that it made something grow crooked inside her. 

(Spoiler: It was her/my brain.)

Loch made me pinky-swear to him and I did easily and then we had a picnic on the windy beach below, egg salad sandwiches, tonic water and baked chips. A favourite meal. We watched the logs bump on the shore and the foam ice the tops of the waves and he asked me what I would change. 

I want to be like everyone else.

How do you mean?

I don't want to have to need pills to function properly. I don't want to be taken at face value. I want to be deep and mysterious and together-

I look at him and he is shaking with laughter. Of course I'm not offended. Just fatally curious as ever. 

What's so funny? 

You are who you're supposed to be. I don't like hearing you doubt yourself. The pills are-

They make me thirsty and I can't concentrate-

For now and we'll deal with later in a little while. You are deep and wonderful and beautiful. No one here wants a robot or a superwoman. We just want you. Safe. Happy. Not hurting. Not being hurt. Not suffering. Not being tortured or in distress twenty-four hours a day. You promised you would trust me but I see the way you look at me. 

I don't-

You do. It's as if I have become the enemy. And I never will be, Bridget. We'll get through this. Even if it takes the rest of our lives. But I'm not going to let Caleb consume you slowly or try and tear you away from me. 

He can't.  

But you can't let him go and I understand that but he's going to do some real work on himself too and we're all going to get to a healthier, less-fucked up place. Or die trying. 

I nod. Is it hyperbole? No. Is it encouraging? Maybe. 

A little, anyway.

Hands inside the cart at all times.

I woke up to shouting this morning. Caleb was back first thing and PJ sent out a heads up which is interesting because PJ sleeps in on Sundays and to wake him takes an army. Maybe that was it, the army's sole dissenter rode up and PJ snapped to, and before I woke up I guess some of the others tried to get him to quietly go again and he was having none of it. 

Because he knew I was taking two steps forward and three back. The usual. Things seem okay, make a little progress and then turn around and let go and slide all the way back to the beginning. It's a human game of snakes and ladders and grief is the snake and life is the ladder and he doesn't want to be left behind. 

Ha, like me on the stupid log in Call of Duty. That never gets old. 

Jacob didn't stay. It's fine, I think Caleb learned his lesson too, I point out to Ben but Ben is watching body language and keeping me from moving forward (three steps back, Bridget) while Caleb and Lochlan get further away. They walk down the driveway and I am left wondering if Caleb is going to shove Lochlan next and maybe he'll fall and hurt his head and forget me or I'll have to feed him for six or eight weeks while he learns to use utensils again, helpless and weakened in the space of one calculated moment of overwhelming emotion. 

Which is why we are always stuck right here in that before moment. 

Jacob gave me a gift and I'm not squandering it, I swear but my curiosity is a lethal mistress, always and I strain to read their expressions as they return. Caleb hurries ahead of Lochlan and sweeps me into his arms in a hard hug, my feet off the ground. 

I missed you, Neamhchiontach. His voice breaks. Lochlan is allowing me back early. He has some rules I can easily agree to if it means I can see you. He touches my face, my nose, my ears. I just want to know the rules. 

Tell you later, Lochlan says as he brushes past me when I look to him for confirmation. I'm sure there will be another set of rules for me to listen to later when it comes to the devil but what good is an army with missing soldiers? What good is an angel without a devil to be the foil? And what the heck is the summer going to look like now that there's no countdown and a velcro-ghost, stuck like static on a fine silk shirt to my skin, inside my heart, all over my face, written like a letter I never read?

For a moment a lesson was learned.

PJ got me a foot long sub to conquer today and I don't think I can do it. Haha. It's crispy chicken with lettuce, tomatoes and pickles and sweet onion sauce and it's so good but so huge. Worth the money when you can get lunch for eight people for a hundred bucks I think. And he just gets the big ones so you can eat half and save the other half for dinner or eat the whole thing for lunch so it's decisions made. So I don't need to make pizzas tonight like I had planned and instead I can throw some pottery. Which I'm going to do now because it's a break for my mind and I can focus on building and technique and squish mud between my fingers and make a huge mess and I don't have to worry or fret or be anxious and that's a gift.

The fretting is creeping back and that makes me fret more. I hate it. 

It's Thursday and I'm back.

I was not planning to take another four days off from writing but sometimes things happen and in this case it was total mutiny in the form of Benjamin and Lochlan not letting me leave the bedroom for over forty-eight blissful hours of breakfast in bed, long naps, a whole host of movies on Netflix and at least three blistering-hot bubble baths, sorely needed after what seemed to become endless gardening and fixing up and changing and planning and I did not mind it and had a burst of energy which always seems to be followed by a long rest as I will continue to run until I can no longer breath or see. 

Until my legs will no longer carry me and my heart abruptly caves in, slowing to a dangerous crawl before a staccato beat is detected in the air and Loch comes running. 

Because he just knows. Knows when it changes, knows when something's different, knows when there's a shift in the matrix and something is wrong. 

Jacob followed me inside on Tuesday, screaming helplessly at my retreating form, shoulders rounded in against the rain, head down against the wind, legs wet from the tall grass, ears broken to his pleading voice. The wind took it and it wasn't until I reached the patio and pulled the doors across the tracks that his voice came into focus and I could hear him and so I was granted half of a one-sided conversation which makes things neither comprehensive nor fair. 

I tried to respond but then Lochlan was there with a warm towel and he started to say something but then he abruptly told me to finish my thought, and then he never took his eyes off me as he told Jake to please leave and then I heard and felt nothing after that and we were alone. 

Then he watched me for a few minutes as I started to stutter and flutter and lose my shit and he cancelled the week and everything else too and he called for Ben and that was that. Four arms to hold me while the ghost of Princess Past breathed on the top of my head in my mind but not in real life and sometimes they get a little bit mixed together and so this was a much needed reprieve. 

I know I'm never going to be okay, I was never going to be the same anyway, and this always serves as a reminder that I was supposed to be something special and instead I'm just something, alright.

Doesn't matter what flavour (and it's the only time I don't care that I'm allergic to food colouring).

Planted the potatoes, tomatoes, basil, wildflowers, peas, beans, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, pumpkins and sunflowers yesterday. 

Very excited. Wore (that took a while, kept writing whore. SNORT) myself out a little in the heat and we had slushies from the gas station for dinner so not a loss exactly and I am excited to see if any of these seeds come up. It's supposed to rain all week so who knows? I'm just glad it's done. We also gave a spare lawnmower and a bike to the neighbours which is nice because it saves them a few hundred dollars and frees up some space for us.Win-win. 

I want to do the front gardens a little better but I also have zero energy and no one else does either. Fun times! 

Might get another slurpee today and snooze by the pool. Duncan has an exceedingly comfortable lap to rest my head and unless Lochlan randomly tickles me like he does when I nap by the pool it could be a good day. 

(Oh my god I just realized I can buy a slushie machine. BRB shopping.)

No one banished the bug.

Today I had a phone call from the Devil, which I was permitted to answer, I got bitten by a ladybug after doing some garden prep ahead of this weekend's planting and I was cleared to swim, and so swim I did, first around the point after jumping off the cliff to celebrate, and then in the pool this afternoon with the boys and the cover a quarter open to the sunny skies, as we celebrated the first nice day this year. It's almost twenty degrees and I am embracing it. 

Daniel also trimmed my hair for me as it somehow grew two inches after he cut it all off a month ago and so this time it is boy-short and I love it. 

I harboured no bad feelings toward the ladybug, who didn't want to be trapped under my shirt any more than I wanted it there and I released it into the backyard after losing and catching it twice from the couch to the patio doors. 

The Devil is doing well and was very pleased to learn I have the all-clear and there is hardly a mark there now, just a pink semicircle where the punctures were. No more scabs, and the bruising has faded to a yellow-brown shadow. Not that I would know but Ben looks and then gives me highly detailed reports from my backside which makes me laugh and then he'll make terrible jokes or even worse propositions and I have to bury my laughs in my hands because it isn't supposed to be funny. 

But yes, floating in the coldish pool in the warm sun on a Friday afternoon is possibly the best thing. We even invited Batman and New Jake but neither of them showed while I was there. Maybe they did later. I'm hoping to go back in after dinner for a quick swim but dinner is always so late and I have to wait an appropriate amount of time so maybe not tonight.

Maybe tomorrow though.

Progress?

This morning I asked Lochlan if we could audition for the new iteration of Ringling. 

He didn't say anything but he also didn't say no.

The tin girl (who already had a heart so she wished for a brain instead).

Oh, don't mind me. I was spraying painting some old picture frames out on the far lawn. I put down newspaper weighted with small rocks and I grabbed my trusty chrome and copper metallic krylon cans and went to town. I was having a good time, holding each frame up by one corner so I could get the inside edges and outside all the way around and then I laid them flat to dry. An hour later, same deal on the back side of each frame. 

They're now having a final cure up on the porch floor by the patio doors so I figured it's a good time to go clean up as my hands are bright silver up to the wrists. 

And the nail polish remover didn't work. 

Neither did the paint thinner. 

I think I should have learned my lesson with that oil-based exterior paint that time but apparently I HAVE NOT.

(Also I have pretty silver rocks in the corner of the yard now which is really neat looking, truth be told.)

Hoarding daylight.

Dalton and Duncan are making a farmhouse breakfast for the whole point this morning. Baked beans, scrambled eggs, toast, super-thick bacon and fruit bowls and coffee and juice and I am here for it. Pastries too because we have scones and croissants to use up and then we are doing a major rain-gardening event today. That's where you garden in the rain, if you were wondering. It's a bit messy but the ground is soft, the plants are happy and if you leave everything on the lawn afterward you can go back the next day and all the shovels, rakes and claws are clean so you don't have to waste water hosing everything off and waiting for it all to dry before putting it away. Saves a step, if you will. 

Also nothing beats coming inside and changing into dry clothes and warming up by the fire so that's maybe the best part. Maybe we'll order pizzas tonight too and just have a quiet day catching up. I am still exhausted from the wedding whirlwind and still in awe that Ruth is married and so my brain has been drifting along on auto-pilot since. Lochlan too, though he did take my phone away since Caleb won't stop messaging me and he stuffed it in a drawer I can't reach in the walk-in closet and then for good measure took the little wooden stool away. 

He asked me to not reply if I need my phone back, which I do. If Ruthie messages me to go to Marshalls with her I need to know, you know? Then I will load up on handbags and everything will be well. A handbag addiction is an attempt to organize your life, or so I've been told and I'm terrible at it, I guess. Maybe a Longchamp or a Gucci would change that, right? Oh, probably not, but a girl can try. Valentino will look smashing with my new button fly jeans and my twenty-year old Switchfoot t-shirt, right? Right? 

Of course it will. Valentino looks good with everything. 

Not like I'm going anywhere though so maybe just a Longchamp, but only if the leather ones aren't heavy. I have a Rogue bag by Coach that I can barely lift and need to sell but I also want to keep it because it's easy to organize. And it fits my laptop and my ipad. So there. 

I also have a bag coming from overseas presently. So excited. 

Give me a break, it's the only vice I have left, if you don't count men.