Downhill is faster.

You know what? I'm pissed off now. I fired my counselor this afternoon as I was leaving her office right in the middle of my session. I don't care. I'll take Jake's omnipresent subjectiveness over her judgmental crap any day. I don't bust my ass getting across town to her ghetto carjackville office that many times a week so she can be disapproving and snarky. Like she's sorry she wastes her time on me because there is happiness here. Because that woman could not talk a kitten off a ledge and I actually feel a little fearful if she is considered to be a resource for women who've been beaten up and don't have someone like Jacob in their lives.

I was so angry when I came home I sent PJ home and then I called and cancelled everyone. I cancelled the physical therapist and my weekly checkup. I don't want anyone here. I can't take it anymore. Didn't I say last week that I felt self-destructive?

Maybe I'm nuts because now I'm alone in the house. Maybe I am nuts. Maybe Cole should have just snapped my neck because he could have and if he really wanted to kill me he simply would have. Maybe I don't deserve the brief moments of overwhelming joy with the angel Jacob who walks this earth to protect me and to love me. Maybe he is temporary. Nothing that wonderful ever keeps. Nothing is ever in my life for long if it's good. I don't have that kind of luck, folks.

Maybe I just need to sleep. Going to take some of those zombie drugs and lie down for a bit.

Bullshit

Jake just sent me this quote from the guidelines of the ministry:

    The social behavior of the minister ís spouse is naturally open to common scrutiny and judgment in the same fashion as the spouse of any other public figure. This person must therefore appraise his or her conduct within and without the congregation in this light.
Attached to it was a link to a local bar announcing their new mechanical bull has arrived and the contests begin this weekend.

He is SUCH a freak.

I called him and pointed out that while right now my injuries prevent me from appearing this weekend, hopefully by July I should be okay to go ride. Serves him right to have that mental image in his head for the rest of the afternoon.

(For the record, I don't nor have I ever felt the need to ride a bull and I haven't set foot in an actual bar since the mid to late 90s.)

Of course we fight.

You people thrive on drama. That or you're all in a very bored post memorial day slump and you're reading blogs instead of doing work. Either way, keep it up because my American readership DOUBLED yesterday. I love it, maybe I'm a passive attention whore.

Or just a whore if you read my gmail. I'm sure it's all the girls who thought they'd capture Jacob over the years but he didn't see them because he was only looking at me have decided pestering me with nasty emails is the new gossip.

And no way am I posting the Mother's Day pictures online, much as I'd love to, my kids are in them and I won't be putting their pics on the interweb. If you feel like you're missing out, you are. They're amazing photos.

Someone on gmail told me to wait until reality set in, that pretty soon all the daily bullshit would crop up and life would no longer be sparkling and new. The post-honeymoon phase.

Right. Must be a new reader who wasn't paying attention. Jacob has been in my house 5 days a week for various reasons or a hot meal or a movie or whatever. He's been a permanent fixture since the winter of '98. That's a long honeymoon phase. The only difference is that now we can touch each other (all over!) without anyone feeling guilty. Like asking for a cookie and being given the entire Keebler Enterprise.

So in honor of the doubting thomases who read, here's a newsflash. Of course we argue. We started out arguing. We have argued through so much crap. Oh the stories I could tell. My all time favorite argument took place on a country dirt road in the moonlight after a hayride and we were screaming at each other and we never resolved it but I got and gave a damn big hug at the end because we love each other with no conditions attached. Always and forever.

And there's one revolving argument that never goes away, especially now. We have it 4 times a week every week and it will never be resolved. Because I am a stubborn girl.

The Great Hearing Aid Debate.

Because Jake loves to discuss my hearing disability. He loves to point it out. He likes to exploit it by saying he said something he didn't.

No, he doesn't exploit it like Cole exploited it the night he snuck up on me and plowed me into the wall. Not cool.

But of course now Jacob says hearing aids would be good for my safety.

Somehow I don't think it would have made a difference. If I had heard Cole I would have been thrown elsewhere. Possibly into traffic. Hearing him wouldn't have stopped him.

My issues are with background noise and certain low notes. I really have to concentrate. It's very tiring. Sometimes it's nice to be in my own world in that noise. I can't really explain why I won't wear hearing aids. He offered a cochlear implant. I don't want to go through surgery. I actually just like pretending my hearing issues don't exist and he's been the loudest dissenter about the subject since I have known him. My preference is to pretend that I am perfect (because DAMMIT I AM PERFECT.)

So I told him I would get the implant. The day after he gets life-sized angel wings tattooed on his back. Since I know he's got wings somewhere back there anyway. Larger than life.

Bless his heart. He shook his head and took a sip of his coffee, which means the argument will continue when he feels like it. I'll be here. I just won't hear him if the TV is on.

So yes, we fight. And I will write out some of those other stories another day.

Resolutions.

Yesterday we were gifted with a great set of pictures from the Mother's Day brunch. Jake was collecting pictures from the day for the June newsletter and there are 3-4 really good photographers who lent their talents and gear to the event. One of them wound up taking a lot of pictures of the four of us and he gave us all the prints.

They're candid shots in black and white, I didn't expect them to turn out well and I'm about as photogenic as a brick but wow. There's one where Jake was kissing the top of my head, just as I smelled the flowers that Henry had passed to me. I keep looking at it. And there's another one with the four of us that is so cute-we're all smiling, and Ruth and Henry are each holding Jake's pant legs and leaning out like he's a jungle gym. His arm was around my waist and I was back to the camera, looking up at him. He took that one to his office. The rest were all funny facial expressions and Jacob speaking and giving toasts and then group shots of all the moms. I love pictures.

I also got back my necklace yesterday and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. It's my diamond heart that Cole gave me that I wore every day right up until 2 weeks ago. It got ripped off in the fight and PJ took it to be fixed since he works at the mall. I went to pick it up and while I was paying for the repairs I realized I wasn't going to put it back on. I think I'll just save it for Ruth for when she's older.

My wedding ring still sits on the kitchen windowsill where I put it the day I left for good at the beginning of May. I don't want to touch it but I have to put it away now.

And it looks like we'll both be officially divorced before August-Jacob sooner than I. That's the silver lining from Cole's attack because I don't have to wait a year to file. Jacob had already filed in April after a long separation-he did it before he asked me to be with him. Mentally we were both calculating the days after that that we can legally get married and then we let that go, because it fell to labour day weekend and that was my old wedding anniversary. Maybe some random day in November. Not like it will be a big wedding, probably more like an absolutely private simple 10 minute ceremony in Jacob's church officiated by Reverend Carolyn, who fills in a lot when Jake is off.

Dare I dream of actually being his wife? For real?

I have been everything but that to him. That would be the icing on a cake that took so long to bake we practically chewed through our arms with hunger waiting for it. Now there is the scariest analogy ever. I need more coffee. Jake's. Wife. Oh. wow.

I would love that. I will love it. We've talked about nothing but our future together.

I'm not even going to get into the house stuff. We can't live here. Jacob's house is back up for sale because it's too small anyway. I think we'll stay here for a few months and try to look for a new house in this area. One with just good memories for us. Which is something new to look forward to.

The ugliness of city life.

I grew up a beach-town girl. Up and down the east coast I think I ate more sand than food growing up as a little girl. I have freckles and squint lines. I breathe salt air and fell asleep to the sounds of fog horns and clinking bouys.

That's why I think city life sucks.

And frankly, Jacob is a blooming idiot for giving up the beach to follow me out here but he contends that the beach without the girl is just...dull.

Last night on the way home from dinner we drove through downtown and there was a woman beating another woman up on the sidewalk. I pulled out my phone to call 911 and Jake actually pulls over and GETS OUT OF THE CAR. I'm telling him to please stay in the car, he just says lock the doors. Granted I don't worry about him, he's big, he's strong, and he can talk people out of anything. He got the women both calmed down and within minutes the police were there. So he stands around shooting the breeze with the police for 10 more minutes and I was just muttering under my breath about how much I hate this city.

We went on our merry way but not before being treated to a new round of street-person depravity on the edge of the legislature park further down. I won't even say what I saw. Gross.

Argh.

I was on a roll with a full judgemental, spoiled rotten verbal rumination of how much I hate city life and Jacob looked at me and asked me where else I could get 11 different kinds of take-out or all the Hello Kitty gear a girl could ever want anywhere else?

He's got a point. Though had I never sampled the amazing Vietnamese restaurant 12 blocks from my house I would have been good with the hotdogs and french fries at the canteen on the beach for the rest of my natural life.

And at least on the beach I don't have to watch people kick the shit out of each other.

The chorus of sighs.

This morning was the first time I braved Jacob's Sunday early service since 'the incident' and I knew it would be a long morning but I wanted to thank people in person for the food and the prayers and the babysitting too. I can't gloss over it yet, I have to keep wearing the sling and thanks to my pale complexion the bruises have turned a fabulously icky shade of brown. I've been wearing scarves to hide the ones on my neck. It's absolutely unsettling to see Cole's complete handprint burned into my throat like this and yet scarves are so warm in the muggy weather. In my haste to get inside away from the wind and the approaching storm I left my sweater in the car, I was hot anyway.

Jacob was halfway through his sermon and he had walked back up near the choir benches and he turned and paused a beat and then he continued and started to remove his jacket (I'll digress here, he's got this worn-out moss green pinwhale cord suit jacket, he practically lives in it when he's working) and while he was talking about the sadness and ecstasy of moments in our past giving us a fresh spiritual outlook (! chills) he walked down to me and put the jacket around my shoulders. Then he smiled and ran his hand down my hair and then turned and walked down toward the back of the church, still talking while the collective sigh rose up from almost every woman in the sanctuary.

When he was finished he mentioned that he just couldn't have anyone in his congregation sitting and listening to him with blue lips. He then called for people to offer a half dozen sweaters or jackets that would be kept in the coat closets in case anyone needed them for the heat is now off for the summer but the weather is not cooperating. And because he only has one of those jackets. Cue the grin and a sprinkling of laughter.

He's so smooth.

I didn't give him his coat back when we left because I have a thing about his coats. They smell like him, like sandalwood and patchouli. Intoxicating. Like him.

Sigh.

Jacob's truth serum.

Last night Jacob finally let his moralistic guard down and had a second glass of wine. And a third too. Considering how big he is you would think he could hold his liquor but he just can't seem to manage it and therefore he has always been a designated driver, a teetotaler. Except for once a year or less he just says "fuck it" and has a few.

I have been waiting for this night, honestly because he's as honest and forthright as I am when all inhibitions go away. He speaks his mind and I think he finds it to be akin to when Hemingway talks of seeing Cezanne's paintings in a new light when you're hungry. You see the beauty so much more clearly. He's honest to the point of hurtful. I have learned the most from what he keeps in his heart during these times.

He really really really wants a baby. Because he waited so long already for this life. He's angry. He doesn't want any more denial, any hesitating. He blames me for waiting until I was getting hurt before I left Cole. He doesn't want Cole to have had the best part of my life and he feels like he's always going to be second in line.

My god he was so angry. And it's strangely beautiful because he's a quiet angry. He rarely yells. Instead he just stops, much like I do. He thinks instead. He uses his feelings and wrings the life out of them. He makes them into his lessons and then he learns.

Only he confided that this one isn't going away and logically he is so very aware of how difficult this would make everything but he cannot get past it. Even me reminding him that I left Cole for him and that I was here because he's first in my heart brought a look and one word.

Don't.

That pissed me off. I don't deserve that look. And I may quietly get mad and stop talking but sometimes I get a little overwhelmed by all of this. By everything. I yelled at him. He deserves better than me. He really does.

Don't WHAT Jake? Don't remind you that I was married? Shit happens. I didn't know you. I didn't know how my life was going to turn out. I didn't know anything. I can't go back and change it but I don't love him anymore. I love you and now you're telling me it's not enough for you? Well FUCK YOU because it's all I have.

He laughed again because he takes none of my bullshit posturing. Now was not the time to laugh. I started crying. Hi, that's one of my most famous talents. God forbid I bottle anything up ever.

It's enough. It's more than I ever dreamed of, Bridge. I just can't even explain how overwhelming this feeling is.

Which feeling is that Jake? Resentment? Competition? Selfishness?

That's not even close to fair, Bridge. The feeling that I want to be a good lover, a provider, a protector and a dad. I want to be a witness to the miracle from this vantage point. I want a house full of love and laughter and every goddamned cliche out there because you make me so happy and I have wanted nothing more than to make a life with you and we are so blessed right now. And you are the only person in my life I would ever want this gift from.
(I'm sure I visibly swooned.)

Then why can't we wait?

We're 35. The kids are 5 and 6, they won't be close if the baby's too far behind them, I'm afraid we're going to miss our chance and we've already missed so much. No more goddamned waiting, Bridge. Look at everything we've been through in the last ten years.

We haven't missed anything Jake. Life is now.

So let's have one. Let's start living. God doesn't want us to be unhappy. (he might have slurred this slightly).

Oh, pulling out the big guns now, I see.

You know what I mean. You think too much, Bridge.

Are you trying to change me?

No, I'm trying to make you see how I live. How I think, how sometimes beating decisions to death with logic and outcomes does nothing but delay life and life is so short, Bridge. I was starting to feel like you were never going to look at me the way you looked at him.

Oh Jacob I always looked at you the same way. It got me in nothing but trouble.

Right and now you're here. Let's get this show on the road.

You're impossible.

Yeah, well, Bridget, maybe you've changed me.

Does this mean you'll get a tattoo? Or start swearing more?

No. I don't mean that, I mean you make me want to live. To feel everything, good and bad.

Right, can we skip the bad for a bit?

Okay then, only joy. (geez, he is drunk.)

Okay, only joy.

Okay. So what's the plan?

The plan is let's stop using the stupid diaphragm and see what God has in store for us.
The look on his face washed away any doubts I carried. The only thing I can compare it to is the look on someone's face when you have just informed them that they've won a hundred million dollars. Tax-free. I really doubted he'd remember any of this the next day, but he most certainly did.

Update and stop phoning me.

Oh for crying out loud. No. I am not pregnant.

And to further prove that fact, I'm opening a bottle of wine. Because it's Friday and I have earned whatever liquid drama I can conjure up tonight.

Because, you know, life just isn't dramatic enough right now.

Hell, I remember an exciting day was when a package came in the mail.

Why, yes, I did start drinking half an hour ago. But I can't have anymore until the kids are asleep.

Cake hangover: regrets and enlightenment.

You know how I always say I can't allow myself regrets because regrets will eat you alive? They serve no purpose other than to inflict pain. They are supposed to teach you things, as if the road not taken might have been the wiser choice and you'll do better next time.

What if there is no next time?

What if the chance is gone? You're too far down the road, there's no more detours, forks or off ramps? You can't and won't go back. But then in the distance you think there's one more shot. One last tour off the beaten path.

I am selfish. That is why. Not selfish? Smart? Dumb? Oddly not allowing myself to get carried away on romance. But I can't resolve this inside my head and neither can he. And getting carried away on romance that very one time in April has permanently marked me as impulsive. The one time I do anything impulsive brands me permanently.

So we struggle together and separately. This one is bigger than we are. I'm afraid it will wind up being the one weak spot in the fabric that makes up Bridget and Jake as a unit.

Oh why does this have to be so hard?

The regret? He..

Christ I'm hyperventilating.

He..(anyone have a paper bag?) He wants me to have his baby.

Don't roll your eyes until you have finished reading. It isn't so simple.

He loves the kids. And he wants one more. He wants a tiny creation of our love. A permanent one, since life is rather fleeting for us and a human being walking around changing the world and loving and living made up of our combined genes would be the ultimate expression of our love for each other.

Besides being possibly the most beautiful specimen of blonde ever to grace the human race, a baby would signal how not to fix a broken life.

It's too romantic, even for me. Aside from the glaring fact that we're still married to other people and will be for a while yet, there's already two kids in the middle of this broken home. And yes Jake loves those kids like they are his. They practically are his (oh no more rumors please) and he has had a big hand in helping raise them from birth and he loves them. But I know. They aren't his. They are another man's children and no matter how you rationalize it, it's not the same and never will be. I know there are step families and adopted families and everything is terrific but right now in the headspace we are in, it isn't the same for the purpose of his argument. And I see that.

I'm selfish. Jacob did not say I was selfish. He knows he wouldn't have to say much to convince me. It would be different this time around. He would be here. Is that enough? We've come so far. The kids are old enough now to brush their teeth when told. To try new foods and walk down the street without me fearing they'll run into the traffic. To have their own money. The baby stage is far far behind us now.

Okay so I am selfish. I have never done pregnant very well. I took diclectin through both pregnancies just so I could get my head up off the floor. Hell, Jacob has held my hair back while I was sick when pregnant, thanks to always arriving at the best times. He's got absolutely no shame. I get huge. I swell up. I wind up on bedrest. I have terrible deliveries with complications. I had PPD after Henry. It was so difficult.

The thought of going through any of that again on purpose ruins me. I can't do that again.

But then I look at this man and I think of having HIS child and I want it very much. For he is 35 years old and would be the best father on the face of this earth.

And bitter Bridget said that once before. How do you move forward when you fear you'll repeat the same mistakes you made before? I don't have faith. I had faith before. I loved Cole so hard I feared I would kill us both with it. We had it all and I'm too bitter to assume that wouldn't happen again because life with Jake is a thousandfold more intense, more beautiful, more loving, more perfect. But what if I wake up? What if he decided tomorrow that he made a mistake? After what he has done in his life on behalf of us I shouldn't be thinking like that but I've had so many surprises I didn't expect in the past few weeks I wouldn't be surprised now to find a beanstalk and a golden goose in the backyard. And a talking donkey from Bremen town for good measure.

Why am I living this life in slow motion? If I went for it every time would I be happier? Having exhausted all forms of life without Jacob I found out that life with him was worth it. Even if all I ever get is this two months of broken happiness it's enough for me and yet once again I'm rigid-Bridget, unwilling to close my eyes and leap because I am all too aware of what happens in life to people who are impulsive, and yet had I been impulsive before now, before 1998, I wouldn't have put the extra 3 people in my life through all this pain. The pain of breaking up one family for another newer one. A younger blonder model. Oh my god I'm a reverse homewrecker and this is my midlife crisis.

Wait, Jake is my full-on adultlife crisis, if given the decade of chemisty. But he's not and that's a stupid label. He looked at me in that coffee shop in 1997 and told me he wished I wasn't married. I should have gone back to his apartment that day and slept with him, then told Cole, and then gotten a quickie divorce. But that's a regret. And if I had done that I wouldn't have Ruth or Henry today and I wouldn't change that.

So now what?

Does Bridget squeeze her eyes shut and jump and hope she's safely in the deep end or does Bridget hold to her guns and demand that life not get any more complicated. knowing it will quietly break his heart like it has twice before, because he watched me bring home two babies already and wished that they were his. The laws of the universe that make it so there are two tiny recreations of the life of Bridget and Cole running around and none of Jacob and Bridget, which Jacob secretly sees as the penultimate expression of his love for me, are riddled with ironicies aren't they?

And that, my friends, is regret.

And it's a regret with a ticking time clock, he wants a baby now. After waiting so long to be together there's a renewed sense of urgency, a need to find and exert some sort of control over our circumstances, a need to place a permanent marker in our history together. Which is the sweetest thing in the entire world to me, when he puts it that way. But it's still a phenomenal task. With huge risks. But life is a risk, right?

I know all I have to do is say I can't and he'll let it go. And I will always have to look him in the eyes and know that I denied him the one thing in life that he ever wanted besides me, or because of me. Not sure if I can do that. What gives me the right to do that?

And this entry will give him my side. Not because I am that passive/agressive that I would use this space to argue my position on a huge subject but because he reads this daily and I write a lot more eloquently than I talk and somehow even without expression or tone I can make my thoughts known. Or without interruption even. He doesn't interrupt though, he sits and waits a few beats and then counters. But this is fresh from the inside of my head, and my heart. The edited version doesn't hold the clarity I have through writing it down. We have talked about this into the early morning light too many nights.

And he doesn't want to waste another minute. He said I have brought him to his knees once again.

And I just might have written all this out and wound up talking myself into it. Lovely.

I need to go lie down.

Cake.

Our favorite kid books these days are all about Edith. Edith is the lonely doll, from the series by Dare Wright, which has been around since I was a little girl. Ruth loves Edith, and Henry loves the pictures. We never get tired of Edith's predicaments, nor do we tire of her petulance. When I was a kid she made it somewhat fashionable to be a scowling, pigtailed brat. Because it was cute. It got results.

Of course when you grow up and you continue to get the petulant label attached to your bad mood you quickly learn that no one takes you very seriously at all. The results are not quite what you're looking for, ever. But sometimes the resolution is surprising and wonderful. Such is my life. Life as a doll.

When I don't get taken seriously I go from petulant to insolent in about half an hour. It's not an easy transition and it's a tough hole to climb out of. Jacob saw it coming a mile away. This is where being a good friend has come in handy for him over the years, for he understands where my mind is going and how to lure it back.

He woke me up at midnight with warm chocolate cake. Cake and Irish hot chocolate. Cake in bed for me is like how most women feel about buying cute new shoes. I love cake.

We shared the cake and he offered a day, probably Monday, to look forward to, in which we would do nothing but take the kids to the lake for a picnic. Just the 4 of us. And that I did need more sleep and he just...well he just was worried. He traced his finger across my forehead and tucked my too-long bangs behind my ear and commented that I never wear earring anymore.

I pointed out that he didn't need to be so worried about my earrings. They're in an Altoids tin in my jewelry box. I just usually don't bother with them. In case he swallows one.

He laughed again. With cake in his teeth. I laughed too when I saw that. And the rest of the cake rolled off the plate halfway across the bed. He picked it up with one hand and threatened to throw it at me.

Oh it's on now.

I am so bad. Under the guise of being injured (find that silver lining Bridget) I asked him to cool it and I kneeled against him and asked for a kiss. Who's not going to oblige a kiss right then? Especially when I looked oh so stupid in a camisole, underwear, bedhead and cake? What an ensemble! I should go out like that.

He closed his eyes and was giving me one of his earth-tilting kisses, and I pulled back and grabbed his hand, smushing it into his nose. The hand that was holding the cake.

Those sheets will never be the same. He had cake in his ear. I possibly had cake in places I can't talk about in public.

We made amends in the shower.

Which brings me back to needing sleep, because we had to change the sheets in the middle of the night.

Did I mention I love cake?