Birth of an urban cowboy.

Hey, Bridge? Come outside for a sec.

Huh? No, fuck that. It's freezing.

Just for a moment. Get your coat on.

What in the heck is that?

Your new ride, princess.

Well, that...that's really big, Jake.

Sitting out front blocking the sunlight was a candy-apple dark red Dodge Ram 3500 quad cab behemoth of a pickup truck. I have to admit, she is awfully pretty and I'm slightly jealous of Jacob's attentions being shifted off me to this new toy. The one with running lights and dual wheels in the back.

I didn't think we needed a truck that big. It's a far cry from the old beloved vintage Suburban, which finally went to the junkyard in the sky, the same one he's been driving since he was 16 years old. But at least this one comes without worries, it's brand new. He's earned it. He really has.

It has heated seats. For my perpetually cold bony little ass. Oh, terrific, honey!

What's funny is I can just see over the hood. On tip-toes. It fits him, though and he's like a kid in a candy store looking at it. Like consumerism just skidded into our house and bit him in the ass. He had to have her. And he looks like a cowboy now with his new truck, having completed the last vestiges of the western male myth to a tee. I asked him if he was going to wear his cowboy hat now to complete the package.

What, you think I should?

Why, yes. Yes I do. Hot damn.

Drive-by folk music lessons.

While I ride the disco biscuit wave of anti-depressant goodness, you're going to be treated to an awful lot of head-clearing drive-by snippets. Just so you know.

I don't think I have ever heard a folk song build and sway and then positively explode quite the way this one does. I love it. Hang on, it's quietly goofy until the last quarter, and then this from Elephant, by Damien Rice.


    What's the point of this song? Or even singing?
    You've already gone, why am I clinging?
    Well I could throw it out, and I could live without
    And I could do it all for you
    I could be strong
    Tell me if you want me to lie
    'Cause this has got to die
Epic.

Midnight turkeys.

(The title today is borrowed from one of Henry's favorite books)

I'm an idiot.

This morning at 1:37 am I woke up coughing so hard I was afraid I would break something in my chest. Old habits die hard, and I immediately quietly slid out of bed and headed for the couch downstairs, having grown accustomed over the years to Cole yelling at me if I woke him up (even when it was fine for him to wake me up at strange hours to rip off my underthings and do whatever he wanted). I had a glass of juice, checked out a few blogs and then settled on the couch with a blanket and the couch cushions and a big swallow of cough medicine.

Around 4 am Jacob called for me,

Get'cher little ass in bed where it belongs before you freeze to death.

I went back upstairs and it was so dark now with the heavy winter curtains up that I was feeling my way along and I made it to the upstairs hallway and then I went to cross to our room and flipped over the portable oil-filled heater we run in the hall when it's really really cold outside. The heater crashed onto it's side and I think I broke two of my toes and I was half-delirious from the lack of sleep and all the medication.

Bridge? Are you okay?

No, fuck. I'm so tired, Jake.
I found the light switch and flicked it long enough to righten the heater and move it out of my way and then I turned the light off again and ran and jumped into bed. Jacob snuggled me down into his arms and then out of habit I reached down, yanked the quilt up to my ears and elbowed him in the eye.

Jesus, Bridge!

Sorry!
This morning he was looking at the hint of a bruise under his right eye and listening to me yelp as I tried to pull wool socks on over my wounded toes and he laughed and told me that charm school failed me because I have the grace of a yeti in snowshoes.

It was payback for teasing the tooth fairy, of that I'm sure.

I will say I'm doing pretty well for someone who's had around three hours of sleep. Please no jokes about narcoleptic nymphomaniacs today because I will hurt you. And I promise they won't be superficial wounds like the ones we're both sporting today.

Tagged.

Smarts has tagged me to stay warm to tell you five things you may not know about me. She warned that it's harder than it looks. She's right!

1. When I was ten years old one of the boys ran into me with a pencil and stabbed me in the ribcage. The lead broke off and even though it happened twenty-five years ago I still have a dark dot under my skin.

2. I don't know the words in the correct order to Oh Canada. I can get through it using a mixture of English and French lyrics so all is not lost. I stay now and sing with Henry's class in the morning so that I can learn it again.

3. Growing up I had a huge crush on Jack Lemmon. My friends were mooning over Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer and I was off mooning over Jack.

4. I can do a perfect impression of Andrea Brooke Ownbey. I like to use it in public and drive Jacob crazy with laughter.

5. I cry when I hear Auld Lang Syne. It doesn't matter if I'm happy or sad or if it's on a movie on TV, there's just something about that song. Thirty-five years into this life you would think I would have a handle on that by now but I don't.

Yes, Smarts, that was tougher than I thought it would be.

Tooth fairy.

In this big old creaky Victorian resplendent with carved woodwork and ancient plaster walls, where the light shines warm through leaded glass windows and laughter echoes off the high ceilings, lies a most ominous secret.

Oh yes.

In this house the tooth fairy is said to be a tiny bell-ringing, sparkling milky-way shadowed creature with a beautiful smile and papery butterfly wings.

It's all a hideous lie.

In reality the tooth fairy is 6'4", blonde, generally unshaven and wearing only pajama bottoms and he scratches his chin in bewilderment, fishes a five dollar bill out of his wallet and attempts to navigate a floor strewn with Polly Pocket wardrobe implements. Once the toy minefield is successfully navigated, our giant cumbersome fairy will then knock the clock radio off the nightstand thereby waking up Ruth, who confronts our fairy still holding the tooth box.

Oh shit.

His excuse?

I was just clearing a path so the tooth fairy won't have any problems finding you tonight. Go back to sleep, sweetheart.

The fairy was dispatched once again around midnight and I'm pleased to say he made much less of a ruckus the second time around and this morning Ruthie was a very wealthy young lady indeed.

Pocketful.

    Like the coldest winter chill
    Heaven beside you... Hell within
    Like the coldest winter will
    Heaven beside you... Hell within
    And you think you have it still, heaven inside you
    So there's problems in your life
    That's fucked up, and I'm not blind
    I'm just see through faded, super jaded
    And out of my mind
    Do what you wanna do
    Go out and seek your truth
    When I'm down and blue
    Rather be me than you

This song is too high for Jacob's baritone but he's singing it anyway, because it's the only AIC song I like and it's fitting for this remarkably freezing cold day. This day in which even my zen player wouldn't play because it was -35 (windchill) when I went out to shovel the sidewalk.

Because forks and automobiles are off-limits but I can still wield the mighty blade of snow removal. I was gifted new silk longjohns this weekend and I'm only feeling pain in my fingertips and toes when I go outside.

Oh and yes, he's very impressed that I have once again written down everything that's going wrong. I got called by my entire name this morning, something he usually saves for the kids when they do something they aren't supposed to on purpose. Yes, I wrote those entries on purpose. But he will live because he says my very bad is pretty darn good and he'll take it.

Good, because I need to look forward to being warm again, someday. That warms me. He still wants me even when I'm a mess.

And when she was bad she was horrid.

And when she was bad she was horrid

    You slid away from me
    Crept away from me
    I tried to keep you down
    And there was nothing I could say.
    So what you're trying to say
    is you don't wanna play.
    But what you want and what you need
    doesn't mean that much to me.

It lurks in the dark and comes out to strip us of our thick skins and contented hearts just when we need them the most. The allowance made for the depression to hang around, even with all the pinching going on around here.

The issues with our sex life remain. I wrote about it back in June, and little has changed. You'll never meet a more dedicated couple in love bound to self-destruct over issues that scream of a history together that's too long. It went on too damned long.

See? Aargh. I can't even figure out how to explain it without exposing myself, us to everyone in a terribly invasive way. Worse that I usually do. Surprise!

Loch's prediction of Very Good Things to come when Bridget recovered from the onslaught of Very Bad Things that took place was ignorant of one of the biggest points of note. Jake and I did sleep together once before, although oh so briefly back in 2000. He's had me with far less baggage than I carry now. He knows what it can be like. He knows and he wants that. He wants it now.

But it isn't like that anymore and he's feeling ripped off, frustrated, impatient. And it shows in everything he does. He's tense. Not with me, with everything else. He'll blame the whole world while he stands there and refuses to blame me for the way I am.

Nights are bad. In the morning when I have no control and I'm hardly awake, it works, somehow. It's much easier to write about.

At night with me, Jacob has taken to doing whatever he can to get me to shut up, help me relax, stop fighting him, and stop asking him to do things that he will not do. Ever. And in my head and my heart I know none of this is fair and I wouldn't dream of throwing it in his face but then in the heat of the moment everything changes and Bridget turns into some sort of little sex maniac. His words, not mine. He has called me challenging, combative (when feeling generous) and fucking messed up (when not).

So when I write about him holding me down or pushing me down, it isn't the same as it used to be. He's doing it to make me stop. Stop trying to do things he doesn't want me to do. To stop me from being a freak.

When I'm so excited I cannot breathe I ask him for things that I wouldn't ask for any other time. It happens. It flies out and I can't put it back in fast enough. He loses his desire for me when I do this and I know that. Well, maybe not, he's perpetually into me. It doesn't matter if it's quiet or if it's loud, with music or without, following a lapdance or a round of stoli or a mug of hot chocolate. Everything. Nothing. It works up to a point. Everything works up to a point and hell, more than once I have begged him to use me in some sick fashion and Jacob got up and left the room, punching the doorframe on the way out. But then he is back moments later, trying to bundle me into his warm, strong arms, kissing my eyelashes, my ears, my mouth, my skin all over because in spite of this bitter pain he still wants me all of the time. Like an addiction to something you are certain will kill you.

I can't even figure him out. He's fighting me, fighting himself. Unable to resist even when he seems to hate us both for our actions and reactions. And me? I'm fighting history, a way of life I've been accustomed to for so long I can't figure out any other way short of becoming a doll, without moving or speaking, and honestly?

What sort of fun would that be?

I may be fucked up but I don't want to be a dead fuck. Because please. Life is too short for bad sex. Even fucked up crazy painful (emotionally) miserable fighting-through-it sex is better than just Bridget lying there and taking it.

Or so I've been taught.

Yes, that's a supremely painful admission too. Or is it shameful? Jacob will tell you different. He would take me unconscious. I swear it. So has very little actually changed for me?

And Jacob would have you believe that everything, that his life with Bridget is perfect. And it would be except that he refuses still to venture to new far away places in the dark. Those same dark places that I am somehow refusing to crawl out of, thereby making his life equally imperfect. Not in some misguided attempt to remain the tiny little bad girl that I want to be but because the dark is a familiar comfort and sometimes, as I have said before, I liked it. Some of it. Jacob doesn't have to follow in Cole's footsteps nor does he need to reflect the terrible level of depravity that Cole had reached with me, but there's a limit I have that I like to push regularly and I want Jake to meet me in the middle.

I'm not a bread and butter girl, there is nothing pedestrian about sleeping with Bridget and as intriguing as it once was to Jacob, now it's an embarrassment that he wishes would just go away. He likes his lap dances and he likes me riding his lap or spread out on the table or the floor and dipped in something sweet but everything else is completely off limits. With no room to negotiate.

Off limits would be fine for most people but when you've done it all there's pretty much a list of things you enjoyed to some extent and I'd like Jacob to take me to those places. Because with him it would be a million times better, a million times greater. Oh my God, I cannot fathom the highs that those experiences would achieve with him. It would be fun and not scary with Jake.

And he won't and I feel like a goddamn freak some nights. Like last night when he propped himself onto his elbows and clamped his hands over my ears and told me just to focus on his face and not think, just focus and take it. And he fucked me for a long while and everything was good and okay and wonderful then.

I would do anything for him, because it's Jake.

He proclaims me still completely fucked up. He's right. I am. I know all this.

And still I fight for something that was never mine, and we both fight for something that is still just out of reach, for now.

I just hope we get there. Because after all this time it hurts. It hurts to know that the most intimate part of our love is a confirmed disaster. Any progress here is going to be hard-won and it's own reward.

Why can't I fix this?

And when she was good, she was very very good.

A wee bit of dirt, or an ode to Jacob and his morning wood.

One plus of the waking up before 6 am habit is that when I start or move even slightly Jacob will invariably wake up too, sensing that I am awake even though he can't open his eyes just quite yet. He'll usually shorten whatever space he finds between us, if there is any left at all, and he'll grab me and pull me in until my back touches his abs, his warm hand spread out across my belly. He pulls my thigh down hard into his lap with one hand while his other hand presses my head hard into the bed. Then he pushes himself into me, not slowly, but with force, because he wants me so badly when he wakes up in the morning. He's much rougher at daybreak then he is at night. At night he's so slow and gentle and has so much patience. He'll wait forever, he'll say he wants to fuck me forever, and he has hours to try things and to wind me out on his whims. In the mornings he has no patience, he doesn't want to wait, he just turns me over and then he's inside me and I'm grabbing for the blanket or the bedpost just to hold on. He doesn't want to talk or kiss or cuddle, he only whispers things I can't hear and takes what he needs.

Speak to me/Breathe.

    Breathe, breathe in the air
    don't be afraid to care
    leave but don't leave me
    look around, choose your own ground
    for long you live and high you fly
    and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
    and all you touch and all you see
    is all your life will ever be

(Pink Floyd or Phish, who covered it well, your choice, it's what's for my audible breakfast this morning.)

So am I capable of seeing anything at all?

You bet I am.

I can't believe my car is an issue even. It's my car. What's the big deal?

Perceptions and reasoning aren't always the same thing are they? But no one asked me for the reasons, instead they created their own. This is what happens when you allow everyone input on your life. When you go and make a decision without a group vote the shit hits the fan. We're still cleaning that shit off of every surface imaginable.

My car was getting very little use. Very very little and even less now with the snow. It's a coupe, it's not something you want to be out in unless the weather is beautiful. It's winter 5 months of the year here. And I'm fucking medicated, I can't drive. Jacob can't drive it, he's too tall. And the insurance rates on it are through the roof.

Not to mention, it's the most extravagant gift Cole ever gave me. It's black. My badass little car. He led me out into the driveway with his hand over my eyes and there she was with a big white bow on her roof. A toy car for my toy girl, he said. I only ever put 11000 kilometers on her and I had her almost two years.

She was procured by a man who will probably use her to fuel his own life crisis and celebrate his upcoming divorce. Which is fine. It really wasn't much of a family car. And with Jake staring down car payments for the first time in his life we need something a little more practical. His truck is on life support and so he's going to get a new one. A very large one but I've been assured I'll be able to drive it when I end this permanent sanctioned high I'm on because it won't have a broken seat adjuster track like his old truck did. I'll be able to reach the pedals.

Besides, fast cars aren't my thing. Everyone thought my car was the Coolest Car Ever. I lent it out for special occasions. Sometimes I lent it out just for fun. It was a fun present but it sits in the garage and reminds me of when Cole was not angry. Destructive memories. It had to go.

The guys mostly blame Jake, refusing to see the logic involved and I'm not impressed by that. Ben's direct comments, agreed on by others were that Jacob was removing my own personal mode of transportation so that I would be completely dependent on him and he would have total control over where I went and who I went with. Which ties in nicely to the whole drug her up and keep her home scenario they're expounding on right this minute, because my ears are still burning up hot.

Added fuel to the fire would be bringing in reinforcements (Loch), Jacob canceling Caleb's impending visit indefinitely and basically my whole spoken need to just step back and let Jacob run The Bridget Show because hell, I'm safer that way. Physically and emotionally. Do they need a map to show the path that led to this? I'm not being coerced, I'm being smart. I've elevated my attempts at self-preservation to a whole new high and hopefully this time it will hold.

All I know is that I have had a lot of sleep and a lot of talk and I feel almost human again, confident in my big decisions right now. Jacob made love to me gently last night and then ferociously this morning and confirmed that I'm not a zombie (yet) judging by all the shushing he had to whisper because Loch was staying downstairs.

I don't regret getting rid of the car. That's 3000 pounds of baggage off my mind right there. Go Bridget.

Perspective.

I'm not feeling so lucid this afternoon and I crashed down into a chair at the table.

He bent down and kissed my nose and then he got down on his knees and we were eye to eye.

Do you love me, princess?

Of course I love you, Jake. More than anything.

Do you know how much I love you?

Yes, but tell me again.

I love you. Forever and then a little more and I will never ever stop, no matter what.
And that's enough. It's more than enough. It's everything I will ever need in this life.