(I found this, written last night but not published. If you want to look inside my head, then know that sometimes I sit down and write miles and miles of words, but only a few steps will ever reach your eyes. Most of it just sits here, in drafts, forever. Some of it cuts too close to the quick, like this one.)
Maybe what Caleb said about me still walking the tightrope while everyone watches me struggle and teeter sparked the wheels. I don't know. In any event, I'm coming down into some sort of valley of miserable frustration tonight that is sucking the life out of me.
So long. So long to keep secrets that explode and then you knew them anyway and still you're simply dumbstruck. Floored and hurt and blown apart once again by things you knew already, things that get confirmed along the way and still knock you on your ass.
I think therapy is going to kill me. Why is it beneficial for me to know that Jacob did indeed love his ex-wife? Why do I need to know this? Why do I need confirmation that Cole slept with people I knew he slept with?
This shit, this meaningless bullshit is what drags me down, and again I come home and I get through the remainder of the day and all I can think of is that if I can just kill myself I can avoid such a terrible onslaught of pain.
And then I look in Jacob's eyes and I see him shaking his head because he's going to force me to endure all of it because he's selfish.
Selfish.
And yes, I threw the other hearing aid in the garbage. I had a high, noble week that week when I got them. I thought I could change the rotation of the planet. I was pregnant, married, fresh off vacation and on a high that I never thought would go away but it did.
It went away, along with the baby and the one hearing aid that worked really well.
But he is still here.
And maybe I'm selfish. Maybe I don't want to hear everything. Maybe I don't want to take pills and tell all my secrets to some overpaid sap in a houndstooth coat. Maybe I don't need to be forced to admit shit that I don't need in my life.
Maybe I need something else.
I don't even know. I just know that he is still here and I'm wary and weird and I didn't sleep last night and I''m tired of everyone checking in to see if Bridget went crazy yet. Poke her and see if she yelps. Covet her and see if she wavers. Break her and see if she heals. Crack her, watch her crumble. Fragile Miss Bridget doesn't need this. What she needs is continuance, and consistency and caring. Support. Love. The right kind, not the difficult kind. I wasn't crazy, I wasn't fragile. I was doing okay. Jacob blew the lid off all of it. Somehow he gave me permission to stop holding it together all the time and so I let it fall apart and now I can't get it back together for any length of time and I can't do this anymore. And what he thought he fixed, he broke more. Only I can't tell him that. Somehow being with him is a license to not be very strong at all.
I can't..do this. It has to stop.
And soon he'll be back. Stroking my hair, telling me shhhhhhh, baby, it's okay, everything's okay. Holding me while I cry and not letting the demons anywhere near me. And then he's gone again and what happens then? Huh? Who fixes that?
Crumbling is the perfect description, and it's exactly what I've tried not to do since Saturday night.
And I can't. I can't figure any of this out. It shouldn't be hard, but it is. I shouldn't be conflicted but I am. I don't know why I would want to take that key and fuck up my life and I took it. And I knew he was smiling but I didn't look back. Caleb knew that I knew his hotel room number, he always stays in the same room, I've been in that room, I've felt the sexual tension between us, hell it was there for 2o years. One of the reasons I couldn't spend much time around him. One of the reasons our first meeting after Cole's death was so fucking awkward.
Yup, I've got a laundry list of guys. One drops out, the next queue up to take his place.
Such a lucky girl.
Only I stopped that. Because I don't want any of them. Only one. Only Jake. Jake who laughs at me when I'm drunk, like now, because he turned off my phone and locked the door and the children are asleep and I'm allowed to have a sanctioned drink spiel because I fucking earned it and he hasn't figured out any other safe way to blow off steam. He loves the fact that I fail to measure my words or contain my emotions, I simply dump it all on top of him and then spin off to the other side of the desk and take another sip.
He's on the phone now making some calls while I empty the remainder of the Stoli and blow off more steam than he ever imagined.
Hey, write a little bit, honey, see what you come up with.
Okay.
Sure.
Will do.
Oops, he didn't mean online.
He really should have fallen for someone less freaky.
Because...
Oh, Christ. He is still too good for me. I can't stop my brain from thinking about what a night with Caleb would be like. He knows what bad girls like. He cultivates a repetoire that would fulfill desires that Jacob can't manage because he's too nice.
Bridget likes nice everywhere but one place and that place is very very important to her.
And I'm sorry. I can't help it. Sure, I caught the eye of the unreachable, unshakable preacher boy, and all his friends laughed and teased him to no end as he was visibly taken by Bridget, the whore, Cole's bride, the freakishly psychotic wife with the streak of utter depravity. Cole had the ride of his fucking life on me and it was painfully obvious that Jacob wanted a piece of that action and he got it. Oh boy did he get it. He fell so hard and I love him for it. And it's obvious that he thought he could fix it but that isn't working so well because it didn't go away. It's not fading, we still struggle, we fight, we get thrown when out of the blue an offer comes to fix it all and I want that and I can't have it and Jacob is horrified and territorial and scared that after everything that has happened he might lose me now.But he won't because I'm not her anymore.I just hope he loves who he ended up with after all.
I let him read it first and then he asked somberly if I really felt like that. Most of the time I don't and yet still I wrote it down. And still I post it because it's here, in my head and I'm just trying to deal with everything. Still. And I printed it and put it in my bag and tomorrow I want to talk about it in therapy. I just don't want to talk about it tonight.
