The world has caught on fire from what I've been told.Lochlan appeared on my back steps right around the end of dinner last evening, seven beers into his evening and looking for comfort and a fight. Lochlan's been on the wrong side of a lot of beer and anger and need lately and I promised I wouldn't write about him and I guess I lied about that too, because he's my friend and overtly he hasn't done anything wrong other than show up in his tux at the alter just a little too late because the bride married your new best friend and they rode off into the sunset an hour ago, buddy.
These city lights are killing ever slowly the sanity within me.
Maybe I lost in my creation.
This isn't how I thought I'd turn out.
In your eyes I'm picture perfect.
In your eyes the grass is greener.
Have you seen it though my eyes.
Cause through my eyes.
Stars are burning brighter.
So bright we can't ignore.
Lochlan always tried to be above the drama and lately he is ALL of the drama all by himself. He's now concerned that he'll be made out to be the bad guy in my life, with a drinking problem and an obsession to boot. He's afraid Ben is somehow using the quietest moments we spend together to whisper into my broken ears that Lochlan is bad for me and I should stay away from him. Lochlan dares to have that much ego that in our darkest hours of deep conversation, he is that important that we're talking about him. Last night he was told the world doesn't revolve around him.
It can't, because it revolves around me.
He was fine with that.
Because in my darkest hours I have bigger ghosts to fight off, and for Lochlan's handwringing over having lost at love and lost his way and lost everything, in sober daylight he hasn't lost anything, really. He let go and things didn't come back and that's how you know something isn't yours.
He hasn't lost anything, not when we're comparing scars. I can lift up my shirt and you see the living autopsy I have become with the hole in the front where Cole died holding my heart and then the big tear in the back where you see where Jacob grabbed for it when he fell, and closed on air because it wasn't there. I guess he forgot he was already holding it and he didn't pull it out of his pocket in time and that's why sometimes I lose track of the pieces now. They were given back to me and I gave one to everyone because I wasn't ready to have any of it back, truthfully. Honestly.
Lochlan hasn't done the hard jobs, he's danced along the top of the wall while we dug under it. He stood back and leaned against it, supervising, while we rebuilt whole sections, and he hid behind it while we stood with our backs to it to fight so many times I've lost count.
Ben and Lochlan have created a forever-argument in the moment that Ben had to tell me Jacob was gone, because Lochlan couldn't do it, even though Lochlan should have done it. He was supposed to do it and he should have stood up and spared Ben from that. Instead he hoped that I would transfer the mask of pain onto Ben's face and begin right there to put up a wall between Ben and myself.
So everyone is well aware of how magnificently that plan backfired and Lochlan is out in the cold.
Only he's not, because he's one piece of my puzzle, holding one piece of my heart, so tightly it keeps squirting right out of his fist and he has to go chasing after it. He's the glue that holds the memories to the wall so I can go look at them when I want to, he's my link to happier Bridget before the boys fell in love with me, before death, and before life turned out so strange, he's my voice of reason. I'm so selfish I can't ask for that piece of my heart back from him. (KeepitandIcankeepyou.)
And he has lost things too. Love, above all else. Friends. Time. Ground. Me.
If there is one thing we have learned about having the upper hand is that it isn't about making sure the people you love suffer as much as you have, go through what you've been through or be forced to experience the same pain you have so they really get you, it's about making life easier for them, as much as you can, easing their suffering in the best ways you know how, and making sure they're protected for the rest of your days. Making sure they are safe. Happy. Loved.
He tries to do that for me now and Ben lets him. Because Ben knows the sort of desperation you can find at the bottom of a bottle or when you're fresh out of hearts or when the need for Bridget overtakes plain old good common sense. And for that, everyone wins, and we get pulled back up to walk along the top of the wall for a little while again.
The view from up here is so nice, I like it, and so much easier when the ghosts aren't reaching for my ankles. And as long as I stay here sandwiched snugly between Ben and Lochlan, the ghosts can't get close at all, let alone reach out and grab me.
I brought Lochlan coffee this morning out on the patio where he sat with the mother of all headaches. He thanked me profusely.
Being an asshole to him doesn't help you.
He's generous with both of us.
He's not going to do to you what you've tried to do to him, Lochlan. Be grateful.
You don't think I am?
No, sometimes it doesn't seem like you are.
How did you get so far away from me that you don't see these things anymore, princess?
The wall. It's in front of you.
What?
Nevermind.