From the Diary of Elizabeth Jackson, Date ___________________
Date __________________
I dreamed of Paris today. Of the lights reflecting off the water and standing underneath the Eiffel Tower while snow fell around us. I dreamed of the day he got down on one knee and the day I left him, racing into rain to meet my next fate. In that fate, I found a mirror but looked not into my eyes, but Jenny's. Hers are younger than mine, but there is a toughness I feel mine lack. They are the same shade, hers highlighted differently by the red hair I now hide under strawberry blonde dyes. I reached out and touched the mirror and it rippled, like a pond, and she took my hand. We stepped through together and I turned to watch a bullet race past where I had been standing. Shadows fell around me and Jenny took my hand to run and I realized as we did, that my own chains were falling free.
I've had a lot of time to think over the past few weeks. I sit in silence most of the time, and my nights are long and frightening. The shadows I'd chained to long past prison walls are free, tying my hands, my wrists, my ankles. I see the shadows following me, linking me to trees and hitching posts. I have not entered the basement since I came home. The door is locked tightly, as if the shadows will stay there. Shelly reminds me I got through this once so I will again. This time, he did not torture me.
My instant argument is that he might as well have held a knife to my throat and whispered vile promises in my ear. But she is right. I am whole and even speaking again, even if it is scratchy and painful at times still. I can swallow more every day and my determination to not be subjected to the humiliation of a feeding tube again has me drinking my smoothies and even trying more solid food. I am still a precarious 102 pounds, but it has stabalized. I will gain it back. Whatever tortures this held, it will also force me to face demons that haunt me. I can say it, and I will - I do not eat only because it is difficult. I often do not eat because my food intake is one of the few things I can control. When that was taken from me in the hospital, I realized a future that is still years away for me. I cannot give up like I have been. How insulting to me, to the kids here, to the people in my life. How insulting to Jenny who came back from her own brink and returned to a job she loves. I do not know how long she will stay in that position, but she belongs there for as long as she wants to be. How insulting to Jenny for me to be less than when I told her to go be more, to soar above what the ALS and the baby were doing to her physically. How insulting to Jenny who broke all senses of protocol and stayed far longer than I ever could have while I was wasting away in the hospital. How insulting to Jenny, who loves me.
Oh, dearest god, the ties of love. How much easier had it been for me to wall myself off. To demand nothing of the people in my life but casual comfort sex and whispered secrets kept in the dark? No ties and binds save for the horses. And then she walked in - well, typed in. I saw the woman under the fears. I saw the woman under the pain. And I loved her then and could never hope she would love me in return. I do not know if it was her traumas in January that forced her hand or if her hand would have come about on its own, but I am glad it did. For all the tears I have shed and the anger spilled at times in unjust words toward people who I feel want us apart, I am so glad she touched my cheek and reached for that first, scared kiss. And I did not realize just how much I loved her until I saw her in that hospital room, defending me to doctors like it was her legal right, and I knew that if our places were reversed, I would do the same for you.
Jenny, I say this not knowing if I can ever show this to you, but I would leave Witsec for you. Not because of what you did, of how you risked your health and even your position to stand by me these past few weeks, but because I love you. Because when I look at the picture I have of you by my bedside, the one of you laughing as you brush off Kelly (despite your joking complaints about how horses smell) I know that I would move heaven and earth to keep you safe. And I do not write these words because they are merely safe to say without action behind them. When we all arrived in Albuquerque, after the days in Santa Fe, I signed my opt out card. It is not dated. It is tucked into this journal. But I am ready to use it if the choice comes. My case means little in the face of knowing that if I could do the same for you that you did for me, I would risk everything. Everything. My only regret is that I did not back when you were in the hospital in January. Had I known then that my feelings were as real as they are, I would have acted then. If I had known then that your touch would be so gentle and honest and wanting, I'd have taken control then as you did in my hospital room. I loved you then. I will love you when my last breath shudders from me.
My beloved Jenny ... I realized only recently how much I have been living in fear. Not from the shadows I speak of but from my own heart and the possibilty of it breaking. Perhaps it has been seeing Adam that has made my own worries settle, but to have what happened with Jethro finding out about us so close to my own breakup with Adam, the glass heart that I hid behind ten foot thick walls shattered. I could not have your confidence, Jenny, try as I might. Because every moment you were not with me, I feared he was finding ways to prove to you that he was better for you than me. I felt unworthy, useless, an ultimatium to be managed. Despite my deseperate need to not make it a competition, in essence it still was because I did not know where I fit in. Our time together in DC helped greatly, but I still wondered. It was nothing you did and everything I felt because, behind my smiles, I was preparing for a fight. Not with you, but Jethro. I dreaded seeing him again because it meant we would fight over you. I do not know if I give him too much or too little credit here, but I do know that he loves you. He loves you deeply and he wants to be happy with you and he wants to see you happy. Whatever else I may think of him is incidental because in the long run, it does not matter and any confrontation colors the time you and I have together.
So tonight, Jethro, I release you from my constraints of conflict. I will not go head to head with you in a battle for Jenny's affection. I no longer feel guilt for her time with me - be it stolen moments in a hotel in DC or a week in a hospital under guard in Santa Fe. I release you from all of that because it is not healthy for either of us. For any of us. I release you because if Jenny were in this position, I would give up all and fly to her side and if you barred me from the hospital I would scale the walls (or at least drag a bench to sit under her window.) We will never truly get along again but you are a good man and you love her with the same passion I do and you are the one, you are the one, who will raise the children that will have her hair and your eyes. I do not know, honestly, if that decision is because I will not be here much longer than Jenny, or if it is because you are truly the parent to raise them. While I believe strongly it is the latter option, it is because those children are around because of you. Daniel would not have come into your lives had Jenny left you to be with me. Jaime will worship her father. Yes, she will. And I refuse, abjectly refuse, to let these children be subjected to the tensions of my own internal conflicts. Yes, I will admit there will be nights when I lie in my bed alone and ache for the woman at your side. There will be days when my smiles are forced. But I know that the day you two stand there and vow as husband and wife, my tears will not be out of jealousy but love. Because she loves you. Oh, Jethro, she loves you. I do know in my heart that if our time were longer, things would be different. But the woulds and the possibles and the never ending hopes of hopes only poison the present we ache to celebrate. In a different life it is different. In this one, we both have the love of a woman who is inspiring in her strength and knee-weakening in her beauty.
Jethro, I will no longer prepare for conflict with you, but I will also not back down from my place at her side. No, I am not her spouse. No, I am not the one who will raise the children and be called mother. But I will also not be ignored because I am not some clandestine affair, tucked away to be dusted off when Jenny sees fit. I will respect your wishes. I understand that for you, given your history, what you have been forced to accept is all but impossible. To you, it is a ticking time bomb, something else to add to the end of your time with Jenny. So, I may not like many of your wishes, I will also do my best to respect them and I do this out of respect for you and Jenny, not out of the petulant anger that drove me before.
But as I do this, know that I will not back down. I will not create intentional tension but I will not fade into shadow. I think of moments upcoming - the wedding, Jaime's birth, and other events where I will hope to participate. I want to be there, but I will also respect reasonable wishes. I will not fight with you as an outlet for tension to be relieved. I will not taunt you. I will not flaunt our relationship in your face. But I am not going away because she said it to me one night on the phone and they are words that sustain me in my most lonely moments. She is my soul mate and you are her partner for this life. I respect that and she needs you and she loves you.
And as I write these words, I only pray that you will someday do the same for me. Hopefully, you already have begun. You came to Santa Fe. Jenny brought Daniel to see me. That alone speaks volumes.
I dreamed of Paris today. Of the lights reflecting off the water and standing underneath the Eiffel Tower while snow fell around us. I dreamed of the day he got down on one knee and the day I left him, racing into rain to meet my next fate. In that fate, I found a mirror but looked not into my eyes, but Jenny's. Hers are younger than mine, but there is a toughness I feel mine lack. They are the same shade, hers highlighted differently by the red hair I now hide under strawberry blonde dyes. I reached out and touched the mirror and it rippled, like a pond, and she took my hand. We stepped through together and I turned to watch a bullet race past where I had been standing. Shadows fell around me and Jenny took my hand to run and I realized as we did, that my own chains were falling free.
I've had a lot of time to think over the past few weeks. I sit in silence most of the time, and my nights are long and frightening. The shadows I'd chained to long past prison walls are free, tying my hands, my wrists, my ankles. I see the shadows following me, linking me to trees and hitching posts. I have not entered the basement since I came home. The door is locked tightly, as if the shadows will stay there. Shelly reminds me I got through this once so I will again. This time, he did not torture me.
My instant argument is that he might as well have held a knife to my throat and whispered vile promises in my ear. But she is right. I am whole and even speaking again, even if it is scratchy and painful at times still. I can swallow more every day and my determination to not be subjected to the humiliation of a feeding tube again has me drinking my smoothies and even trying more solid food. I am still a precarious 102 pounds, but it has stabalized. I will gain it back. Whatever tortures this held, it will also force me to face demons that haunt me. I can say it, and I will - I do not eat only because it is difficult. I often do not eat because my food intake is one of the few things I can control. When that was taken from me in the hospital, I realized a future that is still years away for me. I cannot give up like I have been. How insulting to me, to the kids here, to the people in my life. How insulting to Jenny who came back from her own brink and returned to a job she loves. I do not know how long she will stay in that position, but she belongs there for as long as she wants to be. How insulting to Jenny for me to be less than when I told her to go be more, to soar above what the ALS and the baby were doing to her physically. How insulting to Jenny who broke all senses of protocol and stayed far longer than I ever could have while I was wasting away in the hospital. How insulting to Jenny, who loves me.
Oh, dearest god, the ties of love. How much easier had it been for me to wall myself off. To demand nothing of the people in my life but casual comfort sex and whispered secrets kept in the dark? No ties and binds save for the horses. And then she walked in - well, typed in. I saw the woman under the fears. I saw the woman under the pain. And I loved her then and could never hope she would love me in return. I do not know if it was her traumas in January that forced her hand or if her hand would have come about on its own, but I am glad it did. For all the tears I have shed and the anger spilled at times in unjust words toward people who I feel want us apart, I am so glad she touched my cheek and reached for that first, scared kiss. And I did not realize just how much I loved her until I saw her in that hospital room, defending me to doctors like it was her legal right, and I knew that if our places were reversed, I would do the same for you.
Jenny, I say this not knowing if I can ever show this to you, but I would leave Witsec for you. Not because of what you did, of how you risked your health and even your position to stand by me these past few weeks, but because I love you. Because when I look at the picture I have of you by my bedside, the one of you laughing as you brush off Kelly (despite your joking complaints about how horses smell) I know that I would move heaven and earth to keep you safe. And I do not write these words because they are merely safe to say without action behind them. When we all arrived in Albuquerque, after the days in Santa Fe, I signed my opt out card. It is not dated. It is tucked into this journal. But I am ready to use it if the choice comes. My case means little in the face of knowing that if I could do the same for you that you did for me, I would risk everything. Everything. My only regret is that I did not back when you were in the hospital in January. Had I known then that my feelings were as real as they are, I would have acted then. If I had known then that your touch would be so gentle and honest and wanting, I'd have taken control then as you did in my hospital room. I loved you then. I will love you when my last breath shudders from me.
My beloved Jenny ... I realized only recently how much I have been living in fear. Not from the shadows I speak of but from my own heart and the possibilty of it breaking. Perhaps it has been seeing Adam that has made my own worries settle, but to have what happened with Jethro finding out about us so close to my own breakup with Adam, the glass heart that I hid behind ten foot thick walls shattered. I could not have your confidence, Jenny, try as I might. Because every moment you were not with me, I feared he was finding ways to prove to you that he was better for you than me. I felt unworthy, useless, an ultimatium to be managed. Despite my deseperate need to not make it a competition, in essence it still was because I did not know where I fit in. Our time together in DC helped greatly, but I still wondered. It was nothing you did and everything I felt because, behind my smiles, I was preparing for a fight. Not with you, but Jethro. I dreaded seeing him again because it meant we would fight over you. I do not know if I give him too much or too little credit here, but I do know that he loves you. He loves you deeply and he wants to be happy with you and he wants to see you happy. Whatever else I may think of him is incidental because in the long run, it does not matter and any confrontation colors the time you and I have together.
So tonight, Jethro, I release you from my constraints of conflict. I will not go head to head with you in a battle for Jenny's affection. I no longer feel guilt for her time with me - be it stolen moments in a hotel in DC or a week in a hospital under guard in Santa Fe. I release you from all of that because it is not healthy for either of us. For any of us. I release you because if Jenny were in this position, I would give up all and fly to her side and if you barred me from the hospital I would scale the walls (or at least drag a bench to sit under her window.) We will never truly get along again but you are a good man and you love her with the same passion I do and you are the one, you are the one, who will raise the children that will have her hair and your eyes. I do not know, honestly, if that decision is because I will not be here much longer than Jenny, or if it is because you are truly the parent to raise them. While I believe strongly it is the latter option, it is because those children are around because of you. Daniel would not have come into your lives had Jenny left you to be with me. Jaime will worship her father. Yes, she will. And I refuse, abjectly refuse, to let these children be subjected to the tensions of my own internal conflicts. Yes, I will admit there will be nights when I lie in my bed alone and ache for the woman at your side. There will be days when my smiles are forced. But I know that the day you two stand there and vow as husband and wife, my tears will not be out of jealousy but love. Because she loves you. Oh, Jethro, she loves you. I do know in my heart that if our time were longer, things would be different. But the woulds and the possibles and the never ending hopes of hopes only poison the present we ache to celebrate. In a different life it is different. In this one, we both have the love of a woman who is inspiring in her strength and knee-weakening in her beauty.
Jethro, I will no longer prepare for conflict with you, but I will also not back down from my place at her side. No, I am not her spouse. No, I am not the one who will raise the children and be called mother. But I will also not be ignored because I am not some clandestine affair, tucked away to be dusted off when Jenny sees fit. I will respect your wishes. I understand that for you, given your history, what you have been forced to accept is all but impossible. To you, it is a ticking time bomb, something else to add to the end of your time with Jenny. So, I may not like many of your wishes, I will also do my best to respect them and I do this out of respect for you and Jenny, not out of the petulant anger that drove me before.
But as I do this, know that I will not back down. I will not create intentional tension but I will not fade into shadow. I think of moments upcoming - the wedding, Jaime's birth, and other events where I will hope to participate. I want to be there, but I will also respect reasonable wishes. I will not fight with you as an outlet for tension to be relieved. I will not taunt you. I will not flaunt our relationship in your face. But I am not going away because she said it to me one night on the phone and they are words that sustain me in my most lonely moments. She is my soul mate and you are her partner for this life. I respect that and she needs you and she loves you.
And as I write these words, I only pray that you will someday do the same for me. Hopefully, you already have begun. You came to Santa Fe. Jenny brought Daniel to see me. That alone speaks volumes.