Page 32 of HoHoHo for You

Was I strong enough for this?

It was a strange, strange day.

Bridget was tired and quiet, but we reversed roles from the past two days. I got lost in the story, seeing every moment she described play out in my mind.

And strangely, the hardest parts were the pages when she stopped talking about events and started reflecting. On herself.

She recounted the first time she got her period and for some reason the blood triggered her. She didn’t understand why she had a panic attack. Her aunt thought she was freaking out about her period starting and didn’t click that she’d been triggered.

For years, Bridget was convinced there was something wrong withherbecause she had these strange reactions to things.

Christmas was ruined for her from the start, but as a kid she still wanted presents and to talk to others at school about what she was given. But she couldn’t enjoy it like she had before. And over the years, the Christmas blues turned into outright anxiety. She started drinking to keep herself sane during the holidays when she was fifteen.

Richard, the old chaplain at her fancy private school, and the man who’s death had brought us into contact with each other, came into her life around that time. She got upset with this sweet old man when he was kind and caring because it made her feel fragile. She grew angry with him for warning her against sleeping around and drinking, but then she also got mad when she “flipped out” on him, and he stopped asking about what she’d been doing.

Life was very confusing for the teenage Bridget.

When she turned to talking about how she met Jeremy, the fucker who’d almost put me back in prison, it made my skin crawl.

Bridget and I had talked about Jeremy so many times in the past year. Sometimes those conversations made me bitter because her memories of him seemed so skewed. He was a controlling bastard. And sure, I could be grateful to him for keeping her safe for so many years… but that was only because he knew her from when she was a teenager. Knowing she was so alone in the world back then and he was the one watching over her… it made my skin crawl.

Then later, after she turned twenty-one, she’d dived deep into the dark web and developed a sexual penchant for the dark side of life. That fuckerhelped heruse herself as bait for the psychos she found there. Eventually, before I met her, one of them almost killed her. Even though he got her out of there just in time, he was half-responsible for putting her in that position to begin with. One wrong step, just a few more minutes and I never would have met Bridget.

I could never forgive him for that.

But Bridget had. She took responsibility for all that bullshit on herself.

I shook my head and tried to focus on somethingotherthan Jeremy.

I didn’t miss that Bridget’s handwriting grew erratic over the following pages.

She’d jump between telling stories and talking about how she felt, or what she feared—her anger towards her father, her frustration with Jeremy’s control, and yet also the co-dependence she felt with Jeremy because he fed something safe into the reckless self-destruction that was growing in her.

It was stunning to read that even back then, somewhere in the back of her mind,sheknew she needed a protector. She knew she needed someone who would jump in and save her in the moments she might not understand that she needed saving.

She knew it, but she fought it as well. And according to this journal, she still didn’t know why.

I readall day.My head spinning. More than once my body tensed as I instinctively wanted to jump into those page and pull the younger Bridget back from the precipice of the newest danger or wound.

To my relief, Bridget grew more relaxed as the day wore on. She came to sit close more than once. Laying down and sleeping alongside me when I lay on the bed, sitting food in front of me and just leaving it when I was out on the deck—like I’d done for her when she was writing.

There was only one moment when I broke free of the book and met her eyes.

She’d come outside to take away my dinner plate, and as she leaned over the table and reached for it, I caught her wrist and made her look at me.

I was reading about how alone she had always felt.

Her mother wouldn’t leave for her.

Her father threatened to kill her, then went to prison.

Her aunt took care of her, but only for the money.

Her aunt’s boyfriend violated her.

Her teachers got frustrated and gave up on her when she became too out of hand.

Even when she had friends, their lives were so different to hers, she always felt isolated from them. And shenevertold them the truth about her life.

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