A/N: Disclaimer - Stephenie Meyer owns all the characters, obviously, but I'm the one who makes them do all the weird stuff. Thanks to my great beta, Trekgeezer for helping me tweak this chapter! I know the readers are now divided and that some can't forgive me for allowing Bella to sleep with Jacob. I hope that you'll be able to stick with me to the end, anyway - be brave!
You're my lifeline
You're the pipeline to all my dreams from here
You're my lifeline
You're the pipeline to everything, that's clear
And if I could make you happy I'd stretch it out for you
And if I could give you someone
Who would not play the fool
But every time I try to know you
You send me back to school
You're my lifeline
You're the pipeline to all my dreams from here
You're my lifeline
You're the pipeline between love and fear
And if I could make you happy I'd stretch it out for you
And if I could give you someone
Who would not break a rule
But every time I try to show you
You send me back to school
Yeah, you send me back to school
Soundtrack of our lives: Lifeline
Chapter 53
January.
BPOV
When the office door opens, I'm greeted by a woman who is wildly different from Dr. Banner. A woman, maybe in her thirties, with curly reddish brown hair, dressed in an embroidered shirt and wide brown slacks, smiles up at me. She can't be more than five foot two, with a wonderful face that's shrewd and bright like a copper coin. When I shake her hand, her grip is firm and warm.
"Ms. Swan? Pleased to meet you. I'm Margaret Kaye, but you can call me Maggie. Please come in." She shows me inside her office, which is singular like her. Warm red and brown colors dominate. There are paintings and ethnic objects of art made of wood and clay decorating the open spaces and the walls are covered with bookcases. It's a room I could feel at home in, if I wasn't feeling so distressed. My heart is pounding and my hands feel clammy and cold.
"Please take a seat." Ms Kaye, well, Maggie, points to a leather chair standing at an angle from a high-backed chair with an embroidered cushion on it, where she sits herself down. There's a small table between us with a clay bowl and a box of Kleenex. "You're American I take it?" she asks me.
I nod and take my seat as directed. Her accent sounds vaguely un-British, but then I'm not the best judge. Maggie smooths her shirt down and looks at me with a smile hovering at the corners of her generous mouth.
"So, will you tell me why you think you're here, Ms. Swan?"
I wet my lips and reply. "Bella. Please call me Bella." I draw a deep breath, willing the trembling in my hands to subside. "I'm here because I've been feeling depressed for some time now. I feel like all the light and color has gone out of my life and everything is just a dull monochrome. Empty. A friend, Siobhan, encouraged me to look for help and recommended you." That's the short version.
Maggie looks at me, thoughtfully. "And can you tell me how long this has been going on, or how it started, Bella? Have there been any changes in your life that have affected you emotionally or physically?"
My mind reels. So much has happened I barely know where to start. I can't really say what has led me to this moment, so I just pick up a thread from the confused ball of tangled feelings and memories in my head and start unraveling.
"I went through an ugly divorce last winter. My husband more or less threw me out after more than fifteen years of marriage. He implied that our marriage had always been a failure and that he'd married me for the wrong reasons, more out of pity than love." I feel my voice tremble as I repeat his words.
Maggie gently asks, "Did you believe him, Bella?"
I swallow and give a small shrug. "I don't know. People say things they don't mean in emotional situations. I've seen people going through a divorce who paint their partner and their relationship in the blackest colors, as if denying the value of what they had means that they can justify doing the right thing now. I know that he had been unhappy in our marriage for a long time, and so was I." I frown, remembering seeing James this summer.
"Actually, when I saw my ex-husband this summer, he said something that surprised me. He seemed to say that he had divorced me out of some kind of concern for my wellbeing. I don't know what he meant. Maybe he just enjoys trying to confuse me. He's very manipulative."
Maggie leans back in her chair, watching me. "So what happened after he initiated the divorce? How did you react?"
I still feel uncomfortable admitting to anyone the extent of my weakness. "I … had a breakdown." I bite my lip and twist my hands together in my lap, wishing that I could get up out of the deep chair and start pacing instead. "I wept without reason; I couldn't sleep. I had panic attacks that left me trembling and useless, unable to breathe, unable to speak. I shied away from all social contacts and isolated myself since I didn't want to explain my situation to others and couldn't trust my own reactions." Maggie just looks at me, no visible judgment on her face.
"And did you receive some kind of help, then?" I nod.
"A friend of mine, Rosalie, who is a lawyer, helped me get legal counsel and looked out for me. She got me to see a doctor and I was given anxiety medication and sleeping pills. I took spring off from my work in San Francisco and went to stay in her beach house in southern California, to get better and to work on my book."
"How did that go?" Maggie asks. Her face is kind but detached, and I wonder what kind of stories she usually listens to in that chair: abuse, child neglect, fetishes or grief trauma? I probably seem pathetic and privileged.
"Well, I slowly got better. I mean, my panic attacks and nightmares subsided gradually. I started seeing a behavior therapist and with her I worked on identifying situations that made me uncomfortable and techniques to alleviate anxiety. I focused on eating better and working out regularly to take control of my body. After a while, I began to wean myself away from the pills, but I still had a hard time being around people. I tried to leave the house only sparingly and kept my interactions with others to a minimum. I had this weird feeling that people were watching me all the time. That they judged me." I fidget, embarrassed, "I know that sounds paranoid, but I couldn't help it. I felt, still feel … ugly."
Maggie shifts in her chair, then asks, "Can you remember any other times in your life when you experienced similar feelings, being judged by others or feeling ugly? Was that your first encounter with a therapist?"
I feel my heartbeat pick up again, and I force myself to take slow breaths. "No. I saw a therapist when my husband and I lost our baby girl. My husband demanded it because he thought I needed professional help."
"You didn't agree," Maggie states matter-of-factly. I shake my head.
"The therapist didn't understand what I was going through at the time. Talking with him didn't help me. He kept insisting that what happened was a tragic accident and that all my reactions were normal." I draw a deep breath. I tried to tell Dr. Moore that I felt my lack of connection with Lily had somehow contributed to her death, but he kept hammering home that I was just suffering from a lack of sleep and emotional exhaustion, made worse by grief.
"And you didn't feel that your own reactions were normal?" Maggie is so still that I start to fidget in my chair. How can someone be so focused? It's as if she had a flashlight trained on me, following every breath I take with absolute attention.
"No. I thought I was an inadequate mother, and I was afraid that somehow my deficiency had caused the death of Lily, my baby daughter. He refused to listen, so I gave up and stopped telling him what I felt and started saying what I thought he wanted to hear."
Maggie smiles, a small movement at the corners of her mouth, but there's no amusement.
"Is that how you have approached therapy, then, in the past? Saying what you think that I, the therapist wants to hear?"
I shake my head and feel my cheeks flush. Put like that it makes me sound rather childish. What's the point of therapy if I'm not prepared to be honest? But what's the point of seeing a therapist who isn't interested in the truth?
"No, but I need to know before we go ahead that you're willing to listen to what I have to say and not push your theories on me."
Maggie raises her eyebrows. "Is that your experience? Bella, let me tell you something: this is a safe place. In here, you may say anything you want. I'm not here to judge you, or to push theories on you. My job is to try to hear what you're saying and help you hear it, too. My hope is that we'll be able to see how you feel about yourself and your life, what aspects of it are positive and worth strengthening, and what aspects of it are draining your energy and making you feel depressed. I don't normally prescribe drugs, but if we get to a point where I feel you would benefit from anti-depressants, we can discuss that, too. What do you think of that?"
I sit still for a moment, letting the silence stretch out. Am I prepared to try this again? I look at Maggie. She seems like a person I could grow to trust, I feel a certain affinity to her and to this room. Maybe it is indeed a safe place. I nod.
"All right. I'll try to be honest with you, if you'll try to take what I say seriously. I'm not interested in medication, but if you feel we need to discuss it, we can."
"Fine. Now, what is uppermost in your mind? What is bothering you right now?"
I sit up straighter and then reach for my bag, taking out a brown envelope. "Something happened yesterday that I don't understand. My father had been cleaning house over Christmas and found some of my old school things. He sent me a couple of essay books because he thought I would think it was fun to read them again, but when it arrived in the mail yesterday and I opened it, I had the strangest reaction. I started crying and shaking, and I had to put them away in a bag and hide them at the back of my closet. It scared me because I don't understand why it happened."
Maggie takes the envelope from me and looks at me as it rests in her lap. "And how do you feel now?"
I grind my teeth, looking at the envelope. "I'm still uneasy. I don't like it. It's as if those pieces of paper were alive, or contained some kind of poison. It's just old essays, for God's sake. Am I losing my mind?"
Maggie gestures to the envelope. "May I look at them?" I nod and look away, taking the opportunity to look closer at the pieces of art covering the walls. From the corner of my eye, I see how she leafs through them.
"When did you write this?" she asks. I shrug.
"I don't know exactly. I started high school in Forks my sophomore year, just before I turned 15, and I graduated when I was 17."
"Were you happy in school? Content? Did you do well?" I hardly know how to reply.
"Um, I did well if you're talking about grades. I took AP classes and aced them all the way, graduated with a perfect grade point average. I had to, you see, because neither one of my parents had the money to send me to college. I had to get a scholarship if I wanted to attend something other than community college."
"So you worked hard in school," Maggie confirms. "And did you achieve what you set out to do?"
I nod. "I got a good scholarship to the University of Chicago and earned my master's degree in English literature there before going on to write my dissertation at Berkeley. That's where I teach now, when I'm not here, I mean."
Maggie nods. "It seems to me you have both worked hard and done well for yourself, Bella. But let's get back to high school: when you asked me if I meant your grades, what were you thinking about specifically?"
I can feel my face cloud over. "High school was horrible. I had a difficult time making friends and ended up keeping mostly to myself. I got along with the teachers but there was a group of kids who were really mean to me." I shift in my chair. "I get it, I mean, I grasped the rules of high school life, the pecking order or whatever, but I couldn't wait to get out of there."
"You say that you understood the pecking order of your high school environment. What did you mean by that? Why were you singled out?"
I start feeling prickly all over. I don't want to think about those days. I try to keep it brief.
"High school wasn't really much different from middle school. You know the score: some kids are popular and some kids are not. There are groups, and you get sorted into one of them, regardless of what you think. I was fat in middle school and so I was one of the ugly kids. Then I always did well in school, so I was a geek. When I got to Forks, I was the daughter of a cop, so I was a pariah. There was really nothing I could do about it, except to keep my head down and endure it."
Maggie is looking at me, but I look down at my hands in my lap.
"So, this was a time in your life when you were unhappy? Do you think that this unhappiness has somehow loaded the books your father sent with that emotion?"
I shrug. "All I know is that I felt I wanted to burn them on sight."
"Then maybe you should." I look up, surprised. Maggie's face is neutral – she's not joking. "Sometimes, a symbolic action can be liberating. If you feel like you want to erase those feelings, maybe burning the books will be a strong expression of that wish." I hesitate, and Maggie inserts a new question.
"You mentioned being fat, and when Siobhan talked to me on the phone, she felt that you were working yourself too hard and keeping yourself on an unusually strict diet. Would you like to tell me a little bit more about how you feel about your body?"
Boy, this is hard, but it shouldn't be. God knows I've thought about it enough. I brace myself to tell the truth, or enough of the truth.
"I feel that I need to control my body better to be able to control myself, my life. Being the fat kid in school was pretty hard, as I'm sure you can imagine, and my mother has always needled me about my weight. She has weighed 110 pounds since she was seventeen, so she thinks everyone else should." I snort, then quickly return to sober. "And she was right, up to a point, I mean, being fat made me unhappy." I shrug. Renee and I have never seen eye to eye on food, but I've learnt to ignore her.
"Anyway, I grew out of it in my teens, but in Forks I was still the ugly kid; by then it was just the way everybody saw me. Then later, when I was pregnant in my thirties, I gained a lot of weight again and I never really lost it. Maybe that was one of the reasons why my husband and I gradually drifted apart: he just didn't feel attracted to me anymore, and I didn't feel attractive." I take a deep breath, plunging on.
"Anyway, after the divorce, when I felt everything disintegrating, I decided to turn my life around. I started dieting and exercising to sleep better and get in better shape. I'm still doing it now, because it makes me feel better, it's become a routine. And I'm not an anorectic, whatever Siobhan may have told you. I eat three times a day, and I exercise three or four times a week and that's perfectly normal. I'm not even thin, you can see that for yourself, can't you?"
Maggie looks at me intently, then tilts her head as if she's considering what I'm saying.
"Bella, you look perfectly normal to me. You should remember that normal isn't a certain set of physical qualities but includes a wide range of ways to be human. Siobhan also looks normal to me. What do you think of her?"
I choke a little. Siobhan has been a wonderful friend to me ever since my bathroom bawl before Christmas, but in February she's going back to Ireland and someone else will take her place in the other bedroom. I know I'm going to miss her terribly.
"I think that Siobhan is a beautiful person, inside and out. I love her." I squint at Maggie, angrily." I don't have any hang-ups about other people's weight, if that's what you mean?"
Maggie shakes her head. "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to imply that. So, you find Siobhan beautiful, inside and out. How about yourself? How would you describe yourself, Bella?"
I squirm in my chair; the leather feels squeaky beneath my thighs.
"If you're talking about looks, I'm a middle-aged woman with dark hair going grey and dark eyes. I am a little on the heavy side but reasonably attractive for someone my age. If you talk generally, I'm a middle-aged woman in the middle of an academic career who is having psychological problems for some reason I don't quite understand."
"Do you find yourself beautiful, Bella?" I stare at her.
"Are you crazy? What woman would ever say of herself that she was beautiful?" Maggie smiles at me and it makes her eyes twinkle merrily like candles flickering.
"Oh, I know a number of women who would describe themselves as beautiful. The question here is, would you, Bella?" I dig my fingertips into the sturdy armrests of the chair. Honestly.
"No." I say carefully. "I couldn't say that I think of myself as beautiful." I hurry to brush it away. "But that's not important. I was never pretty as a girl, and I've learned to get by without being beautiful. There are other values in life. Besides, at my age it becomes an academic question, really. I'm heading for that part of life where men don't see you anymore, regardless of how pretty you were when you were younger."
Maggie is silent, long enough that it becomes uncomfortable.
"Bella, just from this session, I have gathered that there are a lot of things bothering you right now. You're describing feelings of emptiness and a lack of joy or positive emotions that to me sounds very much like an indication of depression. However, when you talk about your life, I can't help thinking that your reaction is not in any way strange." She pauses, looking at me to make sure she has my attention.
"You've been through some major life changes this past year, including a divorce and the move here to England, leaving friends and family behind. And you've mentioned years of social ostracism in school, your parents' divorce, a strained relationship with your mother, and the loss of your only child at a young age. Any of these things might cause depression in a person. I'm not sure, but from what you've said, I'd say that it's possible you've suffered from post-natal depression, too, though it may have gone undiagnosed. Please, don't be offended by my question, but around the time when your baby died, did you have thoughts about killing yourself?"
My throat contracts. I've never really talked to anyone about this; my recurring fantasies about killing myself. They are fantasies, nothing more, I'm sure of it, but there have been times ever since my teens when I have planned the manner of my own death, and culled emotional relief just from the idea that death lay within my reach. When James read my journal, this is what upset him most and it was the reason he insisted that I see a counselor. I think it's the one thing neither one of us could get past; he couldn't forgive me for not telling him how I felt and I could never forgive him for violating my one source of private relief.
"I did have fantasies about killing myself, it's true. You see, I felt so completely worthless there for a while. As if I didn't deserve to live when Lily died. I can't explain it. My life seemed like a complete mistake."
Maggie leans forward a fraction and tries to catch my eye, but I have a hard time meeting her gaze.
"I'm not surprised, Bella. I hope you do know that the guilt and the trauma you experienced were normal reactions, maybe exacerbating feelings that a post-partum depression had already invoked of being worthless and useless as a mother. One out of five women experience post-partum depression, Bella, and they can be anything from mild to severe, life-threatening conditions. I'm concerned that you didn't receive more professional help at the time and I think that some of the things you are experiencing now may be due to old wounds opening up. Leaving your marriage, your job and the United Stated are all traumatic, life-changing events, even if you perceive them as positive in some aspects, and this may evoke feelings of abandonment and worthlessness all over again."
I sigh, my lips trembling. I really don't want to cry anymore. "But what can I do?" I hear myself wailing. "This is who I am – this is my life! It's not magically going to change, and I can't go back and do everything over. Are you saying that this is what my life has become now – that I'm stuck with this?" It's awful to say the words out loud, because this is my secret fear.
Maggie shakes her head gently. "No, Bella, not at all. I am merely trying to see what the roots are to what you're experiencing right now, to help you work to achieve some new ground and other ways to tackle life."
I sink my head into my hands, feeling exhausted. "So, what should I do? I have to tell you, I'm really not keen on taking any kind of medication. I'd rather start running again and wear myself out to get a good night's sleep."
"Bella, what we're working with here is compassion-focused therapy. The goal is to teach you how to look at yourself, others and life with empathy. I venture to guess that you spend a lot of time beating yourself up in your head, am I right?" When I don't answer, Maggie goes on. "When you fail to meet a deadline or when you break your routines for eating and exercise, I bet that you tell yourself a lot of harsh things, don't you? Would you tell me what you say to yourself in private, please?"
I cringe. "Okay, I know that I'm my own worst critic, but that's actually a good thing, you know? It keeps me on my toes, keeps me focused. I'm always fair with myself – it's not as if I'm some masochist constantly beating myself up." I look at Maggie, and realize that she's still waiting.
Sighing, I sit up straight and try to give an honest reply. "Well, all right, when I fail to meet my own standards it's true that I call myself names, like stupid or weak, or ugly and pathetic." I feel uncomfortable saying these things out loud. I've always thought of this as a toughening-up exercise, to steel myself against whatever others may throw in my face. If I've said it to myself first, it won't sting so much coming from others, right?
"And how does that make you feel?" Maggie asks. I wrinkle my brow, thinking back to times in front of the mirror. How does it make me feel?
"Um, hot all over sometimes, or cold. Like my stomach hurts and I want to curl in on myself. Like everyone can see just how ugly I am and what's wrong with me, so I don't want people to see me." I blow out a breath, listening to myself. "Oh, shit, this sounds so messed up when I speak about it. It's really not that bad. I mean, anyone who's honest with themself has to criticize themself from time to time, don't they?"
Maggie nods. "Yes, but honesty is not enough to induce the feelings of shame and discomfort that you describe. Listen, Bella, I want to go through some exercises with you. You will do them here, with me, and then at home several times a day until we see each other next week. Whenever you have these negative thoughts about yourself and feel ashamed, I want you to switch modes and start looking at yourself as if you were a compassionate bystander, and talk to yourself from that point of view. It will take some training, but I encourage you not to give up. The first couple of weeks, or in some cases months, are always the hardest." She sits up in her chair and her face takes on a fierce quality I haven't seen before.
"And if at any time you experience anxiety attacks or have serious problems sleeping, or if you have suicidal feelings or thoughts, I want you to call me immediately, Bella – immediately, is that clear? Therapy can open up feelings that you haven't accessed in a long time, and I don't want you to be alone with them, or feel overwhelmed, okay?"
I stare at her, already trembling with a mixture of fear and hope. She is younger than me, but in this moment she seems so … motherly, for lack of a better word. I haven't even started telling her about Edward, but maybe I can and she won't judge me. Maybe she's someone who really cares, someone who can help me. Maybe I'm not alone.
"Okay," I whisper.
Maggie grins, and her smile is the kind that lights up a room. "Good, now I want you to follow me over to the mirror and we will begin our first exercises in compassion together."
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E-mail from eacullen (a) Yahoo. com to BaSwan (a) Hotmail. com
Jan 11 2012.
Subject: Merry Christmas.
Dear Bella,
I haven't heard from you, and I didn't expect to. I've decided that I'm still going to write to you, though, and hope that someday you'll read it. I've heard it said that writing to someone is a way to be close to that person, and I think that's right. When I write to you, it's almost as if you're sitting in the next room, reading or working at your laptop, and I can see that wrinkle in your forehead when you frown over the text in concentration, or that ghost of a smile when you think of something and you can't wait to get it down. Writing to you is the only time I feel close to happy.
Christmas was weird. Grandmother and Gramps came over and stayed with us for the holidays. Carlisle and Esme tried to pretend it was just like any other year, as if nothing had changed, but everything has changed. I'm a different person, and Alice is, too. We have grown up, in good ways and in bad ways, and there is no going back.
We're growing closer, me and Alice, even if things are different from before. She still looks up to me, but there's sadness in her when she sees me now, too. She knows I'm not the perfect brother. She knows now that I never really was. She still loves me, but everything that's happened makes her sad. We don't talk much, but when I'm home she comes into my room and reads and we listen to music, or we sit in the basement and watch a movie together. It's almost as if she knows what I'm thinking. I feel comfortable with her, in a way I would never have thought possible. I've told her I am too sorry for words about everything that happened, and she has told me a million times that she forgives me, even though she doesn't think it's my fault. I know she has a big heart, like you Bella, so I believe her.
On Christmas night I couldn't take it anymore, so I hid in my room and cried like a little girl, because I missed you so much, and because I couldn't stop thinking of all the Christmases ahead when I won't even know where you are or who you're with. Alice came in and sat with me in the darkness on the bed, and pulled her fingers through my hair, like you used to do, and even if that didn't stop the ache in my chest, I still felt comforted. I'm so lucky to have her for a sister.
After my stunt in California before Christmas, my parents demanded that I should talk to my counselor about it. Don't worry, I haven't told them about you. I let my parents believe that my visit to Rosalie's office was because I'd become obsessed with her, and that's the story I'm sticking to with them. College has been something of a shock: I'm working harder now than I ever did in high school and I'm not getting any free rides from my teachers. I'm not complaining. I'm doing okay. I still run track, but I'm not the fastest guy on the track team anymore, which is humbling in a way I didn't expect. People have led me to believe that college is all about partying but I'm staying away from that crowd, even though some people seem to have heard rumors that I'm a party animal. Those days feel like a long time ago, but actually it's only a little more than a year. So much has happened in a year.
I hope you had a good Christmas, whether you spent it in Europe or in the States. I spent a lot of time brooding over what I would like to get you for Christmas, but since I know that you're not comfortable getting presents from me, I will not pester you with the list. I hope you had: people you love, a Christmas tree, an open fire, good music, and all the things you like to eat, in moderation so you didn't get sick.
You know what I would like to do if I could spend Christmas morning with you? I would sit with you in front of a fire, on the couch in our pajamas, bundled up warm. There would be snow outside, and the Bach Christmas Oratorio would be playing in the room. I would have made you a pot of Darjeeling tea, and fresh scones with Cheddar cheese, butter and black currant marmalade (that was your favorite, right?). Then I would make you open one (1) present, and that would be the book you would be reading all through the next two or three days. I would watch you read, and brush crumbs off your lap and be completely and blissfully happy. Why? Because I love you.
Edward
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E-mail from eacullen (a) Yahoo. com to BaSwan (a) Hotmail. com
20 January 2010
Subject: The cruelest of months
I disagree with the poet: I think January is the cruelest month. Did I tell you that I'm a student at Northwestern? Well, I am, and living on the lake, which seemed like such a good idea in balmy September, doesn't look so good now. The icy winds coming off the water these weeks are the kind that make you want to shrivel up and die as soon as you step foot outside the door. I bundle up in my pea coat and knit cap, but I'm still frozen stiff by the time I walk into class.
I started out taking pre-med classes because that's what Carlisle felt I should do, but I'm already thinking about a psychology major or maybe going into psychiatry. After this last year, I'm starting to think that God is trying to tell me something. Maybe if I'd been able and willing to help Alice, none of this would have happened; but then I wouldn't have met you and discovered that you needed me, and that I needed you. I know I'm a screwed-up son-of-a-bitch, but I honestly think I've been able to learn something through everything that we've been through. What if I could learn enough to help other people?
You think this sounds crazy, right? But I'm still going to talk to my counselor about it. I've been seeing the counselor once a week now. That was one of the conditions Carlisle made over Christmas. And even if I thought it was bullshit at first, I'm not so sure now. Her name is Chelsea, and she's really good at drawing things out of me, things I didn't even know I was thinking or feeling.
So, maybe I could be like her sometime and sit in a chair and help other screwed-up people discover what they're really thinking and feeling? One thing came out early on, though, because it was the only thing I'm completely certain of: that I love you, Bella. Don't worry, I haven't told her who you are. But if I can't talk about you to anyone, I'm pretty sure I'll go crazy or do something stupid. You're pretty much the only thing I think about. Okay, maybe that came out wrong. Please don't freak out! Please tell me you're okay, that's all I really need to know. I love you.
Edward
A/N: So, at least everyone's in therapy now! What about Bella's self esteem issues - have you ever been there? On another note, I understand that a lot of you really dislike Jacob, but I always thought that if Bella needs him, hey, it's good that he's there for her, no? Love triangles are a bother, though, I think we'd do better without them as a plot device - what do you think? (Vampire Diaries? Lauren Oliver's Delirium-trilogy?)
If you want to relax with another fan fic, I've been reading Dancing in the Dark by jaxon22 id: 8751380 Edward is a stripper who suddenly discovers he's a single father left with a baby, and has to deal with Bella - his baby girl's strict attorney aunt. A little humor, a little angst and a lot of attraction. A wonderful depiction of life with a new baby and how that changes your priorities. Thank you for reading!
