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Fifteen
I hit the Backspace key.Again.For what feels like the thousandth time tonight. My ability to draft a regular, nothing out of the ordinary blog post seems to be broken, and honestly?
I think it has everything to do with Briggs. I groan and drop my head onto my laptop on the kitchen table. Glancing at the small clock at the top right of my computer, the time reads three twenty-seven a.m. I’ve been sitting here for two hours, and I have exactly zero words to show for it. After Olive woke up from her midnight feeding, I finally got her back to sleep and managed to sit down at my computer and accomplish… nothing.
Actually, I’d have lots of words if I hadn’t deleted.. Every. Single. One of them.
My brain is officially broken and I have no idea why. Maybe because I’m exhausted and have a newborn, or maybe it’s because Briggs poured his heart out and now something inside of me feels… different. Realization has seeped into my head, and now I’m doubting everything.
Ever since Briggs and I had the conversation about the impact the media had on him during one of the worst times of his life, it’s made me questionThe Puck Bunny.
Entirely.
If he feels this way, then do others? Have I hurt others unintentionally with who and what I report on?
I started this anonymous sports blog when I was barely twenty, and now it’s been four years, and it’s grown tremendously. Way bigger than I ever imagined, and sometimes it’s hard to believe that it’s grown to this size. I think the last time I checked, I had over amillionsubscribers.The Puck Bunnystarted as a place where I could share my love for hockey and for journalism in the same place. Growing up, it was the one sport that Grams constantly had on the tv. Gramps was a hockey fan before he passed away, and then somewhere along the line, I fell in love with it too. It was something I looked forward to, and once I realized that I loved watching the highlights the most, the rest is history.
I realized then that journalism was my calling.
Becoming a journalism major and startingThe Puck Bunnyfelt…right. Writing these posts that are sometimes funny, and focus on the other side of hockey too, not just players and teams’ stats.
The scandalous side.
It was all fun, and games and then… I got pregnant with Olive, and it went from being a hobby, to something that had grown exponentially and with growth, came income.
Income that I desperately needed now that I was having a baby, alone.
That’s why I continued to blog my entire pregnancy because I needed the money even more now than before. I was in school, with no medical insurance, because I was technically self-employed, and I had to prepare for a baby without the help of Briggs. The medical bills alone took a huge chunk from my savings. And, I would never have asked my grams for help, not unless there was absolutelynoother choice.
She has enough on her plate with the Brickside, and the amount of money that it costs to keep it up.
“Come on Maddison, it’s literally a fucking paragraph. You can do this.” I try to talk myself up. My fingers hover over the keyboard again, and I type a simple sentence.
The Puck Bunny is officially… out of scandals.
Backspace. Backspace. Backspace.
Would Briggs hate me the same way that he hates the rest of the media? Would he hate me for the posts from before I even knew him?
I can’t stop thinking about what he said, and the fact that I could possibly be hurting others with what I post.
But, it’s my job. A job that I have to have in order to support my daughter, even though I’ve padded my savings. It’s always just been a job, a way to reach my dreams.
I just don’t want to be the person that hurts Briggs, not after everything he’s gone through… even if we’re not together, he’s still Olive’s father and I don’t want to hurt him.
Since I’m obviously not making any headway in drafting a new blog post, I pull up Google and type his name in the search bar.
Briggs Wilson.
A dozen articles pop up immediately. A few on his latest hockey stats and a few of my own articles take center stage.
Briggs Wilson, betrayed by his own blood, brother caught in bed with his cheating fiancée. Family dinners will most definitely be awkward now.
Chicago’s bad boy strikes again, arrested for being drunk and disorderly. When will the Avalanches’ center get it together?
Next stop… no longer a part of the Avalanche organization? Briggs Wilson, a recipe for disaster, says NHL announcer.
God, these are awful. Swallowing harshly, I bite back the sting of tears. Jesus Maddison, you can’t continue this, you can’t have anything to do with something so damning.. so cruel, he’s Olive’sfather. I can’t imagine Olive growing up and knowing that I was a part of something that hurt Briggs.
I pull up my email and delete each and every tip that’s come through in the past month. The ones I haven’t touched, because I was trying to navigate motherhood, but now? I can’t even look at them without feeling sick. Not when Olive’s father is the topic of so many of them.
And not even just that he’s Olive’s father, but that he’s agoodman, and he’s shown me that. He and his friends, they have been here constantly to show support to me, and to Olive.
Right here and now, I make the only decision I can. The only one that feels right.
The future ofThe Puck Bunnyis on hold, and I don’t know for how long. I just know that I won’t hurt him, not ever again, not when I now know who he really is, and what those headlines did to him.
Slamming my laptop shut, I exhale.
I’m done.
