I Don't Know If I Can Do This... 

I have been inching toward separation and divorce for the last few months.  I even have imposed my own deadline in order to motivate myself into action (since I know I am liable to back out if I don't.) 

It's not doubt that fuels the hesitation.  I know that although things have improved for the moment, they will return to their former ugliness.  That is only a matter of time.

What creates my problem then?  It's got to be many different things.  There is sheer, unadulterated fear -- fear of financial ruin, fear of loneliness, fear of isolation from family and friends, fear of retribution by L.'s family and friends, and fear of the unknowable.  That seems to be the largest part of it.

I am also concerned about the permanence of it all.  Once I take that step and announce my leaving, I am virtually certain there will be no turning back.  There will be no additional marriage seminar, no book to read, no therapist to see for the purpose of restoring things to some level of normalcy.  This is the precipice -- one more step means falling off the ledge.

This weekend I was more depressed than I have ever been.  I thought that perhaps I should just resign myself to living in a relationship with no hope of happiness or freedom.  I can't possibly be happier regardless of what happens in or out of my marriage.  I might as well just crawl in a hole and die.  After all, divorce IS death -- the death of not just a relationship or a partnership, it is the death of a dream.  Once, I dreamed a dream that I had found the one, and only one, person I would share my life with willingly until life itself was gone.  And now that dream has disappeared from me and I will never find it again.  If there is to be anything after this, it must be a new dream, a new purpose, a new vision of what life could be.

Right now, I only dwell in the shadow of the nightmares.  I dare not dream a new dream.