Is my problem an inability to compartmentalize? I was very happy with him for a long time and now I'm not and honestly today I turned over the thought in my mind, if I were to walk out the door today and never see him ever again that would be okay with me. It is that gone. And he's actually in better spirits these days, whatever funk he'd been in for years on end that caused things to ditch like a plane in remote woods - things seem to be lifting, he's starting to make ends meet I think. We don't discuss finances, or anything else really, except what's on the menu for the next meal. We used to discuss finances - I used to manage the finances, in fact. But the money got run through and he didn't blink an eye. Then we got in a hole - I guess, I quit asking, I just live here - and now, after a number of years of his not pulling in any money at all (expecting me with my fancy degrees to be made of the strong stuff that I wasn't, not on my own I couldn't, not without help, and moral support), now he's starting to, and it's nice too - the work he does is very "community-based" and it's about word-of-mouth, and building a client list, and referrals, and it's starting to happen, people like him, and they like his work. We should never have gotten into a hole - we were riding high - with a house entirely paid for, no children (which has its downside - except - no financial sinkhole there either). We should have been able to have a very pleasant, relatively anxiety-free (or anxiety-reduced) life together. But no. We moved here six years ago this spring, and I figured it would take about a year, year and change, to get the place liveable - that was, I figured, his "grace period." Four years went by before he went out, very reluctantly, tentatively, to earn some money. I was eaten with anxiety for the first few years, almost paralyzed by it. I still loved him, but could tell that the anxiety was building, and my anger, and at some point - four or five years ago, I said - if things don't change I'm going to not love you anymore, and if that happens I don't think I'm going to be able to get it back. I didn't mean it as an ultimatum about money - let's say there was an "alienation of affection," what amounted to a complete withdrawal of affection towards me on his part - and, sure enough, it had its effects.

I have no interest in being single. I can't just walk out the door, there's no place to walk out to. I've lived on my own before, and I can do it (heck - I'm doing it now, to a great degree). What I really wish is to love - and to be loved. All in the same relationship, a marriage. I had that for a long time. I wish it again but he and I have both changed. He's getting better, perhaps some of his stress and anxiety are becoming alleviated as he sees the light at the end of the tunnel of making ends meet. But the damage has been done.

I would like, more than anything else I think, to be in a very loving, intimate, longlived marriage again. But with someone else.

I can't fake it in my marriage, and I cannot will my feelings towards him back. I don't even see the utility or use of it at this point, except that it does make me feel uncomfortable that I am financially entirely dependent on him at this point - at the very point that I have ceased to love him - which is a very, very discomfiting situation to be in, for me. (All the previous years of our marriage, I was either working - at times pulling in either more income, or even the sole income - or we had joint savings.)

Personal evolution. What will happen? Will anything happen? I took a very, very long walk around here today, I must have covered 5-6 miles. Over the last couple of years I have worked very hard to keep physically fit, and as Alec Baldwin said in some recent movie - ladies, the pilates is really paying off. And it is. But there's a part of me, as I march with weights along the empty, frozen country roads here that makes me feel like a prisoner in a state penitentiary. What do they do to while away the time? Work out, keep strong and buff - write letters to the outside world even. (I should know, I used to work for an indigent-defense agency, and one of my responsibilities was to respond to prisoners' correspondence, all handwritten, usually many many pages, and amazingly, each misunderstood, innocent, hated their defense attorney who'd landed them in prison, and were disappointed when they'd confided in an A.D.A. that the prosecution had womped them anyway! Amazing. Dear Prisoner, First of all never confide anything to an A.D.A., you hear? They are not on your side, they're the ones trying to prosecute you, you clod ... No, my return correspondence didn't read like that, exactly...

So I'm sorry, my dearests, for this rather gloomy rumination, it was where my head was at today, I'm afraid, and - it's my blog I'll cry if I want to -

I'm actually feeling okay, there's a chicken roasting in the oven, I'm glad I've been becoming quite shapely (I think), and I'm glad D's stress is alleviating and some money is coming in to the point that he suggested that I look up the cost of a share in the local CSA (community supported agriculture farm, with weekly pick-ups of organic produce, flowers I can cut from their border, etc.). It's quite pricey, but he feels he can manage it with their installment plan. And he's even sprung for tickets to see a simulcast National Theatre production of King Lear one evening next week, a play neither of us has read or seen, and that I have truly felt that I would leap right off my deathbed if I were to die without seeing it. So - I conclude darkly - anytime after next Thursday evening will probably be okay.

Oh I don't mean that at all! I love you darlings, including the darlings I love now and have met, some more recently (than 35 years ago) than others, and maybe even a darling I haven't yet met - because, if we're meant for each other, he is surely alive right this moment.

XOXO