What do you do?

I am home. Home. There's a word full of meaning.

Here at Casa de Crazy, we have been experiencing a full load of chaos, stress, and distress. I haven't written about most of it, because...why?

I teach a communications class at the track. The first thing I tell novice communicators is "Remember to breathe, oxygen is your friend." and then "Don't call the incident in until it's finished. Then, take a breath and key the microphone. You won't lose anything by doing that, and you'll be able to make a full report."

Good advice for life, too, it seems. Let things finish...breath...then key the mic, write the post.

So.

What's been going on here?

A marriage has been disintegrating.

It's nobody's fault, really. Or ever one's. I don't know. Mostly I think it's my fault, really.

For the last five years, I've struggled to hold onto it...to be a good wife, a good mother, to ride out what felt like some very rough, very lonely seas, hope for smoother sailing. I can't any more.

I am physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted.

I don't love my husband. Not romantically. Not the way a wife should. Something inside me broke, a while back, and I can't fix it.

Goddess knows, I've tried...

But you can't force love. I care deeply for him, although I think I may have given him cause to doubt that. I don't want him to go away, although I think he doubts that, too. I want him to be here for our son...but I can't pretend, any more, that I'm fine, that we're fine, that everything is fine.

I have no idea where to go from "I can't be your wife any more..."

What do you do when you wake up one morning and realize that you don't want to be married any more? What do you do when you realize that you don't have a choice, that love or no love, there's a child who needs his family to be whole? You suck it up and try very hard not to let the cracks show. You try to carry on, make repairs, fix it without letting on that it's broke.

Maybe you carry on for years. You try and try, and blame yourself, and hate yourself because you can't be the wife a good man deserves. You swallow your angry words, your disappointment, grip them in your teeth, chew them into fine powder and swallow them down. You wonder what the Hell is wrong with you, that you can't reciprocate. You don't tell him all the little things that drive you buggy, that help the erosion along. You try very hard to see the good, the beautiful, the joyful, and stuff the rest into your closet.

And maybe you manage, for a while, to keep it going.

But then...

What do you do when you wake up one day, years later, and realize that you've been deeply unhappy for a long time? What do you do when you realize that you are missing something you need ? Something at the root, something necessary? And it's...gone...

What do you do when you've told your husband this, and he asks if there's someone else? Accuses you of it, in fact...and calls you a liar...when all you've done is keep your word despite your pain, and been honest with him (if only lately) about that missing something?

And then...and then you DO meet someone...who makes you think...and wonder...and hope...

What do you do when you won't break your word, your vows, not matter that it costs you your own happiness?

Apparently...you break your marriage instead...all the while cursing yourself for a fool for not forcing yourself to love the man who loves you...or faking it, because if you're the only one who's unhappy, what does it matter?

What do you do?