It's 2 am. He's still not home. Why am I still here? Why am I still so pissed? Why am I even contemplating leaving one more message on his turned-off cell phone? So that I can record my fury, my angst, onto that little microchip in cell phone cyberspace for posterity? Lord knows he'll never listen to it. He'll hit '7' to erase it the second he hears, “OK, now, where are...”

Twelve years of marriage and it's come to this. He's not home because he'd rather be somewhere else. With someone else. He denies it but my 'wife radar' is in good working order. I'm sick of picturing who she might be. That's not even the point anymore. It's ABW: Anyone But the Wife. If I tell my girlfriends, they'll all just tell me to leave him, to throw him out. My therapist will again urge couples counseling. Tried that at Year Eight. Lasted the requisite six sessions, with promises to “renew," “refresh,” “re-purpose.” You know the drill.

Make more traditions. Make more efforts. Make more love. Thanks, Ladies Home Journal. Thanks Kathie Lee and Dr. Ruth and Shania Twain. I see it's worked out so well for you.

I could just lie here in the dark. I could start trawling the Internet for a lawyer. I could call that guy from the econ summit, that guy from that party three months ago: “If you're ever free on Thursday nights...”

Or I could go downstairs. Get a jump start making the kids' lunches for school in five hours. Or get the hockey gear loaded in the Tahoe now. Save me a few steps in the morning school hustle. Instead, I swallow an Ambien and knock myself out, just as I hear the car in the driveway. Tomorrow with the lunches and hockey skates. Tomorrow with the confrontation, or the ignoring – I’ll figure it out then, when I sit on the train in my suit from Loehman's. Maybe I'll start shopping at Saks again, like I did before the two kids.

Looking back at all my posts recently, I had to laugh. One of the first was called "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" That could be the title for all my posts, for my entire blog, and indeed for my life!

In my early posts, I waffled, now and then seemingly determined to pursue one course of action, only to change my mind a week later. But mostly I described my relationship with Rob as something damaged. The question was, and remains: Is it irrevocably so?

Today as a warm breeze drifts through my study window and my thoughts flow easily through my head and onto the page, I feel more comfortable in my apartment with Rob, indeed in my own skin, than I've felt in a while.

Some fellow FWW bloggers and readers say don't make a move until you're certain, and when you're certain, you'll know it. Others say I owe it to myself to leave. The latter is not unwarranted or unhelpful advice, but I don't know anything for certain, and I think I'm going to stay put for now. Feels right.

Where staying put with no big-picture plan seemed torturous just weeks ago, it doesn't seem so hard to bear at the moment. Why is this so? Couples therapy? Recent time apart from Rob as I traveled with a friend? Rob's continued evolution through therapeutic work? Maybe all?

One thing I've learned: being gentle with each other, allowing space for independent growth, and not giving in to fear when our directions diverge or seem unwieldy brings a bit of relief.

The longer I'm half-in, half-out of this thing, the clearer I see myself.

I have a good friend, a therapist, who says we don't keep returning to the same type of man with the same type of issues (the ones our parents had) only because it's familiar, we keep going back for more because we're trying to work out our own issues and these are the places we can do it.

She's always right.

I was telling her the other day over lunch that I hesitate to get all the way back into it, because Sam had this underlying negative something that looks totally different than my parent's negativity. But's it exactly the same.

With my parents the glass isn't just half empty, it's cracked and leaking slowly. Present them any scenario and they go first to what could go wrong.

When my niece who just graduated high school was "hang a good paper on the fridge" age, my dad once looked at a her spelling test up there, 99 percent, and said to her "Oh, Ella, how could miss .... You know how to spell that."

She's a fabulous student. National honor society. One misspelling and it's what he sees before everything that was right.

Like I said, Sam is a different kind of negative. It's more an undercurrent, not so overt.

But it has the same effect on me. The way it feels heavy, like something weighting me down.

Whatever it is I'm trying to work out, if I leave this relationship, I plan on working solo for a long time to come.

I've been separated from Sam for 20 months now, living separately, anyway. We're not divorced and we're not even truly separate. We don't know what we are.

I don't know anyway. Sam, he still wants it all back and me, I don't know how to finish letting go.

This Arizona vacation was my second family visit since the split. The first was Thanksgiving, a month after I left and I was too numb then to remember much of the trip.

In that year of firsts, everything is hard. Everything takes re-calibration. Everything is viewed through the lens of change. The difference is so glaring it's difficult to feel anything else.

This visit was the reminder about how time heals. Doesn't feel like it in the long slow recovery, but it's true. Regeneration comes.

Being with my family, just my kids and I, felt natural and comfortable and right. Now I realize during that first year when I went to Arizona without him, to friends' parties without him, to holiday celebrations without him, so much of what I missed was the familiarity of things being as they were.

For 13 years he was by my side. A lot of those times weren't so good.

With the habit of being together faded, I don't miss having him on trips, at parties, at holiday celebrations.

I realize something. I like myself better on my own. I like who I am and how I relate to other people better this way.

Right now there's false sense of something, because the transition isn't done. Whether we get all the way out or move back in, I still have to negotiate change.

Either way, I know — and I want you to know — transition is temporary. And, as they say, the only way out is through. But there is another side.

Being on it feels pretty darn good.

I don't waste much time feeling sorry for myself anymore. Not usually.

That path goes the wrong direction, a downward spiral. Self-pity is the opposite of gratitude and learning gratitude has been a challenge but I'm there. Most days.

Not today. I'm sitting in a big leather chair in my brother's new house, boxes all around, and I don't want to get on a plane and fly back to my life tomorrow. I've been in Arizona a week, which is usually about four days too long, but I think about going home tomorrow. I'm wiping tears with my sleeves. Rubbing my eyelids dry with my forefingers.

Most days I accept my best for what it is. I believe in self acceptance lies the openness to achieve and grow and cultivate gratitude. Know that I'm good enough.

My brother and his partner have an outdoor fireplace that looks like it should be a fountain. It's a long, narrow basin filled with blue glass chunks. The wall behind it is white tile, so you'd think water should cascade down it into the glass. But under the glass, in a layer of sand you don't see, there's a gas pipe. Turn it on, light and flame burns on the glass.

Their dining room chandelier is from Holland. They saw it in a window last winter and had to have it, Googled compulsively until they found it. The soap dispenser by the kitchen sink is motion activated, put your hand under and the gel drips out.

My brother and his partner have offered to pay for all the vision therapy Roxie needs to "train her eyes to keep up with her brain." So her hands can do what her eyes can see.

I'm grateful. I have a list of learning differences that have never been addressed. I'm hopeful in the long run this means Roxie won't spend her life struggling to survive, as I do, because of challenges no one can see.

My parents were always very affectionate when I was growing up. It was almost embarrassing how much they hugged and smooched each other, but there was something cool about it because it was obvious that they really loved each other and enjoyed being around one another.

My husband and I used to be pretty affectionate — after all, that's what I grew up with so it seemed natural — but the worse the issues in our marriage became, the less affectionate we became. You would be hard pressed to see us holding hands or embracing each other for longer than a standard, "Hi, welcome home from work" hug. We're so distant from each other that showing affection seems weird. Sometimes, I just don't want him to touch me.

What is this conveying to my kids? I know people say that a separation would damage my kids, but what potential damage are we doing by staying together?

We don't scream at each other, but we don't portray a married couple who necessarily enjoys being around each other. I don't want my kids to get the impression that this is what a marriage is supposed to be like. I know that the example my husband and I set right now will have a lasting impression on our kids forever. I'm really trying to not screw this all up.

I owe some of you a big thank you. Sometimes when I post things here I do it because I'm not quite sure what to make of a situation, but sometimes I post things just because I think the situation is interesting.

Once in a while there is a comment or two that really makes me stop and think, "Hey, why didn't I think of that?"

A while ago I wrote about my therapist, and how he had issues with my husband and me getting marital counseling through our pastor. You might remember that my therapist was concerned that my pastor and I might have the potential to allow our relationship to evolve into something inappropriate, even though nothing inappropriate has ever happened nor has there ever been so much as a hint or inappropriateness.

I guess I figured the therapist must have seen something in me that I didn't see in myself, so I just took his word and really believed it. It wasn't until I wrote about this situation and the comments started rolling in that I started to realize that maybe my therapist was thinking more about himself than about me.

Maybe he was threatened by the thought that he might lose us as clients, or maybe he's just not a very good therapist. Either way, it was you all who opened my eyes that I might be getting manipulated.

I'm in a weird position. I'm trying so hard to fix everything that I probably would dance through fiery hoops if that's what my therapist said would help my marriage How in the world did I get so needy?

I have an appointment with a new therapist — a female therapist — later next week. If she tries to manipulate me, I think I'm done with therapy.

When the pressure of work, family drama, and troubled marriage overwhelm, I fantasize about leaving town, changing my name, and dropping off the grid for a small but self-sufficient life in the southwestern desert. I don't have much money of my own, but then I don't imagine needing much.

A beat up truck, a dog as companion, and a cozy adobe cottage — that's all I'll need. A pressure-free job at a local dive would pay the bills. I'll be perfectly content writing, exploring desert canyons, and kicking back with a few new friends over beer on rusty porch chairs. No father with Alzheimer's disease to worry about, no student loans to pay, no ambitious career or lifestyle plans in a fast-paced, high-priced northeastern city to frustrate the calm.

Such is my escape fantasy. Do we all have one? Do some people act on them? Are they the brave or crazy among us? I suppose that depends on how troubled their lives were, on how likely they could heal or remain safe, staying put.

This week I depart for a short Mexican vacation. A dear friend who lives on the opposite coast is meeting me for an escape to the beach. We'll sleep in a cabana on the jungle's edge, read in hammocks, and practice yoga on the shore. I anticipate warm air, fresh seafood, and easy conversation.

The temptation to relinquish obligations back home will tug hard. I'll relish the thought of staying behind in a paradise marvelous not so much for its sand and sea as for its lack of strings attached. But no person is an island. I'll be back.

Yay! Vacation. Bring it on!

Well, not vacation, exactly. But as close as I'm getting anytime soon.

We're headed to Arizona for some quality family time and my niece's high school graduation.

My girls and I have been packing this week. OK, technically, Roxie and Lila have been packing and I have been unpacking the inappropriate things they've chosen for the trip.

Replacing long-sleeve dresses and heavy jeans with tank tops, skorts, and cotton capris.

I love traveling alone with my girls. The adventure. Three girls alone on the road, or in the air, as it were. It's empowering to know we can do it ourselves. Even if, technically, I'm going to my family where my kids stay with the grandparents, I stay with my brother or sister and I have way more help than I do at home as the only adult.

Still, even on these totally scripted trips, where little room is left for spontaneous activity, travel feels like possibility.

Even on the "easy" trips, you can't leave home without learning more about yourself. Travel is the ultimate crash course in self discovery.

And there a few things I already know.

We can go anywhere. Do anything we want. Don't need anyone else.

A few months ago I read a Newsweek article written by a woman who was in the middle of a divorce. She and her husband had both come to the realization that the marriage wasn't going to work, so while they still remained friends they knew that divorce was inevitable.

Instead of splitting up the household goods, working out a custody arrangement for the kids, and then going their separate ways, they still lived together in the same house they bought as a married couple. They had separate bedrooms, but they still maintained the home concurrently. The kids knew the parents were divorcing at that eventually they would be split up into two households, but until the house sells they'll all stay together under one roof.

I remember thinking to myself as I read the article, "Is this feasible? Can two people who are divorcing share a house and not be freaked out the whole time?" I figured it must be an exceptional situation, and didn't give it much more thought until a friend recently told me about her neighbor who is doing the exact same thing. Apparently they're afraid to put the house on the market because of the current real estate environment, so they've set up separate bedrooms and they've already filed the divorce paperwork.

Does anyone else think this is weird?

If I filed for divorce I would not want to live in the same house as my husband. Maybe it's different for me because my husband absolutely does not want a divorce, so it would be weird to live with him and deal with the whole, "Are you sure you want to do this? Can't we work it out? How could you do this to me?" thing that I would probably get from him every single day. Not being able to be physically away from him would be bizarre, considering the circumstances.