Good Lord, how long does this last? The deadline I gave my husband to move out was a year ago today. Last night, hours after receiving the latest update on the progress of our do-it-yourself divorce, he asked, once again, if I was still set on it.

Arrgggh.

What has happened, what has he done in the past year, that would incline me to want to reconcile, I wondered indignantly. My roommate pointed out that a year is a long time to stay married to someone you don't want to be married to any more. 

Oh. Well.

There are a number of reasons for that, most of them coming down to money. But since our electronic exchange last night, I've been so sad — for Ed, for myself, over our failed marriage.

And I've had to hash it out again — go once more through the reasons why I want this divorce. My husband, who thank God is sober now, has had sober spells before. Each was followed by a drinking bout that was worse than the one preceding it.

So 14 months ago, I decided I'd had enough. I had warned him months before. But he got drunk and stayed drunk and he had to go.

We had a couple of other issues, too...struggles over money and honesty and communication. So it's not like there's any need for doubt about whether to end this marriage.

Still...how long is this going to go on? When — if ever — will I finally accept my decision to divorce Ed?

That's like asking, How do you mend a broken heart?

"I chose to be a workaholic to support my family. Then she chose not to be my family because I was a workaholic."

This was one of the postcards on PostSecret recently. The fact that I'm wondering if Jake sent it is unnerving. Don't I believe, haven't I always believed, that he was the one, really, that made this decision? That he was the one who didn't want me?

Jake and I don't really talk, and he's a little miffed that I won't be "friends" with him. In the middle of the summer, in the middle of the Cohabitation Experiment, in the middle of me trying to figure out why I was having such a hard time, I got an email from Jake saying that I should stop being mad at him. "It's not," he wrote, "like you were so great to be married to."

So, this made me think. All anyone knows is my side. All my friends with their righteous indignation, all those who excuse how difficult I make things, how panicky and skittish I am — it's not like any of them were there.

What if I am terrible to live with? What if I am ungrateful and unsupportive and demanding and all those things Jake used to say? What if I was, in the end, what made it fall apart?

What if any problems Mike and I had living together this summer were merely the real relationship-me manifesting itself?

As much as you tell yourself you're worth having, as much as your friends support you, as much as someone might love you — there's nothing scarier than wondering, secretly, if it wasn't really your fault after all, and if you'll just, eventually, end up ruining what you have now. 

Mama's time has come. From the hills of Hollywood to the halls of the White House, there are mamas in the limelight. Instead of simply acknowledging the fact that any accolades Mom receives are long overdue, why not join the growing boom of females who insist on everything from paid maternity leave to rock festivals that feature female entertainment?

I refuse to believe the current movement is a response to the 1950s stereotype that kept June Cleaver in the kitchen with her lipstick on. And I keep hoping the momentum is bigger than an angry backlash of feminists who refuse to make room for softer, gentler versions of themselves. 

Most of all, I pray that while the idea of "family values" is of great concern to many of us, those values are not determined by a right-wing government.

We want different things. The point is, for the first time in many years, we are mobilizing to want something. The common thread between us is that we are reaching out to redefine what it is to be a modern mother.

For the first time in (her)story, we are single mothers, rocker mothers, soccer mothers, alpha moms, hot moms, and intellectuals, all taking on new work, new life definitions.

I am totally psyched to see a dialogue begin and, the sensationalistic Mommy wars aside, the truth is that we can all get along.

I started out as a mother and a wife replicating what I had witnessed growing up in middle-America. When my children were born in New York City from 1989 to 1994, there was a dawning of a new consciousness: a network of midwife-assisted births, natural parenting magazines, and higher consciousness baby groups.

Maybe it's too soon to tell ... and I hope I'm not jinxing things by mentioning it here ... but perhaps Edgar, my soon to be ex, and I can have a polite relationship.

We've included each other on the list of recipients for the political stories and jokes we've been emailing like crazy of late. My updates on efforts to move our divorce forward — by the way, have you noticed that you cannot get through to self help in family court by phone, because they don't answer the phone, so you have to go down there? — have not drawn the nasty responses I would've expected.

"I'd like to be friends with Ed one day," I said to my therapist, the Good Doctor. She fixed me with a dubious look. "I may not live that long, of course," I acknowledged.

My roommate, who has followed this divorce drama for about a year now, saw a friendly sort of email from my estranged husband the other day and suggested, "Maybe somebody has taken him aside and told him, ‘It's going to be okay.'"

I hope so.

One of my students mentioned that she and her ex-husband have a great relationship now; they're like best friends. When she said that I couldn't imagine it, but now I dare to hope for something similar.

I mean, Ed is still the only guy I ever married; I must have seen something in him, though I've spent the last many months concentrating on the irretrievable breakdown of our marriage.

Part of me still thinks that hoping for a good relationship with my soon-to-be-ex-husband is like believing in the Easter Bunny. But the rest of me believes it's okay to want that — as long as I don't hold my breath. 

A revelation. It has finally dawned on me that I don't have to hate my husband to divorce him.

Having spent most of the last year putting up barriers against Edgar to defend myself mentally, physically and emotionally, I guess there's a reason the realization has been so long in coming.

In an email the other day, Ed told me that he misses me terribly.

My first thought was to run and hide under the bed for a week or so, partly because I miss him, too.

Sort of. Every now and then.

But the parts of him and our life together that I get a little wistful about come with the not-so-nice stuff, which is included at no extra charge.

I know that one reason — not the only one, but one reason I drank as long and as hard as I did — was to dull the pain and insanity-inducing frustration of living with an active alcoholic.

I don't want to go back to drinking, and I'm pretty sure that would happen if Ed and I got back together.

Since we've been apart, he's had some periods when he didn't drink. But over the past 11 months I've been blessed to miss some of the scary episodes involving him and the bottle, and he's not volunteering any reports on how well he's handling his alcoholism.

Here's the crux of it: He knows the disease of alcoholism is costing him his marriage.

So better safe than sorry.

I wrote Ed that while I sometimes miss him, too, I do not want to get back on that merry-go-round with him.

I added that this does not mean I don't care for or about him and pointed out that while he may not have been the best husband, I may not have been the best wife.

Jake popped up on Facebook today. It startled me. A lot.

The Internet is not a place I expect to find Jake. He's not social in general, and doesn't do much with on the Web besides email. He's the last person I'd think would be a part of any kind of networking site. I certainly hope I don't run into him on any dating sites.

I only found him because I was idly flipping through profiles of people from my high school, just to see who was there. His name and picture popped up and my heart stopped, it was so unexpected. And so...strange. Like a violation. He was in a place I thought of as mine.

Someone I know recently un-friended me on Facebook. She just went through a messy, messy breakup with a guy I'm also Facebook-friends with and un-friended everyone who knows them both, saying it was just too hard to see his name and picture pop up on her screen all the time.

Another friend called me last week, crying, because her newly-ex-boyfriend had just un-friended her. Not that she hadn't expected it, but the reality of it was one more thing in the line of heartbreak.

The Internet is a strange thing. These sites are strange things — suddenly we have these visuals, these reminders, these ties. I get irritated enough when the people I didn't like in high school pop up on the "people you might know" list. I can't imagine being confronted with a lost love every day.

I am not pleased that Jake has stepped into my digital world. It's silly to feel possessive over something public, but I do. I can only hope that he remains as lackadaisical with the Internet as he has thus far. Because I'm certainly not going to be accepting any friend requests.