I feel as though I should have been saving up something deeply profound to say here — something that will mark this, something that one might print out and post on one's bathroom mirror. Something deep. Something meaningful. Something universal and marvelous that will affect and impress everyone.

Yeah. I've got nothing.

When I started writing for this site, I had visions of a hilarious series chronicling my forays back into the dating world. This will be delightful, I thought. I'm in my 30s and have been married most of my life. I have never dated as an adult. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Turning the odd and the icky into a column will make the merely awkward hilarious, and what a comfort that will be. A bad first date will have some purpose. I will try many things in the name of research. I will be Carrie Bradshaw, only without the shoe thing.

It was an excellent plan. I had been dating for a bit, so had some stories saved up. I had no desire at all to do anything beyond casual. You couldn't beat me into a real relationship with a stick.

Then of course, I found myself in one, despite the kicking and screaming, despite refusing, for months, to give it a name. So this has become less about the hilarity of Watching-Alice-Try-to-Figure-Out-Dating and more the hilarity of Watching-Alice-Skid-into-Commitment. Which is constantly startling, really.

It has been a surprising help, these columns. Finding the right words for something here has often helped put things in perspective, or decide where to go, or just ease the feelings over something.

So, thank you, those of you who have been here with me, those that have commented, those who have read, and those who write along with me. I've very much appreciated your company, and look forward to bringing you along on future adventures.

These last few weeks I've been reading and re-reading every word I've written in my journal since my separation. The thing I want most in moving back in with my ex is to hold tight to me, not forget one step of this journey or the tangles of Witches Broom I belly-crawled through to get here.

I moved out when Lila was 23 months old. In the early morning hours of her second birthday I did something huge. As I move back into life with her dad, the one thing I most want to keep is this:

21 Nov. 2006

It's warm tonight. Sweet condensation pooling on the windows. Moist chocolate smells baking in the oven. Home. Forty-one days out and 41 days in, this is finally my home.

I'm sitting in the same the spot I sat last night, back curved into cushy blue glider, feet on a chair under the table, one leg crossed over the other, keyboard on my lap, fingers on the keys, monitor claiming half the real estate on my kitchen table. Same as last night and the night before that and every night for the last five-and-a-half weeks. And, not the same at all. Everywhere I look, art and love and pieces of me collected on the journey color the walls with stories spoken across miles and years.

Decades.

A lifetime.

During this, the final week of my solo month, there have been lots of opportunities to give up and run to a bar, or go to Fire Island for one last fling before the kids come home.

Instead, I've dabbled in cooking, reading, and sampling wine. I've become an expert in the latter. My friends have given up in frustration trying to set me up with dinner-party hotties.

I've resigned myself to the single life, for at least the foreseeable future.

Labor Day weekend will be my last shot at a three-day getaway. So I've been Googling activities that don't involve getting spruced up for the opposite sex. That means no going to a spa, or a resort, no facial peels or shopping sprees. Obviously alcohol and orgies are out.

Instead I decided to try a resource in the New York metro area that supports mental and psycho-spiritual well-being. There were plenty of opportunities not more than an hour from my home that offered to stretch and encourage my inner goddess.

There was the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health Center in Stockbridge, Mass., which says it aspires to "teach the art and science of yoga" and is a "place where people come together to deeply inquire into the core issues of life."

Kripalu has a radiant health retreat for women on Labor Day Weekend starting at $513 for classes, meals, and accommodations. It's taught by Sudha Carolyn Lundeen, a holistic RN who helps people discover their inherent wholeness.

Hey, if I discover my inherent wholeness, maybe that will do away with my focus on finding the next man in my life.

And if that doesn't pique my interest, Kripalu also offers rock climbing, yoga, and bodywork.

Also, in central Massachusetts is the Barre Buddhist Center, which specializes in meditative insight. According to their calendar, I could cultivate Inner Freedom and Nonreactivity with Michael and Naraya, just not on Labor Day weekend.

Maybe I didn't have it all, but I had managed to build a life I wanted. I had a home and a family. (Well, I had a husband and a bunch of animals.) I had work I loved. It took my entire adult life to put it together.

And now it looks like my next task is to take it apart.

Typically, perhaps, I didn't give a lot of thought to what would become of me after Edgar. I was positive, though, that it wouldn't be good for me spend the rest of my life with someone who evidently could not stop drinking to excess.

So I plunged ahead and got him out of my house, mostly out of my life. There is the pesky little detail of actually divorcing him, but we're over.

Since I married late, at 40, I figured I'd just kind of go back to what I did before I had a husband.

Yeah, right.

Nothing is the same as it was, not me, not the economy, not the fields in which I have decades of experience. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Since Ed's been gone, I've found new homes for more than half of my pets, gotten a roommate, tapped my precious retirement account (and am about to do so again), and I failed to get jobs as a waitress (no experience), in retail (plenty of experience), as well as in public relations, publishing, and journalism.

So what am I to do? Something completely different, apparently.

Probably something I don't want to do.

I may have to find homes for the rest of my animal family. I may have to sell my house — if I can find a buyer. Either of those options is heartbreaking, but as my friend Curtis says, "It's all on loan."

Even if I manage to hold on, neither my dogs nor my house will go with me when I leave this life. But I will die knowing I was able to get myself out of a disastrous situation, even though it hurts a lot in ways I wasn't expecting.

Remembering that doesn't make me feel any better, but it does kind of put things in perspective.

I'm walking through the store, barely noticing the music they're pumping into the sound system, when all of a sudden I realize that I'm singing along with the tune that's playing: "Going to the Chapel." I used to love that song. When I was about 10 or 11 years old my parents gave me a cassette of Motown classics and I used to play it over and over, singing along and making up dances.

Back then I thought that was just the way it worked. You meet a boy, you fall in love, and "we'll never be lonely anymore." I'll admit that when that particular lyric hit the sound system I actually snorted out loud.

When I was younger I really thought that would be true. I thought that marriage was a partnership and I would never feel lonely for companionship or for the romantic gazes from a man who loved and adored me.

It wasn't even that I thought I would find a man and have his undivided attention forever, but I never thought that I would wind up married and lonely. Bitterly lonely. The kind of lonely where you sit in your house and think to yourself, "Who the heck is this guy that I'm married to?"

Back in better times, I wasn't lonely at all. We had a good social group and my husband and I would spend hours talking to each other and laughing and generally having a great time.

Fast forward to now, and we don't really have that much to say to each other. He'll tell me about his day and then listen politely while I tell him about mine, then he switches on the television while I work. So instead of "we'll never be lonely anymore" my lyrics are more like "we'll never feel connected anymore."

That stinks.

About a month before Levi and I were married, he decided to get a tattoo. It was a tribal sort of tattoo and was of a circle that came together at three points. Somehow this circle was (maybe still is) very symbolic to him, and he told me that it was symbolic in terms of our relationship, our coming together.

I found myself thinking about that tattoo yesterday as I was driving on the freeway, alone. Since I've had Adrian I have found that I have all of my epiphanies, realizations, and profound ideas while driving — that's also where I do all of my problem solving. Driving to and from work, daycare, etc. is the only "me" time I really get anymore.

But, back to the tattoo. So I found myself thinking about his stupid tattoo — what it represented to Levi, what it represented to me — and I began to wonder what he must think of that tattoo now? (I mean, I've always said tattooing somebody's name on you is probably the stupidest thing you can do [unless that someone is your child], but I've never thought about a symbol.)

That's when my new epiphany happened. That tattoo looks like a cyclone. Our relationship was a cyclone. We came together in a frenzy, ran circles 'round and 'round until we spun totally out of control wreaking havoc on ourselves and everything around us. Then we broke apart, each person forever changed, each on a new path.

I'm a firm believer in everything happens for a reason, that there are no coincidences, that we are each put here for our own unique purposes; and every epiphany I have like this one brings me closer and closer to finding mine.

When my husband proposed to me a dozen years ago, he said, "You elevate me." I knew it was hyperbole, but it was pretty romantic. (And I said, "Right back at ya.")

"Together we can charm them all," he said, "We'll make our entrances. You'll whisper to me what to say."

And what not to say. That was our little arrangement. And it worked well for 10 years.

Now it's Year 12, and my whispered cues are just annoyances to him. I know we didn't write this anywhere in a pre-nup — hell, we don't have a pre-nup. But wasn't that part of our "deal"?

When did he stop taking my cues?

When did my telling him to switch ties or switch topics become perceived as an attack?

When did he start calling me a control freak?

He's fired me as his stage prompter. Now my job is doing damage control the next day.

It used to be okay when it was just us, and we made love on the kitchen stool when he would sneak home for lunch.

But now we are a family, and I have to defend more than my husband's choice of words, or choice of tie.

Now it's the whole fabric I must defend. It's the franchise. He and I have had a tacit agreement for years: He would glad hand, and I would maintain the franchise.

By that I mean, it was up to me to make sure our kids got haircuts, shook hands with grown-ups, and didn't run in the pool area.

It was my job to make sure everything looked good to the outside world. All he had to do was show up and — literally or figuratively — pat everyone on the head.

Quaint as it seems, it's worked for us, for a decade. But now he complains about the kids' haircuts. He doesn't care if they shake hands or not. He doesn't even know what the pool rules are, let alone have any interest in enforcing them.

I've hit several bumps along the way to reinventing myself. It's hard to keep in mind that this is quite necessary and unavoidable when you're in the thick of things.

Being a control freak, I've tried to get around these issues. It's easy to get caught in the maelstrom caused by bucking convention and listening to your heart or going with that gut feeling, especially when doing so does not give you the results you wanted or expected.

I am in the process of trying to recover from a hat trick of seemingly debilitating setbacks: personally, professionally, and physically.

I am not ashamed to tell you that there were quite a few times where I handled each of these incidents with self-pity, tears, or alcohol. Or all of these things.

Always the multitasker.

I guess the point I am trying to make — to myself, if no one else — is that these things happen often and usually simultaneously. It may seem easy to roll over and take it. But I'll have to be prepared to live with that decision — for the rest of my life.

A while back I traveled in Mexico and removed my wedding band for the duration. I was in search of experiences unfettered by others' assumptions about who I am, what sort of life I lead, and what I value.

I was not looking for any romantic interaction of any kind with anyone I met, but still I knew removing the ring was in some ways unsavory, as well as entirely unfair to Rob, and when I returned I explored the situation and my feelings in a post "Let Freedom Ring."

I had the chance to expound upon that post in an assignment for Tango, a relationship web site — and learned the hard way that not all audiences are alike. The readers, most of whom I assume have not struggled with separation or divorce, were pretty sure I was a vapid, selfish, and idiotic for doing and writing about such a thing.

It may be true. One thing they can't say is I haven't thought about it from every angle. I have. And I don't take any of it lightly.

My first reaction to the other audience's comments was that I had better keep my most embarrassing and damning thoughts to myself from now on. But no. I've got a safe place to explore them.

The community at First Wives World is diverse in thought and approach to life, for sure, but here differences are the seeds of provocative discussion, not vitriol and disrespect. In exposing our journeys, and lending to each other constructive criticism and advice we are suddenly in it together, and "it" becomes something larger than ourselves.