Steps forward in real life tend to make the imp that lives in my brain backpedal frantically. "Run, run!" he yips, waving his arms about, Kermit-like. "It's too much! Ruuuun!"

I've gotten much, much better at shutting him up. He shrills away, but I've learned, mostly, not to pay attention. But when it's a hard week, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, when I'm sad — that's when his voice gets harder to ignore.

This moving thing, for example. It's big. Sure, I was thinking about moving anyway. Sure, it's not all about the boy. But part of it is. Taking this step says we think we're actually going to make it. On my bad days, this is what I worry about: What if we're not? What if the magic and wonderfulness and perfection of what this actually hinges on is the fact that it's long distance?

It didn't help that our cohabitation experiment wasn't a success. That I handled it badly. That he's backtracked since then.

Then there's this month: finalizing the legal documentation of my inability to make a relationship work. Just when I think that I am past this, that I've come to terms, it rears its head and reminds me that I don't have a great track record. 

"What about this?" crows the imp, waving legal papers at me. "Why would you think anything ever works out?"

Normally, I know, deep down, that my fears are largely unjustified. That I'm worrying about something that is so "might be, maybe," that I really shouldn't worry at all. This, though, this feels more real. It feels immediate, and it feels scary, and it's hard to talk myself down.

There's nothing to do, I suppose, but do — imp or no — and see what happens.

Tomorrow is my second unmarried birthday.

I hate my birthday. It's been a bad day for years — a day to be disappointed. A day of promises that your partner will come home, only he won't. Or he'll forget. Or he'll blow the whole thing off as not a big deal, anyway.

Plus that whole Husband Moving Out the Day After thing — that will kind of taint your birthday — well, forever.

What was I thinking? How was this in any way a good idea? For the rest of my life, no matter how happy I am, no matter how good a place I'm in, November 14th will always be the anniversary of this, so far, hardest day. My birthday will always be the anniversary of the day before: the Day Before the Hardest Day. The Last Day.

That first birthday alone — it wasn't bad. It really wasn't.  But boy, did I work for that. The effort that went into not making it a big deal, making sure there were no expectations, making sure it was just any other day — it was a lot.

This year, I just can't muster the energy. I'm tired. The last couple of weeks have been hard. The effort involved in being that nonchalant, of steeling and girding and getting myself together so Thursday won't be crushing — the very thought exhausts me. To the point where I'm thinking one day of suck might be better than the week of prep.

The thing is, I used to really like my birthday. Not that anything big or important would ever happen, and not that I wanted that. But it was a nice day, and usually nice things would happen. Now, though, it just leaves me lonely and sad and wondering why no one will ever love me as much as my cat does.

I wonder what it's going to take to make that go away. I guess if something really amazing and magical happened on my birthday, that might knock the other associations into second place. Like, I don't know, Josh Groban showing up in my kitchen to make me pancakes. But I'm not holding my breath.

So, this moving thing. It's causing me no end of worry. The logistics of it, how torn I am, how scared I am of starting over somewhere else, of this relationship ending when faced with the reality of proximity. I've been hoping for one of my A-Ha Dreams, so, even though it will still be hard, I'll feel resolved.

My brain's been letting me down on this one, though.

I had a moving dream, yes. It was clearly a Work This Through dream and not a Nightmare. But, instead of waking up with newfound clarity, I'm still not sure what it means.

I dreamed I moved to Texas (why Texas?). It was big, and it was empty, and I was lonely and sad. (Also, Jake had just died, I think. I was looking through boxes of his clothes and deciding what to keep. Bonus hidden message? Perhaps.)

There were dozens of people my new backyard and I was milling through the crowd. They were all very friendly, and many stopped to introduce themselves.

Suddenly, I was talking to God. He was bearded and wearing a Syracuse T-shirt. He told me to stop worrying, because he would let me know how I felt about moving in my dreams, like he always does. If I had a moving dream, he said, I should pay attention, because it would be him giving me a message.

Is the message that a message is forthcoming? Or did God (or my brain) just make a personal appearance because he's lost faith in my ability to recognize truth on my own? Isn't that all a little meta, even for me?

And if that was a Work It Out dream, why did I wake up still feeling unresolved? 

I have a love/hate relationship with my dreams.

I have a lot of nightmares. Usually the garden-variety, wake-up-roll-over-move-on kind. Sometimes, though, they're the wake-up-gaspy-and-terrified kind. Sometimes they're the horrible keep-falling-back-in kind. Sometimes they leave me so rattled it takes most of a morning to shake it. 

On the other hand, my dreams are really good at figuring things out. I can't tell you how many times I've been miserably confused and unsure over something and have had a dream smack me in the face, yelling, "THIS is how you feel!" It's handy. It's helpful. It's a little trade-off, I guess, for the fact that most of my sleeping time involves things with big teeth and driving off bridges.

Like that dream I wrote about some time ago — when I was worrying the divorce had been a mistake. After that, the worry stopped. Which was fantastic.

When Mike and I first started dating, I wanted an open relationship. We both did. I had, in fact, been wondering if I was even the monogamous type:  I had begun to suspect that I would never want a just-one-person relationship again.

But as things went on, little by little, I started to wonder if I was starting to feel differently. I wasn't sure though — hadn't I already decided how I felt about this? Was I ready for this kind of thing?

Then I dreamed I had a date with Science Boy. Science Boy was someone I met off an online dating site — A PhD student at Stanford, he was nice, he was funny, and he wasn't interested in a real relationship either. He was perfect (at the time), and for many months he was my cocktails-and-casual-sex buddy. In the dream, which was was completely real, he came over, we had sex, it was nice. But, afterwards, I was miserable and empty and thinking, "You know, I don't really want this anymore."  Eureka.

When Jake and I first split up, my strongest feeling was of floating. I felt disconnected, set adrift. There was no pinball groove in which to fall back. There was nothing to tie me. Suddenly, the world was this huge, huge place, and I was just this little dot, all alone. There was nowhere that was home. 

Of course, it wasn't that rational a feeling. I have a family. I have friends. If I fell down the stairs and broke my neck chances were good someone would notice my absence before the cats started eating my face. But it didn't feel that way.

It's different now. My apartment feels like home now, even though I'm the only one who lives there. Maybe especially because I'm the only one who lives there: Everything in it is mine and where I want it to be. I like being alone enough now that too much time without it makes me uncomfortable and twitchy. I feel more capable, in general.

Still though, drifting scares me. That period of time when I felt as though I was just trying to hold on to the planet before I spun out into space, that was hard. Feeling that alone was hard.

So I'm really struggling with this idea of moving to another city. In all rational ways, I want to. I love New York. I want to go back to school. I want to try living somewhere different. I want to be around my friends. I want to be closer to Mike. I want to see if I am capable.

But leaving everything that is known and safe is hard. Since college, I've lived here. I know how to find things. I have a career and contacts and health insurance and a favorite park and an apartment I love on a quiet street that is close to a not-quiet street. I know where to find a darkroom. I know where to get good cheese. I know where to buy paintbrushes and cheap Shakespeare costumes. I love this city, too.

I am not good with change. I am not good with big decisions. I am not comfortable with compromising my own safety. I am afraid of going back to being a dot.

What's hardest about being the one who was left: There's a lot of fear left over. Fear of risk. Fear of hurt. Fear of being left again.

Over everything, coloring everything, is that fear of ending up back in that place — the place that comes before the leaving. That place where you love, where you want, where you're willing to try and he isn't. That place where you're simply waiting — on the side, in the back — hoping for a smile, a word, some time. Hoping he'll remember that you're the one he chose. Hoping that he'll choose you again.

There's nothing worse than wanting someone who doesn't want you back.

So when the person you're with now, the person you've come to love — despite trying not to, despite fighting it — dithers, wavers, backs off, it's that worst feeling all over again.

It's not fair, really. It's not as though the other party isn't entitled to his own fears. It's not as though it's something that can't be worked through. It's not as though this isn't a normal part of a figuring out a relationship.

But even knowing all that, even knowing that you shouldn't look for parallels, shouldn't panic, shouldn't run and hide, nothing, nothing, nothing makes you feel as terrified and unhappy and wishing to god you had never let yourself love someone else as thinking — even for a day, even for an hour — that someone else, someone again, doesn't think you're enough.  Doesn't want you enough.

And maybe that's lot of pressure to put on someone new. Maybe it's a lot of pressure on yourself — to constantly try not to fear, not to worry, not to expect the worst.

But all you want is to be wanted. All you want is someone who wakes up, sees you, and thinks that's the most wonderful thing in the world. That seems like so much to ask. It also seems like so little.

"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. 

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.

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.

You've learned to ask for help. You've leaned you don't need to do this alone. You know you don't have to sit there on your miserable little island trying to cope all by yourself.

But then you realize you don't actually know anyone you can call and say, "I am hurting. Please come over." Well, you do, but they can't. They have kids. They live in other states or across the bridge. They are no longer drop-of-a-hat people. (Reason #732 not to have kids: they prevent you from coming to the aide of your single, sad friend with Nalgene bottles of cocktails and a comforting presence, but that's beside the point.)

So, here I am, in my living room, alone, trying to remember that I've learned, in the course of things, to take care of myself. That doing this alone is, in fact, what I've preferred. Because this week I was hit with some pretty bad news. This week I'm really struggling. This week I could use someone to come and just sit with me. And there isn't anyone who can.

Here's what I recommend to all of you pondering divorce: Get yourself some single friends. Friends without babies. Friends who live within 15 minutes of you. Because there's going to come a night when you need someone, when you're in a place where you want that help, and you'll need someone in your phonebook who not only loves you and stands by you, but is actually able to come over.

I'm in a more cynical space than usual, I guess, because I wonder: What's the use of learning to ask for support when, in the end, you're still going to end up on your couch alone?