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.

While I wait for my insurance company to approve my switch to another therapist, I'm still seeing the same guy I've been going to for months. Honestly, sometimes it's just nice to go sit in a quiet office for a while without the kids and chat with another adult.

My therapist and I got on the subject of sex. He knows I'm having a hard time being a willing participant with my husband, so we were discussing the specific issues I have and what I might to do feel a little better about the whole thing.

Our discussion was pretty matter-of-fact, but we did talk about the kind of things I wouldn't usually discuss in mixed company. I have always tried to not hold back anything from my therapist because I figure he needs to know everything if he's going to give me an accurate analysis.

So we're right in the middle of talking when he starts to get a sort of far-off look in his eyes and he mumbles something like "...weird..." or something similar. I ask him what he means, and he smiles and says, "It's weird talking about these things with a woman sometimes. I mean, it's what I do, but every so often I get a tinge."

What the heck is a "tinge"?

I wasn't quite sure what to say, so I replied with, "Well, it certainly isn't a conversation you'd have with a woman at a coffee shop, right?" We both chuckled politely and the conversation moved on to another subject, but for the rest of the session I couldn't get his "tinge" off my mind.

Am I such a sexual deviant that my thoughts on sex freak him out? I doubt it. Are all his other female clients too polite to discuss anything sexual with him? I'm not sure. I will tell you, though, that if he has indeed "seen and heard everything" as he once claimed to me, then I don't understand how my talk of sex gives him a "tinge."

I went to my therapist last week (as I do every week) and for some reason she asked me, "Why are you here, what do you hope to get out of therapy?" I pretty much thought we had already established this but I guess she was just checking.

I told her that my ultimate goal — with regard to therapy — at the moment was to let go of the anger. I feel at times that I am so angry that it is holding me back. You wouldn't know it to look at me, either. You might not even know it if you knew me. I'm generally a pretty happy, social, outgoing person. Or at least that is the way I appear. Underneath all of that is one pissed off chick.

I am so angry with Levi (for obvious reasons) and barely a day goes by that I don't at least have a fleeting moment of rage toward him. Sometimes, if I get on an anger "roll," I can be distracted by it for hours.

This is a problem. I need to let it go, accept what he's done so that I can get on with my life.

Anger sucks. Especially when he's not around for me to take it out on.

She suggested that I write a list of things that trigger my anger. I did it, and my list is absolutely ridiculous. In fact, this is probably the only forum where I could share my list and not be looked at funny or laughed at.

Here's one of the triggers I put on my list, just so you can get an idea:

Anything to do with the state of California, especially in the winter — I can't stand that I'm shoveling my car off, probably while holding my baby, while he's sleeping in sunny California.

Do you understand what I'm saying about it being ridiculous? I actually hate the entire state of California, just because he's there. I'm rolling my eyes at myself.

Yesterday in NYC I was walking briskly along with a businessgal buddy when the oddest thing happened. I hooked a man — literally.

I was carrying a suit bag filled filled with clothes on hangers over my left arm as we yapped our way down the street.

An older gentleman and his wife were walking past us in the opposite direction. They obviously passed too close and somehow my hangars hooked on the husband, and yanked me backwards after him.

I was trying to unhook myself from him but his wife thought I was intentionally molesting him and was pulling him away from me yelling, "He's mine!"

She obviously didn't see the hanger.

Strangely, the same thing had happened just three minutes before with a construction guy as I was crossing the street. That one almost cost me a two by four to the head.

So here's what I discovered: You can literally hook a man on the street.

Now I just have to work on my aim.

My daughter's best friend's mother (got that?) is getting remarried. The young lady, we'll call her Molly, is quite unhappy about it and has spoken to me about it seeking support and comfort. This is tricky.

I've told Molly that though she disapproves of her mother's choice, the man does make her mother happy and her mother does deserve love. Molly does not disagree with me about this but tells me that the man is inappropriate with her mother when she is around, touching and fondling her mother, she says.

The groom-to-be has five children from his previous marriage(s), and though his children are with their mother(s) most of the time, summer vacations and holidays and every other weekend, this will be quite a blended household.

She is concerned because they will eventually sell their home, and she and her sixteen year old sister will be moving into another man's house and will be constantly interacting and living with five other children.

Wow. What can I say to this?

Blended families are kind of like mixing different recipes together. The result will not be one or the other but some kind of new creation. Whether or not this new creation turns into something that everyone can learn to live and hopefully be happy with is the responsibility of both of the adults.

Unfortunately, in this case, the man is feeling a bit threatened by the step-family's attitude, and he doesn't seem to want to do anything to encourage faith and trust for Molly and her sister. The bride to be is feeling protective of her marital choice and defensive when it comes to her family's feelings about her upcoming nuptials.

Consequently, no one is doing anything to make this better. If I knew the woman and man better, I would recommend family counseling, but I'm pretty sure that my advice would not be welcome.

You can tell Roxie feels change coming by the crazy way she's been acting.

It started in Arizona last week, but I just chalked it up to the over-tired, over-stimulated chaos of travel. She started having the kind of meltdowns I haven't seen from her since I Sam and split our household in two.

She bit her cousin in the swimming pool at the end of a long day. Biting was her thing for a while, but it's been a couple years since she last bared her teeth.

Her behavior has reverted, though. She's had a rough week. In school Thursday when I was visiting for family day her best friend looked at me and asked, "Why is Roxie acting that way?"

"That way" being out of control, dumping other kids stuff on the floor and laughing.

None of the 16 kindergarteners have seen this side of my baby.

It's been long gone, packed away when we moved.

Thing is, she's super sensitive, she feels every minor shift — and what I think she felt in Phoenix was Daddy wasn't there. Daddy wasn't there and the energy surrounding his absence had little to do with the high cost of tickets.

This kid, I know she could feel my conflict every time I said Sam and I have been scoping out rentals. Would hear the thoughts under my words saying something else.

Saying I don't think we'll be back together by the end of the summer, I think we'll be all the way apart.

This is dragging on too long. For everyone. I need to be all the out or all the way in by the time she starts first grade. Sam needs a direction. He deserves it.

Sometimes I hate myself for keeping everyone in waiting. Sometimes I wish I could close my eyes and make this all disappear. Wake up two years in the future, lessons learned with out having to live through them.

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?

There's been a lot of buzz on the blog in regards to songs and song lyrics that remind us of our exes or of our divorces. It reminded me of how I felt immediately after Levi left and the songs that I listened to.

What is it about the human condition that makes us sort of torture ourselves with stuff like this after a breakup anyway? My divorce process had a soundtrack. For real. I made myself a CD and I listened to it all the time. Sometimes singing along, sometimes crying, but most of the time, pining away.

My divorce soundtrack — along with the particular lyrics that would absolutely slay me — went something like this:

U2, One Love:
"Did I ask too much
More than a lot
You gave me nothing
Now it's all I got"

Johnny Cash (previously done by Nine Inch Nails), Hurt:
"What have I become
my sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt"

Dave Matthews Band, Stay or Leave:
"Wake up naked, drinking coffee, making plans to change the world
while the world is changing us.
It was good, good love.
And you used to laugh under the covers,
maybe not so often now
The way I used to laugh with you was loud and hard"

The Felice Brothers, Wonderful Life:
"Me and you have done the same damn thing
We fell in love knowing the pain it would bring
Now all I do is sing
Sad songs with red underneath"

Ani Difranco (every girl going through a divorce needs Ani), Done Wrong:
"like how could you do nothing
and say, i'm doing my best
how could you take almost everything
and then come back for the rest
how could you beg me to stay
reach out your hands and plead
and then pack up your eyes and run away
as soon as I agreed"