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.

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.

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.

As memories of six days of sea and jungle explorations sink in, my eyes open to an old truth about myself.

Years ago I toyed with thoughts of Peace Corp service, working my way around the globe, or a job "in country" with an NGO. When my ability was questioned by parents fearful of such a life, and as my debts rose, I abandoned those dreams. I came to think them ridiculous. (Handy mechanism, to reject away what you actually love but cannot have. It makes the not-having easier to bear!)

But seeking cross-cultural connections and serving others are the only things I've ever felt called to do. Now I'm curious: Can I tap into the strength of purpose I've always had down deep and honor my interests and pursue my dreams?

These days I have more tools in my toolbox and take much better care of my emotional self. Debt can be managed, and my relationship with Rob doesn't have to keep me stuck. Where before I saw obstacles, I now see creative ways to manage concerns. I see opportunity.

With Rob's evolving understanding and acceptance that I can't play the role of a typical wife, and a bit of saving and investigation, I might just be able to get what I always wanted.

This would not be an easy life, to be sure. But fearless exploration of my interior as I trek through new exteriors, and a strong home base from which to depart and return, no longer seem unattainable. Unconventional perhaps, but not unachievable.

A few months before I got married, my brother came to visit. We thought it would be fun to have a night out on the town.

Sidenote: My brother is two years older than me and we have always been close...he's my hero, and I always thought of him as an ideal man. I think a lot of little sisters idolize their big brothers, and I'm no exception.

The evening started out as a lot of fun. He and I and a few friends went to a popular dance club and had a few drinks, and after we all hit the dance floor it wasn't long before I realized I couldn't find him. I headed upstairs to the other dance floor to see if I could find him and there he was, kissing some random woman.

A describe her as "random" because she wasn't his wife. His wife — my sister in law — was back in our hometown, having missed the trip because she had to work. Yes, this woman on the dance floor kissing my brother was indeed random, and I didn't know quite what to think about the whole situation.

I stormed up to him and yelled, "What are you doing?!" Anyone who didn't know the situation would have thought I was his wife with how enraged I was. My friends didn't understand why I was so angry. After all, boys will be boys, right?

This was way more than my brother cheating on his wife, although that did indeed tick me off. What really freaked me out was that I was about three months away from getting married, and the guy who I thought was a great example to all other men was shattering my illusions right before my very eyes.

I yanked him off the dance floor and demanded, "Tell me now...is this what all guys do?" He replied with, "Yeah, every guy does this." It wasn't until I burst into tears that he hurried to add, "Well, not guys like your fiancé. He's different. I can tell."

He was trying really hard to placate me.

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'm back from a girlfriend getaway in paradise. Travels with a best friend off the beaten path awakened more joy in me and soothed my soul, but also left me wondering...

Why can't I capture a sense of fun and wonder in the every day life I already have? Why do I put up with pressures and jobs and people I don't like? Because I think I'm resigned to my lot and can't effect change for the better?

Why do I feel so stuck here in Boston, but I was free as a bird in Mexico?

One idea: I was wearing no wedding ring. I wasn't seeking romantic or sexual attention from men. But I think the ringless finger — and people's assumptions about my lack of attachment — invited more open responses and deeper interactions than I would have otherwise experienced.

One afternoon my traveling companion and I looked up from our reading to see a man snorkeling in the heavy surf. Curious. He emerged onto the beach with a string of fish and spear. We dropped our books and marched over to investigate. He saw us approach and waited to show us his catch of red snapper, octopus, and lobster.

In bits of English and Spanish we learned were evening snacks to enjoy with some friends. He was perfectly sweet and answered all our questions, with no suggestion of interest beyond the subject at hand. But he told us if we brought some beer, we could come try some of the grilled fish. Fun!

Unfortunately, we had other plans. But judging by his manner and our rapport, I think if we had taken him up on the offer we would have found a relaxed local scene in which we felt perfectly comfortable: an evening on the beach with some new friends. But were a ring on my finger, this might not have come to pass.

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.