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. 

OK, I give up. I surrender, I confess, I admit it: I cannot afford my home anymore. By my home I mean both my house and the crazy city that I love, where I've lived for the past 20 years — longer than I've lived anywhere else, nearly half of my life.

I went "back home" to North Carolina last week, to attend my 30th high school reunion (!) and spend a week with my parents. I ended up using a lot of that time looking for a place to move my remaining family, the three dogs and three cats.

And I found something, a tiny little house in a great, big fenced yard. The rent is just over half of what I'm now struggling to pay for my mortgage.

For years I'd been scrambling for work, and just getting by, with the inconsistent assistance of Ed. It occurred to me, as I gazed at the satellite image of Hurricane Ike covering the entire Gulf of Mexico, that homeowners insurance — already prohibitively expensive - will never get any cheaper in Florida.  

My beautiful house, the cherished fulfillment of a long-held dream, needs work that I can't afford. Relatively speaking, it's a wealthy person's home. 

Relatively speaking, I am not a wealthy person.

Also, my parents also are not getting any younger. I'll feel better being closer to them — though I will decline, at least for now, their generous offer to let me live in their basement for a modest rent. I would not feel better being that close.

Speaking of which, I'm not opposed to putting several hundred miles between myself and my soon-to-be-ex-husband.

I don't want to move, I don't want to leave, but I can't afford this life any more.

I give up. That much is certain. Now all I have to do is work out the details. 

"Why is it," my mother asked, "that you can get married for $10 or $15 but it costs so much more to get un-married?"

"Because they know how badly you want it," I replied, and we shared a laugh.

Apparently, I want out of my dead marriage badly enough to actually do something about it. Nothing momentous, but this is where momentous begins. I marched myself up to the Self-Help Center at a civil courthouse and secured the packet of forms I need for my simple Florida divorce from Edgar. 

"Simple" being a term of art, of course.

The packet cost $65. Filing for dissolution will be another $409. In this county it actually costs $93.50 for a marriage license, a mere $61 if you complete the premarital preparation course.

I think that's a good investment. I've often wondered if premarital counseling would have prevented the train wreck that my marriage to Ed became.

Anyway, a clerk asked a couple of questions ("Do you have children with him? Do you own property with him?") and ultimately gave me what I asked for, a manila envelope containing 18 printed sheets. I actually only have to do something with 11 of them; the rest are instructions and receipts.

Unfortunately, one of the tasks I must complete is getting my husband served. I know where he works and could deliver his papers by hand myself, but it seems I still have to have his new address.

So far he's declined to give it to me.

Once I get that straightened out, it looks like I'll have to go to the courthouse twice more: once to go over the documents at the Self-Help Center and have them stamped by the clerk, and once for a Final Hearing.

The forms say they'll mail me notice of that date "in about four to eight weeks."

Okay, I've got the papers. However, I've already headed off to see my parents for a week. So I won't be filing anything until I return.

Hours after I returned home with the so-called simple agreement forms for my divorce from Edgar, my doctor called. Turns out, there is a reason other than stress why I'm so tired — and it's not that I'm having one of those female heart attacks with the weird symptoms, as I had feared.

My hemoglobin is low. The doctor said he suspects I'm bleeding internally.

"This is not an emergency," he said. When I return next week from visiting my parents I'm to go see him for tests. Oh, okay.

And then I realized: Had this happened after I get my divorce, I probably wouldn't know there was a problem, much less be planning to check it out. When Ed is really gone, so is my health insurance.

Tired? Take more vitamins, get more rest and exercise. When my leg falls off or blood starts running from my ears, then I will afford, somehow, to see a doctor, in the emergency room, because it is an emergency.

Millions of people are doing it. It's the American way.

I've been delightfully spoiled for many years, insured and able to make co-payments so I can see a doctor whenever I think I need to. I am afraid of giving that up.

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

I've heard versions of that quote, attributed to Ambrose Redmoon, for years. Especially since I came into AA, where we talk about feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Ed has been out of the house for a year. I've done a lot of life reconstruction since then, with much more to come, and some of it is already scaring me. But old Ambrose's words are wise.

Apprehensive as I am, I'm also unwilling to let concerns about health insurance stop me from ending this bad marriage.

Who knows? Maybe once the divorce is final, my relief will be so great I'll be struck perfectly healthy.