I haven't been to a therapist in a while. I stopped seeing the last guy I was going to because he got a little too fascinated with me and gave me the heebie-jeebies. So I rid myself of the one person in my life whom I freely chatted with on a regular basis about my thoughts of leaving my husband.

I used to talk to my pastor about it quite a bit but my therapist talked me out of that.

I confided in a few friends and soon afterwards it felt like an awkward pity party.

I told my mom and now she dislikes my husband.

If I didn't have a blog to write I would be a big bucket of nerves. At least I have one outlet.

I don't know if I'll go see another therapist. I don't know how the last guy managed to do it, but he got me so wrapped around his fingers that I would save up situations throughout the week and only form an opinion on them after my therapist and I had a chance to mull them over together. 

I went to therapy trying to figure out a way to save my marriage and instead got roped into a codependent situation with the therapist. Why can't anything ever just be easy?

If I do go see another therapist I think I'll find a woman who has such a thriving practice that she won't cling on to one patient in particular and decide to become some sort of puppet master.

I feel like a real idiot for having fallen into that pattern with my therapist, and now I'm scared to see anyone else. Really, it's not like I need another complication in my life.

How do I know if I'm on the right track? Sometimes there's a sneaking suspicion that I may be going off the deep end. As I pack my bags for one last solo getaway, all I can think about is my old life, even though I know how important it is to keep moving forward.

I am totally committed to coming out of all this on the other side.

Probably the best thing I did this month was to commit to another six sessions of therapy. My therapist has been an on-and-off integral part of my life for more than 30 years.

Now, in the post-marriage phase of life, I'm looking for signs, talking to angels, seeing a therapist, journaling, going to Buddhist retreats, and saving time on Sundays for church.

Oh, and I make time for lighting candles, drinking champagne, reading, and celibacy.

All bases covered?

Yikes! Especially since, when I first moved out on my own, I didn't even know where electricity came from. I don't mean which electrical company. I mean where the circuit breakers were, or even what they did.

That's how long I'd been married, pregnant, nursing, and ill.

Ok, get a grip, Joy.

I keep telling my friends, "I am going to be the last 50s housewife."

Not sure exactly what that means, except there's no excuse for disempowerment.

Practicing deep breathing, calming the mind, "ommmm-ing" for peace, I'm treating this weekend as a launching point.

The new school year is going to herald big changes. The kids will get out of bed with no hassles. They may even have my morning caffeine ready. I will find myself, minus the dot on my forehead, and without curry.

Ooops. Wait. This is a reality blog, and my kids don't even know where the stove is.

That's it for now. More thoughts after the retreat and, hopefully, ensuing clarity!

Somewhere in my house is a book entitled Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be by Lama Surya Das. I bought it three years ago when I lost my job and my last pregnancy within a few weeks of each other.

When the job went, that was kind of okay. I was about to take up a new vocation: motherhood. When the baby went, that was utterly not okay, and I've been trying ever since, in ways healthy and not so, to get over it.

I need to reread that book. Fifty-one weeks ago I was surprised to hear myself telling Edgar yes, I do want a divorce. I still haven't filed the papers.

I can talk about keeping the health insurance and the expense and trouble of divorce, but at least some of my delay is a result of my unwillingness to let go of a bad marriage.

Doggone it, took me 40 years to find a husband. So he wasn't the best husband, but he was — uh, still is — my husband.

It also took me quite a while to find and buy my house, which I don't really seem to be able to afford right now. 

In truth, I haven't been able to afford it for quite a while.

It has been pointed out to me that if I don't figure out how to pay for, or to sell, or to rent out the house, it'll be taken from me. Then I'll have to let go. For the past several months I've been working on letting go of the conviction that I must and can hold on to my home.

I've put less effort into the idea of releasing Ed.

But I feel my tightly clenched hands being pried open, so to speak. I'm beginning to accept the possibility that it's time to let someone else (who can afford it) love this house.

Maybe the practice will help me to let go of my marriage.

I almost got bombed by bird poo early this afternoon. In some cultures, this is considered to be good luck. I can only hope this proves to be true. It seems nowadays, it's going to take a bit of luck to get things to pan out, as hard work, perseverance, merit, and networking don't seem to be flushing anything out.

Talk about turning a negative into a positive.

As comical and bizarre as it is, I can't help but wonder why it is that people are able to take bird excrement in your hair and turn it into something positive, but things that are less disgusting — like a break up, or job loss et al. are seemingly insurmountable and always perceived as negative.

The answer seems quite simple: Bird poo washes out. I'll take it one step deeper — it's a quick fix and can never be misconstrued as a personal assault like the other things in life.

The things in life that leave us in a vulnerable emotional state are the things we work the hardest to protect ourselves from. Conversely, when something or someone actually penetrates the barricades we've set up, usually because we've allowed them to have access, it's always more difficult to recover. 

And when we do start to rebuild, the fortress is constricted with thicker walls. This is not a healthy way to go about life, I'm sure, but it is the human condition.

So what does that mean for the state of humanity?

Edgar's therapist mentioned that Edgar's relationship with alcohol was the most important, the one he was willing to sacrifice everything for. My husband, Ed, dismissed the notion with a "don't-be-ridiculous" air that I knew well.

Accustomed as I was to going along with him — and probably because it suited my vanity — I dismissed the notion, too.

After Ed and I had been apart for some months, I listened to a fellow alcoholic, who was under the influence of something at the time, insist that he did not love booze and drugs more than he loved his wife and kids.

And I finally accepted my truth: His therapist was dead right about Ed's affair with alcohol.

Ed would disagree and tell me that his uncontrollable drinking was hell. I don't doubt that. But, as I told him, "I'd feel differently if you were being chased down the street by bottles of rum that threw you to the pavement and poured themselves down your throat, but it doesn't work that way. At some point you make a choice to pick up a drink."

I'm reminded of that Lou Christie hit from the ‘60s, "Lightnin' Strikes," in which he sang falsetto about being powerless to resist sudden attractions to women. He promised his girlfriend that one day he'd settle down and they'd get married.

But until then, he wanted her to stick around, understand.

It is perhaps unimaginably hard for an alcoholic to stop drinking. I don't know exactly why I've been able to do it, one day at a time, for almost a year and a half and Ed has not.

Many recovering alcoholics (and we're always "recovering" or "recovered"; it's kind of like being a pickle, you never go back to being a cucumber) say, "There but for the grace of God go I."

What do you do when your best isn't good enough?

I have asked everyone in my Rolodex of life whom I suspected might be capable of giving me an insightful answer. They all replied, "You keep going."

No shit, Sherlock — but how?

No one seems to be able to tell me how I'm supposed to go about this. In theory, I understand this rationale completely, but in practice, this proves to be much more difficult.

Of course, the cynic in me also has to wonder whether these people would be able to persevere themselves, should they happen to lose their entire foundation while having to complete a 180-degree life change.

They're all in very comfortable niches in one form or another. Many of them have admitted to never facing a set of circumstances as dire as mine. It's not every day that one's entire life changes virtually overnight.

I never thought that this would happen for me, but I am beginning to lose faith. Unfortunately for me, that's about all I have left.

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.

If life is a journey, it's no weekend jaunt to the beach. It's an around-the-world expedition riddled with dangerous passages and course corrections.

My marriage is a journey, unfortunately quite a rough one of late. My relationship to my ailing father and my siblings who also help take care of him is always under construction.

Like many people, I also grapple with work-life balance: how much of myself do I put into my job or even any given project, and how much do I hold in reserve?

I've added another journey. Crazy, right? But stick with me...this one might be worth the added trouble.

I've embarked on a six-month yoga teacher training, and it's intense. The amount and level of physical, academic, and emotional study only seems to grow, week to week. At one point early on I said to a classmate that this might not have been the right time to engage in such a difficult program. Then we started our course of yogic philosophy.

Now I'm chartering more twists and turns in my mind than on the mat. While the training is physically challenging, this journey goes within, and the steadiness of mind I'm building benefits every part of my life.

So this one's a staycation. And there couldn't be a better time for it.

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.