It is 4:30 in the morning,
Mother's Day 1998.

I am awake and crying. The decision I have needed to make for ten years came screaming at me in the middle of the night. After years of working with women in crisis, I realize that I'm becoming one of my clients. 32 years of begging, crying, counseling and praying have failed to make an impact on my marriage. At what point do I really expect things to change?

I have to leave.

As usual, my timing stinks. Mother's Day is no time to tell my children, my husband, and MY mother that I have decided to leave my marriage and my life. The only life they know as mine. The only life I know as mine.

My husband of 32 years is sleeping quietly beside me, unaware of the huge changes looming for both of us. The implications are staggering. I am 52 years old. I have never lived alone and I have never supported myself. And my daughters . . . how do I look at them and explain that all of our dreams for the future are over? I have spent the last six years on a spiritual journey, enough of a path to know that I have only begun this excavation into me and my understanding of my place on this planet. I have glimpsed just enough to know that I'm not living comfortably with who I am. I'm afraid that if I don't leave, the me I am trying to find may disappear completely.

My decision to leave has little to do with my husband and everything to do with me. I like myself with my friends, with my children, with my family and at work. I no longer like myself with my husband. I wish there were an easier way, but I know it's often necessary to leave home in order to find answers, to find yourself, to breathe, to be able to grow. I have been (by choice) everyone's caretaker for so long that I am no longer able to let anyone care for me. "Not to worry, I'm in control and if I stop this balancing act, the entire world may stop turning." I am trying desperately to remember the sweet, innocent, loving girl of my youth. But I see only emptiness and I feel only confusion.

Like so many women, I have become everyone's expectations. Am I pretty enough? Am I thin enough? Am I a good enough _____(you put in the word . . . mother, friend, wife, daughter)? Am I enough? Will I ever be enough?

I have become someone I no longer like.

The fatigue is overwhelming.

It is so quiet here, surrounded by nothing but the majesty of the Colorado high country. It is May, a beautiful time of year in many places, but mud season in the mountains. Still, there is a faint feel of spring in the air, new birds at the feeders and little sprouts peeking out of the last-lingering snowdrifts.

At this moment, I can't imagine living anywhere else.

The serenity of my nest is being destroyed by the piles of packing materials, the stream of tears, the weight of things left unsaid, and the pain of our future disintegrating. My husband, Chris, and I have been packing for weeks. The house is sold, he has found an apartment in Colorado Springs, and yet I have been unable to say clearly what I need to say.

I am leaving.

For some unfathomable reason, he has chosen to believe what we are telling everyone else – that his work is taking him to Colorado Springs and that I will stay with a California friend until we decide where we are going to live. The fatigue of this charade is overwhelming.

Lies . . . I am so very tired of the lies.

For many years we have been living and telling half-truths. I'm not sure when it began, but it has become a way of life. A way to keep from telling everyone the truth – that he has been unable to keep a job, that we are out of money. We must be total morons. Suddenly I'm unable to take one more step down this road of deception. I’m desperate for honesty. Will I know it when I see it?

Chris and I are finishing breakfast and preparing to head into Denver for a day of car hunting, a quiet moment of tea before the busy day ahead. Not a cloud in the beautiful sky, soft breezes and the quiet familiarity of time with someone I have awakened to for 32 years.

"I am going to file for divorce."

The quiet in the room is deafening. He must have known this was coming, but he just sits and stares at me. Nothing else is said. No fighting, no tears, no begging, just nothing. After a lifetime together, it is over in one quiet, sad moment.