Breaking up is really, really hard to do ......

So how have you spent your late spring?

Me - Well I've been busy trying to figure out how to detangle 13 years of marriage and 18 years of togetherness.

And it ain't easy.

I spend once a week in therapy trying to sort out my feelings about this, which vacillate between wildly relieved and utter despair.

For the past week I have been looking at apartments in my general neighborhood, trying to find a place that is both affordable AND still somewhat in the neighborhood we have established for our daughter Emily. Ugh.

At age 11, Em won't be shocked when we break the final news to her. While there has been no official announcement to her by her father and I, I have been preparing her for the past couple of years. Slowly, Surely. Making sure she knows without a doubt that the difficulty her father and I have in living together has nothing - and I mean NOTHING - to do with her.

And then there is the issue of custody. As Americans in Canada, we live in a strange no-mans land of rules and laws. Who gets to stay if we aren't a family unit under my student visa? How will we arrange visitation? How will be manage to fund two households on one salary during my time spent finishing my PhD.

While I don't worry about who will get the proverbial "wagon wheel" coffee table made famous by the scene in "When Harry Met Sally", the sense of loss of "US" is what I mourn. Not the "US" who live in our house now, but the "US" that I recall from our first days together. The "US" that could have been.

Yesterday in the garden, I burst into tears as we were discussing housing and other dull but important topics.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry", I sobbed. "I'm sorry that it didn't work out the way we wanted it to..."

Terrance held me and consoled me as I cried over the pansies, weeping for the marriage I intended to have and dealing with the end of the one I do have.

Original post to Canada Moms Blog. Dawn also blog at "I am Doing the Best I can", and "True Wife Confessions"