Time.

I tell him, over and over and over, what I need in a man.

He refuses to do the simple things I need a partner to do, and is incapable of others.

I have a plan now. The plan is to stick it out until I have enough money. If this means faking it so he thinks everything is fine, so be it. I will stay here and fawn over him, even make love to him if I have to. I will play his game the way he wants me to play it, and then one day, when I have the money, I will file for divorce.

This is not lying, it is self preservation.

It is the only way I can see this going well. I cannot continue to talk to him, begging him to be a man he cannot be.

I cannot just up and leave - I have five kids and no resources.

But in time, I will have resources. The kids will be older and perhaps all the little ones will be in school.

In time, I will be free. Free to be me, free to love and be loved, free to do as I please when I please.

First day.

I can't do it.

I am not a strong enough woman to forgive something as devastating as an 18 month affair, especially when I am being blamed for that affair.

I am not perfect. I made mistakes in our marriage. But none of those mistake warranted being cheated on, lied to, betrayed. I deserve better. Not because I'm someone special, but because I am a human being with feelings and a heart and I deserve to be cherished, like everyone else.

I cannot love my husband. But he deserves to be loved. I am at a point where I think it would be best for us to divorce and go our separate ways. He will be free of the responsibilities that drove him to fuck her for a year and half, and perhaps he will find someone who can love him despite his faults.

I have no plans of ever having another relationship. I know myself and I know my heart, and I am at a place right now, in this moment, where the thought of a relationship makes me sick. I suppose that could change. But it's not something I plan to ever pursue.

I feel like I need to focus on healing my heart so I can care for my children. I can't care for them very well when I'm grieving something that can't be brought back. I need to take steps to care for myself so I can care for others, and I need to make my own life.

It will be a very different life. It won't be the life I thought I had for nearly eight years. The dreams and goals I had need to be put on hold for now. Someday my children will be raised, and I can focus on those dreams at that time.

New goals need to be made. Here they are. This is just the order I'm thinking of them, not the order in which I plan to accomplish them.

1. Heal.
2. Forgive.
3. Divorce.
4. Get a job.
5. Learn to juggle five kids and a job and a home.
6. Be able to care for my children emotionally as well as physically while all of the above is happening.

I don't know how I'm going to do it. It doesn't matter at this point. I can't worry about what the journey looks like three miles from here; I need to concentrate on this first step.

The problem is, I don't know how to take the first step. What direction do I go? What do I do first?

I guess I need to take a gamble and just jump in where ever. I guess it can't hurt. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and then I take a different step. Nothing terrible will come from failure. I'm not trying to diffuse a bomb, I'm trying to fix what's been broken.

If you break a vase, you glue it back together. If the glue doesn't work, all you have is a broken vase. You haven't lost anything, you're just back at square one.

I am a broken vase. I need to fix me, and I have to take those steps.

Today is day one.

Tsunami.

I remember in the late 90's, my friend Mary and I went to a festival where a couple bands were playing in concert. One was a group called Splender, and they had a song with a lyric that I can't get out of my mind.

"There's a lot of things I understand, and there's a lot of things that I don't want to know."

I'm having trouble today.

It seems like the pain and hurt just engulf me and swallow me up, slowly and insidiously, until all of a sudden I'm lost in an ocean of feelings that are bigger than me.

One time I saw a video of a tsunami, not a big one, where the water just gradually came in, not like a wave - it just crept in and before you knew it the water was everywhere and little beach huts and seashell stands were just floating, and then snapping apart, and you didn't want to see but you couldn't pull your eyes away.

And then, the water slowly crept back out again, out to the open sea, leaving a beach full of crustaceans and fishes and broken pieces of buildings and kelp. Lots and lots of kelp.

Just as it came, so it went.

That's how I am. The hurt - my god, how it hurts - warmly, gently, almost kindly, washes over me, but it's so insidious that I can't tell I'm drowning until the very end.

Sometimes I have to tread water there, in the acrid pain-ocean. It's so big that I lose who I am and what I stand for. I don't know what to do. I lie there on the couch and I can't even cry, I just lie there with a big dry lump in my throat and think strange thoughts that have nothing to do with anything.

Sometimes it takes days and days before that tsunami waves pulls back out into the deep. Sometimes it's just a few hours or on really lucky days, a few minutes.

But when I'm engulfed, I just don't know what to do. I don't know how to go on, and I don't know how to just feel it and observe it and let it go.

There's a lot of things I understand, and there's a lot of things that I don't want to know.