2002-01-06 - 12:43 a.m.

I just got home from a depressing evening of cocktails and conversation with some of my unhappily-married friends.

I hear the same stories over and over, and lived them myself. The detaching you learn to do in self-preservation. The silences, and the arguments, and the occasional night of someone sleeping on the couch turning into a regular occurance. Up crying in the middle of the night, strange numbers on the phone bill, trysts with the builder doing the renovation.

Everyone goes through it. I don't know what makes it work for some people, and that makes me scared shitless to do it again. Because, really, I don't think I could take another divorce. I want to know the odds, I want some concrete proof that the boyfriend will never be able to produce.

And I know that it's a leap of faith. No matter what. You can never predict how you'll grow, together or apart. I'm learning that there are ways to face things together. Learning to trust, learning to let him in. It just happens, no matter how hard I try to hold it back. (And believe you me, I try. The boyfriend told me recently that for the first seven months of dating me, he was afraid to call me. heh.)I'm happier than I've been in a long time. He is no small factor in my state of mind during this unemployment.

But I can't stop thinking about how awful it feels to lie in bed at night and cry, wondering what happened to that love you knew, to all those dreams.

And I'm not getting any younger, you know.

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