The marriage yo-yo

I don't really know what to do, or if there's anything to do.

Maybe it's marriage and family. I know that for me, having kids changed everything permanently. It took away my freedom on an elemental level, and I've had nine years to adjust to that. I can gain a facsimile of freedom by planning everything in advance. He never planned to have kids... I did. That's a huge difference. I always wanted to have kids, and the sacrifice of my freedom to have them doesn't feel like such a sacrifice, most of the time.

I'm feeling very afraid right now. And very worn out. This fear of him leaving... it seems like every time I start to feel secure it comes up again, every few weeks, and I'm in a tailspin. I feel like I'm in the classic position of every woman married to a noncommital man; afraid of being left alone to raise my kids. I think I'm numb to the fear of losing him, the person he is, his love, because I feel I've already lost him, or in some part of my heart I've come to stop fearing his loss because it hurts too much to believe it might not happen. Hope kills, right?

I was alright on my own before, I'll be alright on my own again, even though my heart will never be the same.

Looking back I realize that I probably should have had an abortion when I got pregnant with the sprout. Marriage and parenthood weren't in his life plan. I sacrificed the status-quo of my own little family by dragging him into it and having the sprout, and there's no way to return to that old balance.

My heart hurts and I don't know if I can live through any more of this up-and-down and still be a functional human being. I feel like he needs to get his life in order and decide what he wants, what he needs to do in order to be happy. I feel like he needs to do that somewhere else, not here, not with me. Not for him, for me. I can't handle it, emotionally. It's killing me, it's tearing me apart. My distance that he hates so much is a shell I wear to keep my insides in.

I don't know anyone whose life has worked out according to their plan, their vision. Mine certainly hasn't, and I struggle with that sometimes. But I have a responsibility to figure out how to be happy in the circumstances life has handed me, and I need to try to pursue that happiness. The only way I can figure out to do that, at this point, is to ask him to go do the same, in his own way, in another place, under another roof. If he decides that his happiness involves me and the kids, there is always the possibility that we can give another go at being happy together. I can't promise that I'll be up for it, but I am not going to close the door to the possibility.

Karma

How do you tell if being born beautiful, or ugly, is a punishment or a reward?

Some people believe that karma is tit-for-tat. I can't make sense out of it that way... it cannot be either punishment or reward and still make sense. It doesn't hold true. It seems to me that it can only be a learning experience either way; an object lesson, if you will. If you happen to be beautiful and successful and wealthy and all you take home from that is that you are better than those who are ugly and stunted and poor, then you have failed to learn anything at all from your experience. I am not entirely sure that having it easy in this life is as much a reward as it is a self-test, and the test you have chosen for yourself is whether you can have everything handed to you and still remember humility and compassion.

The worst possible form of enlightenment

I've noticed that some people consider themselves so deeply enlightened that it is absolute anathema to them to consider that there might be more than one form of enlightenment, more than one path to truth. Minds wide shut.