Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it

A rainy Saturday morning and I'm frozen with the feeling of being overwhelmed. My home and life feel like such an enormous mess that I don't even know where to begin. There are mountains of paperwork and projects that need to be completed around the house. My children need and deserve some of my time as well. And then there's the subject of husband & marriage. Ugh. I just seem to wander from room to room picking up out of place objects and returning them to the place where they belong. Things are such a mess around here that simply putting things away could take days, maybe even months. I seem to sabotage myself by holding myself to a standard that is impossible to reach, i.e., not only do I have to sort all of my daughters important medical records into piles, I must hole punch and have color coordinated binders for them as well. It's absurd.

And all of this is just a ruse to distract myself from what's really bothering me. I have painted myself into a corner in my marriage. I have completely checked out of it. I went to speak to an attorney right before Christmas to get a professional opinion about the situation. The long and short of this conversation was that it would take time to craft a situation that was best for the kids. I agreed and accepted that it would take the better part of a year to position our lives in such a way to minimize the changes a divorce would bring for the kids. And I set my mind to the task at hand. I not only accepted the idea , I felt like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I had a plan and now, I just had to endure until I saw it through.

And now, every interaction I see between my children and their father pains me. I imagine their lives without him in it every day and I am so confused. Intellectually, I know that we are not teaching them to live in healthy, balanced ways. I know too that we are letting this legacy of codependancy and alcohol creep into one more generation. I am trying desparately to unravel my feelings of guilt and apply what I've learned. It seems that it would be easy for me to see that even though my father was under the same roof as me, it did not mean that he was a part of my life, or that he parented me. And I know too the damage it did to watch my parents lead separate lives under the same roof. Dear lord, it's painful for me to recognize that I have recreated, nearly lock, stock and barrel, my childhood. I want to break the cycle! But I don't want to just go to the other extreme, I want to do what is best for me and the kids. I know what that is for me, I just don't know what it is for them.