Life...interrupted

I know it has been some time since my last real post. The truth is that I've been going through some crap lately and I have had no idea what to write. My head is a mess. One day I feel one way and the next I am feeling just the opposite. I wish I could figure out the right direction...if only for sanity's sake.

Even as I wake each day and go about my daily life, I feel as if my life is out of my control. I look around my home and I am just dismayed at how I've let it go. It is a mess. There is no organization - just barely contained chaos. When I was not working, I maintained order and balance. I wrote things on our bulletin board and knew what was happening. Now? Not even close. Even when I buckle down and clean the house, it only stays that way for a day or two. It is very depressing. Things are piling up...I haven't even started to look at things for the kids to do this summer. I'm honestly out of my element and overwhelmed.

It would be easy to point my finger at Brian. He is now the stay-at-home parent...and thus these issues should be his to worry over. He is home - why isn't he stepping up and ensuring that we have a clean and organized home to live in? Simple answer - he isn't me. He doesn't have the same standards...or even concerns. I worry about everything and he worries about none of it. That isn't to say he doesn't care, but his priorities are not mine and vice versus. Plus I hated being counted on to be the sole person to care for our home when I was home all the time - so it wouldn't be fair to expect it from him. Lastly, I know I've been lazy lately. It's like I'm a pod person. I just don't care...or maybe I should say I just don't have the energy to care.

A lot of this "not caring" attitude stems from the fact that I am not a happy person these days. It was worst a month or so back - so much so that I felt suffocated just being around my own family - but now it is just there simmering in the background. The problem is I cannot pin point what it is I'm unhappy about so I can fix it. Can I just say "everything"?

You need not be a genius to read between the lines of my posts from a month back...I wanted out. Out of this marriage and dead-end life. It isn't because I don't love my husband though. It's that we are not "in love" and the daily grind of life has worn me to a nub. Sometimes just laying in bed with him - listening to him snore as I struggle to even fall asleep - makes me want to smother him with his own pillow. Being around him is just plain annoying sometimes. (I'm sure he has similar feelings about me.) So the question is: how long to do you stay in a situation like this? Do you stay because you have a family and this is the "American Dream"? Do you stay and stay until suddenly you divorce just years before retirement - like my parents? So what then? You waste half a life - waiting?

At the time of all these feelings, my ex-husband was in my life again unexpectedly. Perhaps not so unexpectedly, I linked the two. I began to idealize a relationship with Mark as a solution to my misery. It was not really a surprise to me to discover that I still love him. I don't think I ever stopped. He is the one who left me after all...not the other way around. But enough time had passed under the bridge to heal old wounds and allow me to see him in a new light. I liked what I saw...well, mostly. I felt so much happier and comforted when I was with him. Nothing inappropriate happened between him and I - but I found it harder to resist the urge than I expected. I think that made me realize even more so that things had deteriorated badly between Brian and I.

So now what? Mark is out of the picture - which is distressing me to the point of misery. Brian and I have talked about "options" and "trying harder" - with little effect. I feel lost. Nothing seems to make me happy and nothing seems to be changing. The only thing I keep coming back to is the primal need to be alone - which being a wife and mother seems to make impossible. So I end up resenting everything and everyone in my life these days. It is a vicious circle with no end in sight.

How did I end up in this place? Is this a mid-life crisis?