Come on guys! Please, someone give me some wisdom or insights or experiences!

I know my posts are long and lots of stuff to wade through. I'm working on getting a counselor, but it takes time to find someone available over the summer (they all seem to take a month off, lucky things) and until then I have only my own head and the heads of friends. Friends are great, but they are not trained to listen and pick things apart. They do what friends do, mumble encouragement, vent their own frustration, give hugs, all of which is lovely but not sadly not enough at this stage.

If I were ready to hear the response to my ending it I would probably end it. Some part of me is afraid of how easy it might be. I know this. Otherwise I wouldn't be here, would I?

I threw away some pictures the other day. I was cleaning, in preparation for sharing the place I live in with someone. To save on rent. Not unheard of, of course, and not without it's charms probably, but somehow final nonetheless. Not that it makes anything final in itself, but still. Anyway, I threw away some pictures. I have an enormous box of them in storage and was thinking how easy it would be to throw them all away. And the negatives too. So all those years would just be gone for good.

I don't know if I'm hanging on to artifacts that represent something, the importance of history for instance, or if I am keeping the memories for my old age. I don't know what I'm doing at all.

And my idiot so-called husband has no idea of any of it, because I couldn't tell him without being angry about his ineffectualness and blaming him for all this.

Perhaps I stopped loving him a long time ago and didn't even realise it.

How do you know if you love someone? How do you know what you want or need? How do you know what is fair to expect of someone else?

I thought I knew all this once, and now have no idea.