Sometimes I still dream about Levi. But not in the way you think. When we first separated I couldn't even sleep, let alone dream. Then, when I finally started dreaming again, I'd dream us back together; together as one big happy family.

I'd wake up from those dreams feeling more depressed than when I went to sleep; dying to go back to sleep and savor that fantasy for just a moment longer.

I'm so glad I don't do that anymore.

Now I have angry dreams.

Now I have dreams in which I am screaming at him.

Now I have dreams in which I am leaving him behind.

Now I have dreams in which I am kicking him out of my house.

I had one of these dreams last night. In my dream, Levi was in my house (don't ask me why) with his whole family.

They were sitting there as I reamed each and every one of them. I was screaming and crying, asking them how they could do this to my son? I remember that I was screaming at Levis' sister, "How dare you!!"

I awoke from this dream slightly startled. Why am I still dreaming about this?

In truth, I don't really feel as angry as I used to. I've worked hard at letting that anger go.

This prompted me to do some research on dreams and I've discovered that people work out their issues through dreaming.

One study, conducted by the Association for the Study of Dreams, looked at 49 people going through divorce. The study showed that people who incorporated their ex into their dreams at the time of the break up were significantly less depressed and better adjusted to their new lives at the follow up point than those who did not.

Another remedy for divorce: Get plenty of rest.

In a conservative town in Nebraska, Sara learned many lessons from her relationship and her divorce. "Trust your gut,” she says. “When you become a mom you have to do what’s best for your kid.”

Some people think you should put your husband first, she says, “but if you’re in a family situation that will negatively impact your kid, you have to take care of them. You’re responsible and at some point your motherly instincts kick in and you have to what needs to be done.”

You also, of course, have to take care of yourself. If she had stayed with the marriage, she says, “I would be the mother to two people instead of just one. He would be very happy. I would work outside the home” — in the Air Force — “take care of the domestic duties and bills, and he would be free to do what he wanted to. I could have dealt with the situation, but I wouldn’t be happy."

On the other hand, being on your own, she says, can be tough. “Dating sucks with a child,” she says.

And then there is the regret: “You always worry that you could have done something to make it work... could I have done this or that, tried harder... any number of things. You’re going to second guess yourself. So know that that will happen, and it will be hard and trying, especially if you work, because you don’t get a break.”

Eventually, she says, it pays off.

The secret to making it through a divorce in the Midwest is to find a good support system. In her case, that was not her home church, which shunned her, even though she was a children's ministry leader there.

She felt the church thought she was a bad example to the kids. "I was asked to take a break from any church ministry. It was like, 'You are divorced so now you should rethink things.' "

She found a new church with a more liberal mindset and credits the congregation with helping her through the rough time.

God, how I hate being the single mom on Friday nights. Stuck home with sleeping kids while all the free world plays. I can't leave even for five-minutes to get ice cream from the quickie mart.

Even if I could, 14-hours into being mommy, after making three meals and washing three sets of dishes, after all day wiping butts, and a night of reading stories, my get up and go is gone.

This afternoon my friend Sequoia called. She's spent hours in the back yard watching her Blondie-girl splash around the kiddie pool. It's all you can do in this Portland heat wave.

We have the kind of hot that feels like being stoned. Too hot to think. Too hot to move. Too hot to breath. Way too hot to single parent alone. So you find water and wait it out. If you're solo, you try to find another mother to help get you through.

Sequoia is married, but hour for hour she single-parents more than I do. She does it all week. I'm on 24 hours for half the week, but the other half, I am free, free, free. And for tonight, I’m free.

It's close to dinner time, Sequoia’s husband's out of town, Blondie-girl goes to bed around eight, and then its empty hours ahead. There’s that hollow belly feeling that settles in around sunset.

Roxie and Lila are at the beach with their Gammy and PopPop, so I tell Sequoia, "Yeah, hell yeah, I'll come drink red with you."

Heat blows though my open car windows and Mt. Hood glows pink in the rearview mirror. This is the kind of summer day it was two years ago when I first knew.

Calf-deep in the wading pool at some sun-baked park, Lila in a swimming diaper at my feet and Roxie on the merry-go-round. One eye on each of my babies, and right there I realized the truth of how staying in that marriage would bring more pain than parenting alone.

When Sequoia opens the door her fingers are bare, wedding rings off. I wonder what she's been weighing today.

It's 2 am. He's still not home. Why am I still here? Why am I still so pissed? Why am I even contemplating leaving one more message on his turned-off cell phone? So that I can record my fury, my angst, onto that little microchip in cell phone cyberspace for posterity? Lord knows he'll never listen to it. He'll hit '7' to erase it the second he hears, “OK, now, where are...”

Twelve years of marriage and it's come to this. He's not home because he'd rather be somewhere else. With someone else. He denies it but my 'wife radar' is in good working order. I'm sick of picturing who she might be. That's not even the point anymore. It's ABW: Anyone But the Wife. If I tell my girlfriends, they'll all just tell me to leave him, to throw him out. My therapist will again urge couples counseling. Tried that at Year Eight. Lasted the requisite six sessions, with promises to “renew," “refresh,” “re-purpose.” You know the drill.

Make more traditions. Make more efforts. Make more love. Thanks, Ladies Home Journal. Thanks Kathie Lee and Dr. Ruth and Shania Twain. I see it's worked out so well for you.

I could just lie here in the dark. I could start trawling the Internet for a lawyer. I could call that guy from the econ summit, that guy from that party three months ago: “If you're ever free on Thursday nights...”

Or I could go downstairs. Get a jump start making the kids' lunches for school in five hours. Or get the hockey gear loaded in the Tahoe now. Save me a few steps in the morning school hustle. Instead, I swallow an Ambien and knock myself out, just as I hear the car in the driveway. Tomorrow with the lunches and hockey skates. Tomorrow with the confrontation, or the ignoring – I’ll figure it out then, when I sit on the train in my suit from Loehman's. Maybe I'll start shopping at Saks again, like I did before the two kids.

I am about a month into my new life — and I am slowly losing my mind.

Actually, it’s not that slow.

Since leaving school, I have traveled back to the West Coast to present some research, moved — to the suburbs, no less -- and have not managed to find a job. I cannot tell you how badly my nerves are frayed. If not for the fact that I am afraid of lightning storms, I would probably be able to run about 100 miles fueled by nervous energy.

I know life changes are not supposed to be easy. I have been through enough of them to know this is the case. But that doesn’t keep my insecurities from welling up and overriding my rational mind.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is that so much is out of my control. Nothing chafes me as much as being without a job. Living in a country where people are defined by what they do, (I’m an investment banker, I’m a teacher, I’m a dog trainer), doing nothing leaves them feeling like they have nothing, like they are nothing.

I hate labels, always have, but that doesn’t fill the cavernous hole in my soul that not having a job has created.

Looking back at all my posts recently, I had to laugh. One of the first was called "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" That could be the title for all my posts, for my entire blog, and indeed for my life!

In my early posts, I waffled, now and then seemingly determined to pursue one course of action, only to change my mind a week later. But mostly I described my relationship with Rob as something damaged. The question was, and remains: Is it irrevocably so?

Today as a warm breeze drifts through my study window and my thoughts flow easily through my head and onto the page, I feel more comfortable in my apartment with Rob, indeed in my own skin, than I've felt in a while.

Some fellow FWW bloggers and readers say don't make a move until you're certain, and when you're certain, you'll know it. Others say I owe it to myself to leave. The latter is not unwarranted or unhelpful advice, but I don't know anything for certain, and I think I'm going to stay put for now. Feels right.

Where staying put with no big-picture plan seemed torturous just weeks ago, it doesn't seem so hard to bear at the moment. Why is this so? Couples therapy? Recent time apart from Rob as I traveled with a friend? Rob's continued evolution through therapeutic work? Maybe all?

One thing I've learned: being gentle with each other, allowing space for independent growth, and not giving in to fear when our directions diverge or seem unwieldy brings a bit of relief.

The longer I'm half-in, half-out of this thing, the clearer I see myself.

I have a good friend, a therapist, who says we don't keep returning to the same type of man with the same type of issues (the ones our parents had) only because it's familiar, we keep going back for more because we're trying to work out our own issues and these are the places we can do it.

She's always right.

I was telling her the other day over lunch that I hesitate to get all the way back into it, because Sam had this underlying negative something that looks totally different than my parent's negativity. But's it exactly the same.

With my parents the glass isn't just half empty, it's cracked and leaking slowly. Present them any scenario and they go first to what could go wrong.

When my niece who just graduated high school was "hang a good paper on the fridge" age, my dad once looked at a her spelling test up there, 99 percent, and said to her "Oh, Ella, how could miss .... You know how to spell that."

She's a fabulous student. National honor society. One misspelling and it's what he sees before everything that was right.

Like I said, Sam is a different kind of negative. It's more an undercurrent, not so overt.

But it has the same effect on me. The way it feels heavy, like something weighting me down.

Whatever it is I'm trying to work out, if I leave this relationship, I plan on working solo for a long time to come.