Found this poem today, and it just seemed tomake sense of so much of how i felt in the run up to ending my marriage and since. I found the words comforting - I think it may have helped me deal with a lot of the guilt i've felt -so thought i would share them with you.

THE JOURNEY by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do,andbegan,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice-

thought the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didnt stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff

I have taken the first step and made an appointment with a solicitor. Although I know I have done this before and got a petition written. But I didn't ever sign the petition as I was unhappy with the wording and asked her to changed in several times. This was partly because of the inaccuracies and spelling errors in the first draft, and partly because I just didn't want to go through with it. So I decided to give the marriage one last go and fought for it.

So now here I am in the position 18 months later of starting the process all over again.

I have really been determined to divorce him on the

I wrote this a few weeks ago, when I was trying to understand why I couldn't just go ahead and write my petition. It's been a long haul, and I 've sent it in now. We'll see what kind of fallout there is now.

There's a kind of panic that grips me every now and then. I don't know which is worse -- being in the marriage with all its volatility, or being out of it and having my new-found peace of mind taken from me again with my new partner- that- was (almost) deciding it was best for us both if I let him go. I never had him to let go of, not in the true sense. I was so afraid of what my