How did I get here?

It's coming down to the wire now. My divorce. I guess it's our divorce. My soon-to-be-ex always hated it when I referred to what was ours as mine. Like my wedding. My kids. So, our divorce.

Next week would have been our 15th wedding anniversary. I guess it still is since we're still technically married. 18 years together and it's all reduced to a dollar amount. I can't seem to separate emotion from business. Which, by the way, is why I'm not a business person. We're volleying back and forth with the "help" of expensive lawyers who keep asking for more money with little to show for the expense. My husband hates the idea of paying me spousal support. He doesn't view it as a responsibility to his children. He views it as a burden. And his summary of me is one who has taken advantage of him.

I am looking for full time work which is hard enough for people who did not leave the workforce 14 years ago and who are younger than 42. I'm trying to focus in on a field I can embrace and thrive in while the boys at 11 and 13 still need me around. Helping them with homework, ferrying them around to various activities and social events, being supportive of them as they navigate puberty and adolescence, providing a loving, safe home in which they can grow and learn. But there is no quantifiable value in motherhood. I need to be "self-supporting" and stop "taking advantage" of my husband, their father.

I don't know what the final settlement will look like. My husband complains that things are taking too long. I know this is my fault; as I try to review the numbers that are faxed back and forth, they start morphing into memories of happier times when I still held fast to the dream of an intact family. Of laughter and togetherness and love. All those things that can't be assigned a number. But divorce isn't emotion. It's business. And as I said, I'm not a business person...