There's the Exit Strategy. And Then There's Actually Exiting.

I've been working on this so hard and for so long, this exit strategy. I started with the assumption that there was no exit, and I despaired. Then came my therapist and approximately $10 quillion in psychopharmaceuticals, and suddenly it dawned on me! There IS a way out! And I can find it! And so I did. It's not going to lead me to the place I'd hoped to land (which would be called Only Having To Work When and Where I Want To And Not Having To Worry About Money Ville) but then again, that place doesn't exist on any real map. It's not going to lead me to a place called There, or a place called The End, either. It turns out that this is a work in progress, my life. That I'm going to have to keep redefining it and myself. Who knew?

But still. I put a few goals together, and I started working towards them. And there have been a bunch of times when I thought they wouldn't happen. And they haven't, not completely, not yet. But they are going to, it seems. I'm about to be faced with that time. That time when I need to put up or shut up.

There are still a couple of hurdles. Things like health insurance, of which we won't have any if I leave my job or of which we'll have to pay close to $1500 A MONTH to have, that can eventually be overcome with some creativity, I think. Maybe. And then there's that eeeeeeennnnnnssssssssyyyyyyy teeeeeeeennnnnnnsssssssyyyyyyy hurdle of Baroy. The hurdle being...um, well, see, it's like this. Um....well....I haven't told him yet.

I know! I know! But it's so haaaarrrrrd! Not that he's going to stop me. Not at all! He'll say something about how it's my choice, and it's my life, and he supports me fully. And then he might add something about being concerned how we're going to swing it, but like he said, he supports me. And then I'll see him poring over our Quicken accounts, and holding his chest like he does whenever he has an anxiety attack, and snitching Xanax from my prescription when he thinks I'm not looking. And he'll go back to sending out dozens of resumes each day and obsessing over each and every one of them, and he'll be up all night worried and depressed. And I'm going to be too scared myself to have to deal with his fear. Except I'll have to. I know. I know.

And so I'll sit on this a little longer. Not the exit strategy; he knows there's one in place. But how close I am to it, what needs to happen for it to be a done deal. The fact that I'm thinking I might even be able to give a Jan 1 or Feb 1 end date for my official employment here. (And yes, I know, there are people from my office who might read this, though I doubt it. I also doubt this is news to any of them, except for maybe the specifics. So, screw it.)

It makes me wonder, a little, whether a marriage can be a good marriage when so much of one's life--and of one's dreams for one's future--aren't shared. It feels like a good marriage, or at least a good marriage that's being guided by two flawed individuals. I often complain to Baroy about some of the ways in which 'we' don't feel like partners as much as two people moving along and just checking in with each other fairly regularly. Or, in the case of my exit strategy, not-so-regularly.

(One of the not-very-big arguments we had just before we got married was about the fact that he wanted to--and, in fact, still wants to and does--do his own laundry. We have side-by-side hampers at his request. I do my laundry and the kids' laundry, but he does his own, and then folds everyone's, because I always leave it, but that's besides the point. I have never understood why it is that he wants to keep our laundry separate, just like I've never understood why it bothers me so much. But there you have it.)

So, I wonder: Is this exit-strategy-secrecy-stuff emotional laundry that I'm just trying to keep separate from him and his own baggage? (Ouch. It hurts to mix metaphors that clumsily, you know. Don't try that at home.) Am I protecting him or trying to hurt him? I think I'm just trying to avoid adding one more messy moving part to this already messy steamroller of an equation. But I could be kidding myself. It wouldn't be the first time.