I've been thinking quite a bit about how a woman like me would end up where she needs to be for this. It's not really a difficult path to imagine. I lived in the Connecticut 'burbs as a teen, worked as a "mother's helper," saw women's lives. What if I married my college love - maybe before my degree was finished, took an MRS degree and went to work in an office to help out while he got his MBA? Some time goes by, a child or three come along. He works in the city, I mom in the 'burbs - what if he loved me, but had what would have been considered at the time a "dirty little secret?" Spent some time in the city letting who he really wanted to be come out to play... I'd have known on some level that we weren't okay, but I know a lot of women who used a little vodka & Valium to keep the secrets quiet. Maybe when he got sick, I leaned a little harder. Kids grown, or damn near, bailing fast on the mess we've made for them. He's never home, but the checks still hit the bank; nobody needs me, I like things better fuzzy. Then fuzzier, when the job's gone, the kids are gone, the wolves are howling. Maybe I try the city for work - nobody knows me there, I can make my own way, start over. But I can't. Now I'm sick too, and there's no net. Fuzzy's harder to come by, but way more valuable. Not much left but anger & fear, trying to find a place to be; a little solitude for my aloneness, a little something to keep me from starting scream & cry, cuz I'm pretty sure I'd never stop. Yeah, I can get there from here...