February-Another step Forward.

Hello ALL, I hope this journal entry finds everyone physically health and mentally “On Direction”. It’s been almost a month since I last journeyed. A couple of you have sent HUGS which I truly needed at the times when you sent them (makes me ponder the ability of the mind to perceive happenings across the distance!), any way thank you.
 I’m not sure where to start: Last month I turned 50 and had our (my) 23 wedding anniversary. I say “my” because as always I gave flowers (2 red roses and one yellow rose, has/had a meaning for us) and a card like I have for 23 years. I told the wife how even with the up’s and down’s I would do it all over again (btw- she has not given me a card since January 2002). For 23 years we went out to eat on our anniversary, This year she kept her usual weekly schedule and went to the gym and worked out. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to celebrate our day, and she got home after 9 o’clock.  I was hurt, but I expected it in the back of my mind. I really hoped that she would see a need for change, That we could work through things, That we had all these years of building a life together and we could realize a meeting in the middle and live happily ever after! I Feel/Know that all my friends here have had or will have that brief moment with “those feelings”.
 I think that evening was my “come to realization”. I knew that if it were to work it would take change from both of us, and I was the only one who wanted a change. I was the only one willing to change (and I had changed for her through the years), and that I was no longer willing to be the only one working on being a couple, companions, life-mates.
 I choose legal counsel and filed for divorce the last week of January 2011. I laid out all my current work benefits on the table and said here is half. She has kept the family books since early in the marriage so she really knew before me what (or should I say how little) we had financially. She currently has agreed to the split, I am struggling to attempt to re-mortgage so that I can consolidate bills and keep the homestead. I’ll lose ¾ of our retirement savings, but I will just buckle down and do with less ( spoken from a man who has lived in a white-wall tent on the side of a mountain) . I will make it. I will be lonely in the future, but I know there is hope in the future as well. I know there is a woman out there who wants to be a companion with me. I just have to get through this legal process so there will be an opportunity for us to meet!  BIG HUGS to all my friends, Thank You for being there.