I have a good life.

I have a Bachelor’s Degree in elementary education and a good, stable job. I have amazing friends and family and a husband who loves me. I know all of this. Most days I am incredibly thankful for all of it. Most days. But then, the doubts start creeping in…

Am I where I wanted to be at this point in my life? No.

I was supposed to be happily married with a home and children of my own to raise. Isn’t that what the fairy tales promise?

Instead, I got married young to a man who has this incredible potential but refuses to get off his butt and do something with it. He’s had five jobs in four years, all of them at call centers. Each time he promises it will be better, but 4-6 months in he gets stressed out and apathetic and I’m back to pinching pennies to get by.

And kids? Pffft. Right. Even if, by some miracle, I was able to get pregnant, how am I supposed to raise a child when I married one? I know that I shouldn’t expect him to change who he is to meet my expectations as he is still the same person I married.

But I’m not.

And that, I guess, is the root of the problem. I am not the same person I was two years ago, much less the six we’ve been married or the nine that we’ve been together. But, even as I type this, I feel that I am being disloyal to him somehow. He loves me. He has never abused me, physically or otherwise. I feel guilty and well, to be perfectly honest, I feel like an ungrateful bitch.

I’ve never been on my own. Never had my own space. I’ve always had to answer to or been responsible for someone else. The funny thing is, I chose this. I chose to marry the man who I knew was irresponsible. But, faced with the option of marrying or being alone, I chose marriage.

I settled, I see that now, but not in the way you may be thinking. I don’t mean, “Oh my GAWD what was I THINKING?!?!? I’m so much better than him!” What I mean is, I settled into the idea of being married because I was terrified I would never find anyone else. I was never the pretty, popular girl, with her choice of dates. I was was the overweight, mousy, wallflower trying to blend into the background.

So, when someone actually did pay attention to me, I tended to latch on for dear life.

I settled, and now…now, I don’t know. I used the Almighty Google to try and find someone who knows where I am coming from, but in every post I found there was a paragraph about how the poster had found someone better than his/her significant other. That’s not the case with me. The choice isn’t between my marriage and someone new.

Ultimately, the choice is between my marriage and myself.

I don’t even know if any of this is making sense, or if I sound like a blathering idiot…