Have You Ever Felt Lost?

I do.  And I have for awhile.  I feel like I am losing myself and then I feel guilty for even thinking about such things when I have a husband to be a wife to and a son still at home to raise and older children who are out of the house but do still need a bit of parenting now and again.  And the days pass...and the weeks...the months...the years.  And I look at a life that is only being half lived.  I watch as dreams I once held move away beyond my grasp as I pass yet again another age mile stone.  And I yearn inside.  Longing for something I don't even know how to put a name to.  Is this just something everyone my age (40 years old) goes through? 

I really don't mean to be a downer...especially so close to Yule/Christmas.  Everyone else is posting these heartfelt messages on their blogs full of Yuletide cheer and here I am with one banger of a depressing post.  Sorry.  This is just where I'm at at the moment.  And everywhere else I have to pretend that everything is just fine and I plaster a smile on my face and pretty much fool everybody.  But here.  Here I have to let it out a little bit or I just might explode...or implode...or something else not very pretty.

I have written on here in the past about the issues that sometimes make my marriage difficult.  I even wrote a couple of years ago about the real possibility of my leaving this marriage and moving to be nearer to my family.  As you might have guessed I didn't go.  For lots of reasons.  The most important one being my son.  And because I really do love my husband.  I can honestly say that we are best friends and causing him pain causes me pain.

That is what makes this all so very hard.  If he was an a**hole it would have been easy to pack up myself and my son and hit the road.  He's not anything of the sort.  He is a really good man.  He works hard for his family every single day.  He wants me to be happy.  He just doesn't want the same things that I want.  He doesn't want to live where I want to live.  Or do the things that I want to do.  So the years pass.  And I give in once again and go along with his program.  I stay here in this town because he wants to be here.  I run his business office because he needs me to--which leaves very little time for any of the personal pursuits that used to bring me pleasure.  I watch my family--my mother and my grandmother getting older each year--wanting to be closer to them and not being able to.  He loves the home we live in but my heart belongs in the more rural areas with room for animals and gardens.  And even though we talk sometimes about moving to a home with more land I know that this will never happen because he really doesn't want to.

I really, really do not know what to do.  My son even wants to move to be nearer to his grandmother and other family members.  But, I know that my husband will not go.  And if I do, I will be tearing apart this family for the unknown.  So there is fear involved too.  See?  I told you from the beginning.  I am really and truly lost. 

Sorry again for being such a downer.  But, this is me.  This is honest.