Reality interruptus

It's worse than I thought - my father's visit this weekend seemed to be the breaking point (especially my going to bed with Wombat & leaving Dad to argue with Yeti until after midnight) - and the stress of having to spend over $2000 and 2 weeks in town for the College of Law...

Yeti is furious with how much of my time the 'law study' is taking when I told him it would only be 3 hours a day.

He is furious that I am not working on the book I promised to write from my thesis.

He is furious that his 85 year old mother is worn out from doing all the housework.

He is furious that they both spend all their time supporting me and I give them nothing but bad attitude in return.

He is furious that he never sees me, and that if I keep going in this law career we probably will never have any more kids because I will always be too busy and too stressed to even think of getting pregnant.

We had a huge argument tonight and he basically gave me an ultimatum - prove why I should be doing the law and that I really want to do it & fight for my right to, instead of constantly complaining like I'm being forced to do it.

Immediately investigate things I can do straight away with my degrees - I am going to write to nearby universities after I post this and ask about lecturing/tutoring, just to find out if I DO have the possibility of an academic career.

Quit studying before I spend all Wombat's money on myself (my only income is the government parenting payment) and become a housewife, giving my full attention to mothering & being supportive of others - but if I take that (very attractive) option I have to be the best housewife the world has ever seen - and I have NO practice at that. It would also require me to justify why I have spent 13 years and run up a $36,000 study debt gaining two high-level honours degrees, with no intention of ever using them... giving up my law studies this year would waste $6000 in fees (I didn't pay them upfront - they are added to that immense aforementioned study debt - but if I ever go back and start this course again I would have to pay them upfront.)

If he knew the reality of my procrastination, I think he would demand I leave as I am obviously uninterested in being married to him - he would see it as that much of a betrayal of 'us'.

Whatever way I look at it, big changes are going to have to occur. I need to do some serious work and thinking. I have a lot of investigation to do before we can make informed decisions. I can no longer keep drifting along in my comfortable life, pretending to be so focussed on the grindstone that I can't see how miserable I am making those around me. As tempting as it is to throw in the towel and 'make the stress go away' I can't keep making spur of the moment decisions and then forcing everyone else to live by them - that's how I got into law in the first place - it was not from any idealism or desire to be a lawyer - it was just a quick answer that seemed to satisfy other peoples' idea of what I should do with my life.

Please pray for us - I will try to keep you informed of how things go. There's a brand new ending out there for us... I just have to find the right path to start on - but first I need to find my 'Big Gold Star destination'... and that's going to require some divine assistance.