What the Hell am I Doing?

I've been doing the kind of crying that makes you feel like your guts have been turned inside out.  Partly it's hormones - isn't everything hormones?  Partly it's because Netflix picked entirely the wrong time to send me The Bridges of Madison County. And partly it's frustration from trying to live in two worlds, and not knowing what the hell I'm doing in either of them. 

My husband is working out of town for unpredictable numbers of days now, then showing up suddenly in the middle of the night without telling me he's coming.  His presence should be a relief, but increasingly it seems he comes home only to criticize me, fight, and yell at our son.  When he's not here I'm alone with an intense, demanding two-and-a-half-year-old, and barely able to keep up with the most urgent household tasks.  Yesterday evening I locked my son in the house while I worked outside, because I could not get anything done between retrieving him every two minutes from the neighbors' yard and from our front yard, where I can't see him from the garden.  If we could afford to fence the yard, my life would be a lot easier.  For about 45 minutes while I turned a compost pile and watered some seeds I had planted, my son stood at the window crying (and then he made me pay for it the rest of the night).  As I worked, I felt like I was doing the wrong thing.  I thought, what is the point of trying to learn to homestead if it means I have to neglect my child's needs?  I'm living in this crazy modern world of isolation and independence (and speeding cars and potential kidnappers), urgently trying to learn how to live in the other world that's coming, but without the support system that world generally offers. My mother doesn't want me move anyone else into her house who isn't family, even though we have 4 bedrooms.  My job is about to end, and even the hour a day I have to run errands between work and picking my son up from the babysitter's is about to disappear.  I won't be able to afford to pay a babysitter in order to pick beans or organize my belongings, much less to take some "me time" like the parenting books suggest.  Instead of getting more done at home when I'm unemployed, it's quite possible I'll actually accomplish less; and instead of being a better parent, I'll probably be a worse one.  Realistically, the odds of getting everything done I need to do in order to leave the country this year are pretty darn close to zero, and what I do get done will be because I've parked my child in front of the T.V.

All this has put me in a rare mood, and when my husband corralled me into the bedroom today for my semi-weekly duty, I told him, "I don't want you to come here anymore.  I want a separation."  I don't know yet what the consequences of this will be, in concrete terms.  The first words out of his mouth were about how he's going to have to start paying hookers.  It used to bother me when he said that, thinking that some poor exploited woman is going to have to take my place because she has no choice, but I'm no longer willing to take this particular bullet for all womankind. 

The other part of all this is the doubts I'm having about my plan.  Going to my in-laws' makes sense because I'd have child care, a free place to stay, and people to show me the ropes as I learn third-world subsistence living at my own pace. On the other hand, I don't want to get too settled in there, or ship a bunch of my stuff there.  I don't know exactly how I'm going to find another place to live with a built-in support system.  None of this information is new, it's just hitting home with more impact as the clock ticks down.