I have been resolved bow for a while that this marriage is over.

Contextual information:

SO is an alcoholic, emotionally, mentally, and verbally abusive..documented...years. All my precious posts and comments are either hidden or deleted.

Main post:

Tonight, I heavily considered leaving for the first time since I began this journey of prepping for legal separation and divorce. Leaving the marriage/primary home is against my best interest, against my legal council and goes against everything I know I should do, and would result in my children being ripped from me and left with a drunk.

Yet here I am, and maybe I am here, writing this out so I can calm down, center myself, and not just up and leave.

My heart is pounding through my chest, I'm short with my words, and have even snapped at my kids...I am trying so damn hard to be the stable person in this dynamic, to be the shoulder my kids can lean on and I failed them and in the process gave her ammunition to use against me.

Now I have to fight my inner self in order to stay. I'm emotionally flooded and am having a hard time processing what next step to take, do I just breath?

Every day on the way home from work I say to myself "I'm so fucking done!" Yet I persists in this toxic environment and remain a coward who can't stand up for my own children, why? Because no one else outside of the home sees her. She has crafted a labyrinth that is near impossible to get through and see what is really going on.

I'm simply done, and it pisses me off because it is effecting who I am as a father.