I haven't written in several days because, until tonight, I hadn't felt the need.

On Days 5-8 I thought very little about Ex, or when I thought about him it was to imagine myself being free of him, exploring new opportunities and meeting new people and reviving the relationships I'd been neglecting for the last 12 years. Sometime after Day 4, I realized one of these is my relationship with my parents. I hadn't literally been neglecting them - I called every one or two weeks, visited every few months, and sent cards. I even started sending e-mails once my mom proudly announced that she had learned how to use the internet. But I could have seen my parents more often - much more often when you consider that I live less than two hours away. But I had a partner - a life partner. My parents were my parents, but my partner was my day-to-day family. If anything, I used him as a buffer against my parents, as he occasionally used me against his. My parents deserved better.

Mom and dad have been nothing but supportive, even if my dad is occasionally gruff and makes me feel embarrassed for being anxious and fearful over the split. My parents pledged their complete financial support as well. I work full-time, but I'm considered part-time and paid little more than a serf. I am an adjunct college professor. I teach three and sometimes four courses per semester - only one course less than my full-time, tenured or tenture-track colleagues - and can't even clear $20,000 a year. I've never been happy with this arrangement; if you do any googling on the subject, you'll realize very few adjuncts are. But I love teaching college students, and because the academic job market is terrible and I never earned a Ph.D., I don't have many other options.

I knew I had to face the financial reality of my new life, so last night I translated my monthly existence into a painful (but necessary) set of numbers. The number that frightened me the most? 1556. 1556 is the amount of money I earn in a month. Subtract rent and bills, plus gas for the car, and this leaves me with about $5 a day for food and other expenses. I knew I earned $1556 a month. I knew I couldn't be an adjunct forever, no matter how much I love teaching. I knew my financial survival depended on Ex, who is a full-time, tenured professor and earns about $55,000 a year. But in our two-income relationship, my sub-$20,000 earnings seemed like gravy to Ex's stuffed turkey. My number took on an alarming new significance now that it was truly my number - my sole income.

I panicked. I cried. I asked my mom to sit with me as I scrolled through Craig's List searching for $700 apartments (most of them were located in Newark). I plugged the addresses into Google Streetview and found one dilapidated building in one dilapidated neighborhood after another. I thought about sharing an apartment with a roommate, then worried I might end up hating the apartment and the roommate.

My parents - God bless them - told me not to worry. My mother did this gently; my father, less so. He made his characteristic what's-wrong-with-you? face, narrowing his eyes, tensing his forehead, and squinting impatiently, somewhat contemptuously, at anything he deems an excessive display of emotion.

I have their support, but clearly I need a new job. And this is what truly terrifies me: I can bend my leg (almost) behind my head, teach a (nearly) full load of courses packed with challenging community college students, but I have no dexterity at all in securing gainful employment.

Two years ago, both my father and my ex wanted me to get a higher-paying job. I'd been sending out CVs to community colleges for full-time positions, and while I did score one interview, I generally received polite letters declining my candidacy (sometimes I never heard anything at all). For awhile I hoped the college where I currently teach would hire me full time, but the economic implosion resulted in a college-wide hiring freeze that began in 2008 and remains in (chilling) effect today. Knowing my chances in academia were low, I revamped my CV into a resume for an administrative assistant position. I knew I'd be a good administrative assistant, I knew these positions payed as much as triple what I was earning as an adjunct, and I knew I'd have plenty of time to write at home in the evenings.

In a refreshing change of pace from my experience on the academic job market, I was invited to several interviews. I bought pre-fitted Geoffrey Beene suit. I psyched myself up for each interview, rehearsing with Ex and stoking my own enthusiasm. Truthfully, I really would have been elated to be hired for any one of these jobs; if not in the long-term, at least for the present. But I was never hired. I had a Master's Degree. I'd spent most of my adult life teaching college. In short, I was overqualified. Worth a look, perhaps, but not someone the interviewers imagined would stick around for long. Some of them said as much; others simply nodded and smiled as I talked about my passion for organizing, filing, client services, scheduling, and Microsoft Office. Even now I find myself drawn to the idea of working as an administrative assistant, but no matter how enthusiastically I spoke, and no matter how much I emphasized my relevant experience, the interviewers just didn't buy it.

Now I will have to repeat this process, though this time not as an eager, would-be administrative assistant. My father listed the many career paths I could choose. With my background in writing, he insisted, I could be a copywriter, an editor, a public relations person (a public relater?), a paralegal-er, a business or technical writer, a snowman, a CEO. The last two suggestions are mine, but they feel every bit as unfeasible as the admittedly more reasonable options he offered. This means more resume revamping. This means applying for jobs whose titles I don't completely understand. What is a "project manager," anyway? Surely it's someone who manages projects, but in what context? Why? And why does it seem like all job openings can be divided into two categories - those demanding 10 years or more of "proven success" (for example, in managing projects) and those asking for recent college graduates and paying roughly the same as what I earn now? These may be silly questions, but they're born out of frustration and fear. Frustration that I don't feel qualified to do much of anything besides what I'm currently doing. Fear that my time to write and to teach, to do what I love, is running out.

This fear and frustration made me angry at Ex. After all, had I not financially supported his own ambitions for most of the first half of our relationship? Had he not promised to support and take care of me? Had I not done everything I could to compensate for my meager earnings? I wrote his CV. During his first two years on the tenure track, I wrote most of his correspondence, edited and revised his course outlines, and wrote two outlines from scratch for two new courses he wanted to introduce into his program, all without credit or compensation. I kept our artistic careers alive - maybe not thriving, but alive. I nabbed us two productions in New York; I oversaw the complete redesign of our website; I designed and printed business cards for him. I dusted, swept, or mopped a new area of the apartment every day just so everything would be clean when he came home from work. After his first two years at the college, he managed to get me paid for some of the work I was doing to ease his load. But I still did much more than I was being paid to do because I loved him, and because I didn't want him to feel I was contributing anything less than my share.

I was - I am - angry. Naively I imagined I might skip this part of the grieving process, but as I stared at that number - 1556 - I felt betrayed, humiliated, and vulnerable to the point of being in physical pain, as though someone had just ripped off my top layer of skin. Ex knows how vulnerable I feel; on Day 2 and again this evening, he offered to give me money every month - a sort of voluntary palimony. That term seems especially ironic now: palimony. Mon(e)y for a pal.

The bedroom - now Ex's room. In fairness to him, it's looked better, but it's also looked worse.

I can't take his money. What's his is now entirely his, not ours. His endless shelves of books, his desk, his clothes (on the floor, on the back of his chair, on top of still-unpacked boxes from last year's move into our current apartment), his laptop (a present from my parents and me to celebrate his tenure), his video camera(s) (he's an "interdisciplinary artist"), his cell phone, his tchotchkes (littering his bookshelves, blocking access to the books), his dirt, his underwear (again, on the floor, on his chair, on top of boxes), his socks (many used for masterbation and tossed in stiffened wads onto the floor), his cooking spices and seasonings, his DVD collection (mostly foreign films, alphabetized by director, most of which he purchased on impulse but has yet to watch), his bookshelves that were supposed to keep him organized, his unpacked boxes that take up a forth of the bedroom and cast serious doubt of the effectiveness of the bookshelves...

All of this is his stuff. And I want it out of the apartment, out of my space. And I'm scared to death of how I'll feel once it's all gone.