I know exactly what you are feeling. I am 39, finally at 35 got my shit together finished my bachelor's degree and then masters degree this past summer. I quit the bar/party scene and lost all my supposed friends. It is so hard to be in these positions.

Minus the child, I can relate to a lot of what you've written. Well, and the marriage part, but long term relationships are just as emotionally invested. There's a line in a song by PIG, called Painiac, which, when I heard for the millionth time, made me re-evaluate things. "Too scared to walk away, too scared to stay'.
I hope you find the path to contentment and happy with minimum fuss, miss.

Everybody wants what they don't have.

You are fortunate to have your son grown and out of the house while you are still young. Why does this make you feel old? It would be so much easier for you and your husband to take vacations or do things that would be tough for those with kids to do.

And I would bet that your best chance at the love that you say you want is with the guy you have been with the last ten years. If you were single now, there is no doubt you would be popular. Love is just hard to find. If you get divorced ( wrecking both your lives in the process), you don't become 25 again, although you may act like it. Life doesn't come with a reset button.
You seem like a really nice girl. Do what is best for you, but think before you act.

OK, so much for unsolicited advice from an old guy.

Well, let me start by saying: I'm sorry. I empathize with your confusion and pain, they make me feel a little sad.

That said, you're asking yourself the 'Big Question'. At some point in every person's life they look around and wonder, aloud or silently, 'What the fuck?' Some people wonder where their youth went. Or their dreams. Or their beauty. Or their brains. Or their money. Or all their friends. The really bad part? There's no answer. There's nothing anyone can say that will help you figure anything out. Nothing anyone can do to make you feel better. You either overcome it, make it a strength or allow it to erode you and consume you.

You are in a fantastic place, though, if you look at it. Your mid-30's are not old or used up by any stretch. You are still stunningly beautiful, from a purely physical perspective you probably will be for another 10 or 15 years if you try to keep your appearance up. You've raised your child and now he's free to make his own victories and triumphs. At the age of 34 you have your entire life ahead of you with few obstacles. I'm guessing you are almost done with your education, which opens even more doors. You live in an era where you do not have to rely on your husband and the combination of beauty, experience and intelligence that you have are rare. I cannot pretend to advise you on your career, your love life or your place in this world with any meaningful accuracy but I can tell you that you are in an excellent place to grow, change and become almost anything you desire.

Be yourself. You are fantastic.

Everyone gets to the "is this all there is?" moment eventually. You're just early, is all.

The only suggestion I have is to explore the greater freedom you have now that your son is headed to college and you have both a measure of financial security and the time to indulge those interests while being young and fit enough to do so.

Learning (skill, art, language, apprenticeships) , traveling (domestic or foreign) , volunteering (Habitat for Humanity, Big Sister, mentoring), etc. are all out there waiting.

The default option is doing nothing and continuing in whatever rut you may feel like you're in, so go do something. Go jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Drive Route 66 from Chicago to L.A.. Learn TIG welding. Help build a house for someone who needs one.

What have you always wanted to do but never done?

Now is the time.

That sounds familiar. But take heart, for what I see when I look at your profile and blog is a very attractive, intelligent woman who surely has a lot to offer. If you aren't appreciated for who you are then perhaps you should look elsewhere.

34 is still young. Young but experienced, the best of both worlds. I'm a few years older and I haven't even had any children yet. You can still be whatever and whoever you want to, the only thing really stopping you from doing anything or making changes is you and I mean that in a positive way Anything is possible!

she fits in within herself, and that is plenty good enough -

i tend to agree with Stiles on a lot of stuff and his current comment really hasn't changed anything.

I haven't fit in in years. I am 35, quit drinking and using drugs in my early 20's and never found the bar/club scene to be interesting enough to do it every weekend. Occasionally it's okay.

30 fucked me up. My fiance had just left me, my divorce had finalized at 28, i felt completely alone on the planet and all i could think of was how much i fucked my life up. 30, divorced, failed engagement, no education, nothing worthwhile.

I went back to school at 33, was irritated with most of my classmates because 20 year old kids straight out of high school are stupid, as stupid as i was at that age. Finished my degree and picked up a very good job.

I have always been the type of person that needs to figure out how things work. So i spend a bit of money on doing things like that, computers, cars, motorcycles and anything else that intrigues me. In some cases i have become bored with those things and moved on to others. I home-built a working motherboard for a computer because i was bored.

I may be 35 but i still have plans for this life. Eventually getting out of Ohio is one of those plans, getting my daughter into a good school and of course more hot-rods and motorcycles, the good paying job helps with that. I guess i kind of concentrate on the things i really enjoy doing. I never really spend time dwelling on the fact that i am not in a relationship because my past experience with relationships is that they are more work than they are worth overall. That is mostly due to the people i was in the relationship with. I would work and work to satisfy a person that could never be satisfied.....it was a big vicious cycle. I finally figured out i am just happy being single. It doesn't mean i will stay single, it just means i am content with being by myself.

I hit the "is this all there is" stage a few years ago and started wanting more, i am still working on getting more. There are still plenty of things that intrigue me.....eventually they'll sell one of those space shuttle things and i will buy it and start reverse engineering it out of sheer curiosity.

Do what you want to do, you're the only person that can break yourself of this cycle. Do what makes you happy.