http://therumpus.net/2012/02/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-96-the-dark-cocoon/

You have to go somewhere else, sweet pea. You have to move beyond despair. You have to find the next version of yourself, the more evolved iteration of the woman you used to be.
You don’t do that by choosing between accepting your misery with one man you love or giving way to the fantastical idea of another. You do that by coming to terms with who it is you’ve become and doing the emotional work it requires to let that woman fly. That’s where I was on that day in 1991 when I truly thought I was going to die: a woman about to lacerate the shit out herself while pushing away her own cocoon. When that SUV left the road, it wasn’t just any day. It was the last day of the year in which my mother had died and everything that year had changed.
I was on the brink of being forced to change too. I left a man I loved so much I was content to die beside him. I did it because my purer revelation—more pure than my love for him—was that I couldn’t be the person I’d become while committed to him. In another time, in my marriage with Mr. Sugar, I’ve had transformations that led me in the other direction—toward a richer, more profound commitment, and a happier one too.