It has been nearly three months since I last posted on this blog. Can it really have been that long?

At the end of November, on our ninth wedding anniversary, my ex dropped the bomb that he had found a new girlfriend and didn’t want to reconcile with me after all. Something in me snapped. In December I experienced more pain, physical and emotional, than I ever had in my life. Fleeing from the pain of my husband’s rejection, I reasoned (incorrectly) that another man would fix it. I jumped onto an internet dating website and posted my cutest pictures and a profile that said nothing about who I really am. Then I promptly got into a nearly two month-long long fantasy relationship with a man I encountered online, whom I never actually met in person (thankfully THAT is over). Right around that time my back gave out, literally, for which I had emergency surgery on Jan. 8th. I’m recovering quite well, by the way, although I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to lift my son again. More on that later.

Yet somehow I made it through. Here to the other side, this new year, for which I have made no resolutions except to wake up. I am reminded of that quote from The Shawshank Redemption, spoken by Morgan Freeman’s character: “Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.” Everyday we are living and dying. I just do not want to be one of the living dead. And as long as I am not writing, something inside me is rotting and decaying. Something inside me is atrophying. I need to nurse myself back to health, to make myself strong and alive again through words.

So here I am, starting with one measly post, trying to work my way back to the writing life, to the life of awakening, where I don’t have to run away and hide. I can come out of the shadows and sit still long enough to record these thoughts, to express these fucking feelings, to face what is right now, to let it spill out onto the page. What a beautiful mess.

I can still be found out on my porch at night smoking cigarettes (now in the teeth-chattering cold), though there have been some blessed periods of abstinence over the past three months. One day, I hope one day soon, I might not have to do that anymore.

Yesterday I spent my first evening sitting with a Zen sangha here in my area. It is the first time in months that I have sat with a group. Sitting there, just sitting, the room filled with a hint of incense, I hung out with my secret, silly, breaking heart, my greedy, jumpy, grumpy mind. Walking, just walking. The pressure of my feet meeting the ground. The sound of cars whizzing by outside, mixed with the kind of silence that can only be felt in a meditation hall. Chanting the bodhisattva vow, I remembered why I am here.

I’ve indulged in much foolishness over the past three months. It’s not a judgment, it’s a simple observation. I’m tired of retreating — into men, into nicotine, into crescendoes of self-pity, learned helplessness, and ruthless pits of depression.

Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean I can’t dance in the sunlight.