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I find myself sitting in muted silence.

No white noise, no static, no background music.

For someone who has always found comfort in words, the silence is sometimes deafening.

Have I disappeared from your life?

Most likely so, and I apologize.  I’m still here.  I still observe, listen, read.  But so often, I can’t find the words to join in the conversation.

It’s hard to explain the changes I’ve gone through.  Harder, still, to introduce people to the person I’ve become.  I’m still me, and yet I’m not.

For the most part, I’m somebody better than I was.

There’s this fluff that we carry around with us, over the top of who we are at our very core.  It shields us and gives us a buffer between our most bare, essential selves and the world around us.

I feel like I’ve lost mine.  Or, to be more precise, I’ve torn it off and set it ablaze.

I had a life that I loved, and it turned out that nothing about it was what I thought it was.  My carefully made plans, my hopes and dreams, all had to be released like balloons floating off into the distance.

It’s amazing to discover the person I’ve become, and to create a new life with new dreams, but I feel vulnerable.

I’m starting over as my truest, most authentic self.

And I have nothing to hide behind.

I take an awful lot of pictures of my kids while they’re sleeping.  Looking back, 20 years from now, they might wonder if their entire childhoods were spent sprawled across their mattresses, limbs askew.

Given the amount of time I spend getting them to fall asleep each night, you might think that those photos are my trophies, my way of celebrating another successful bedtime battle where I won and they lost.

But no, I don’t think so.  I think I’m trying to capture the way my heart feels when I’m awake and they’re asleep.  It’s this mixture of love and pride and nostalgia.  Of holding on and letting go, remembering what was and looking forward to what’s ahead.  There they are, asleep and growing.  Always growing.  Up, up and away.

As each evening draws to a close, I plan to fall into bed as soon as they settle down for the night.  But instead, my mind moves from the necessities of the day to other things.  When the house is quiet and the kids are asleep, I find myself suddenly and inexplicably wide awake.

My mind fills with so many thoughts, but I can’t put them into words.

So I sit there in the dark and watch them sleep.  I listen to their little girl breaths and watch their little girl chests rise and fall.  I reach out and touch their smooth little girl cheeks, soft as a feather.

After a time, my mind quiets itself.

And finally, I sleep.

In five weeks, I’ll celebrate the passing of another year.

I’ll be thirty-four. 

This year, my birthday is also an anniversary of sorts, and it has me struggling.

In five weeks, Jeremy will be able to say he has been clean for a full year. 

In five weeks, it will have been a year since we separated.

A year. 

And I’m not over it, yet.  I’m nowhere near over it, and some naive part of me  thought that I would be. 

Nearly a year later, I’m only just starting to come to terms with everything that happened. 

Leading up to this point, my focus has been on trying to survive and rebuild and adjust.  I’ve been so intent on moving forward that I haven’t  allowed myself to look back.

People ask me all the time how I am, and I tell them, truthfully, that I am well.  I’m happy and I’m at peace.  I no longer live in fear and I have so much hope for the future. 

I feel strong and confident and alive.  I am more myself now than I have ever been in my life.

But I struggle, too.  Life is good in so many ways, but it is also hard.

I’m happy.  And I’m sad. 

On my birthday, I’ll celebrate.  And grieve. 

The passing of a year.

This weekend I’m in San Diego at BlogHer 2011.

In the weeks leading up to this trip, I thought about canceling.  A lot.

But here I am.  I’m here.  And I’m glad.

It was a year ago, at BlogHer 2010 in New York City, that I publicly talked about my life situation for the first time.  Surrounded by people who deeply cared about my well-being, who read between the lines and suspected that something wasn’t quite right, I finally lifted the veil.

It was a turning point in my life, and looking back to that weekend, one year ago, I am humbled.

Here I am.

Changed.

Surviving.

Living.

Happy.

I’m happy.

Happier, actually, than I’ve been in a really long time.

There isn’t any one particular thing making me feel this way… I just do.  I’m at peace.  Life is busy and there are days when I’m on the go for 15 hours, straight, but there is a smile on my face and a lightness in my step from start to finish.

It’s an incredible feeling, especially when I think about what things were like only six short months ago.  It’s amazing how much my life has changed, and how much better I feel.

I know I’ve been neglecting this space and I apologize.  I fully intend to document Blythe’s story, but for the time being, I’m enjoying living this unexpectedly happy, peaceful life.

Alison and Blythe are continuing to thrive, and they’re developing an incredible bond with their dad.  He has come so far, and I’m proud of him for dedicating his time and effort to being the father our girls deserve. 

I know that his poor choices are responsible for so much of the hurt we’ve experienced, but I also know that the good choices he’s making now are a huge factor in our ability to live in peace.

Life is good.  I’ve been saying that for years, trying to convince myself that it’s true.

I’m so happy to finally believe.