Coping mechanisms

My ex had an uncanny sense of timing.  He always waited to spring the big one on me at the exact worst moment.  I kind of doubt he did this on purpose. I'd like to think he would never have been that mean, but if it was not on purpose then I suppose it was even worse, because a natural instinct for that kind of thing is pretty awful to contemplate.

The divorce was a coup de grace that almost paled next to many other things, yet it left me needing to redefine myself just before I turned fifty.

I rode my bike and played my piano all the way through it and I hauled that piano with me through six more back breaking moves.  Why?  Because it had been my coping mechanism since I was a child.  A simple line of black and white keys could carry me from despair to peace given enough time and the strength of my fingers.

When the piano was gone I could still get out into nature.  A walk in the woods, alone with trees and rivers and sweet blue cornflowers nodding their heads,  gave me a place to write and think and balance my thoughts against something so much bigger than me.

The bike was the last to go, or so I thought.  No more mind numbing rides at top speeds down the bike trail out in the country where flat fields allowed me to feel free, if only for a while.

But I was wrong.  The universe, in some perverse need to try me to the nth degree, took away all my freedom when I munged up my left foot nearly four months ago.  No more walking in the woods, no more unnecessary walking anywhere.  In fact I have barely even walked to my mailbox, or shopped in those months.

Every coping mechanism I have had in my life is gone except writing right now.  And sometimes that is difficult to hold onto too.  I wonder what people do when they don't know what to do?

(But that is certainly not a challenge!  I have no desire to lose any more.)