New Year's Eve of 2003 was my first time alone in 20 years. I guess you could say it was a celebration of sorts. The difference was that I greeted 2004 as a single woman with nowhere to go and no one to go there with.
If it's true that time fades memories and heals all wounds, then I have to believe that it also must be true that time offers new chances and new beginnings. That's what divorce was for me, a new beginning. I didn't see it then, but in retrospect the message was clear. At the time, I simply saw an ending. The decision wasn't easily made. But more than that, it was hard to figure out what came next.
That period of time I'll call purgatory, though it felt like hell. My then husband and I separated our selves and our assets (and yes, our dreams for a future together), I cried every day. I called my sister nearly every night. I wrote in a notebook that I'll never look at again. For 20 years, I trusted in someone else's decisions. I'd changed. Marriage made me feel secure. The confident me was gone. I was lost and full of fear. I didn't know what came next or what to do with my emotions or the rest of my life.
I'd dabbled at writing since 1999 and had received good feedback in workshops. In considering the possibilities of my new life, I returned to my writing classes and tested new waters, one toe at a time. Corporate America only offered a return to the instability of a commission-based sales position. I investigated franchises and considered culinary school. I tried real estate (one transaction), catered two parties (good food, bad timing, and, oh, did my feet hurt!) and tested my interior decorating skills (details and meticulous measurements). During one of our many midnight conversations, I asked my sister (for the thousandth time) which one of these jobs I should stick with. In her wonderful wisdom she told me, "You can do whatever you want. Just pick one, and do that first."
So, I took more writing classes and every time I churned out a story or a sappy poem rooted in love gone wrong, I felt good. I still moped. I still doubted my abilities, but I wrote.
It took two lawyers, a mediator, innumerable pints of chocolate ice cream, boxes of Kleenex, and a final hour-long document-signing session to end my marriage. With our signatures inked on a hefty stack of papers, 20 years of my life were instantly nullified: sorting his whites from my delicates, intimate lunches carved out of his crazy day, cleaning the goop from his electric toothbrush, trying to make my family happy--none of that counted any more. And in the midst of this, yes, I let myself get depressed and whiny. I beat myself up for the failure I believed was all mine. I spent days in bed. I lost track of time. I drove too fast and without regard to anyone else on the road. I couldn't concentrate, couldn't read, and couldn't eat.
On a day I remember only as sunny, I was talking to my friend on the phone and hiding, yet again, in bed. She demanded I stand up and draw an imaginary line on the floor. With tears in my eyes, I slipped from beneath the covers and stood beside my bed. Trusting my friend completely, I visualized that line. "You have a choice," she said. "Stay where you are and wallow, or cross that line and never look back." I can see myself now, teetering before that imaginary line. I saw my old life, the good times and the bad. I saw me, a 56-year-old woman who had worked hard to be the best wife and mother. My foot was heavy; my toes tingled. But I did it. I lifted my foot and stepped across. With that simple action, I began my new life. The truth was that I didn't know anything about anything. I just knew I didn't want to be a victim. The symbolism of stepping over that line pushed me in the direction of my future. I chose writing as the way I wanted to make my mark on the world, as the way to be the best I could be.
It didn't happen overnight.
Divorce took me outside my comfort zone and forced me to learn to trust myself all over again. I had to look at where I'd been and where I wanted to go, to put together new dreams, to rediscover and shine as me, not just a wife on her husband's arm. I went from fearing an unknown future to building one that I loved, a bittersweet victory, but a victory nonetheless.
In struggling to emerge from depression and self-criticism, each step I took set up my reinvention and new career. I set intentions and posted them all over my home, made dream boards, took more classes, joined a writing group, and made new friends. Yes, there have been (and still are) stumbling blocks: fear and uncertainty nag at me nearly as regularly as my periods used to. They sneak up on me, threaten to knock me down, and I have to battle them. This is what many divorced women are trying to do. It's what my novel's character, Lena, does. It's difficult to start over, to adjust to a new life but, by moving forward one step at a time, we can.
When my aunt saw my photo on the cover of a magazine, she raved with pride. "But then," she said, "Maybe if all of this hadn't happened, you wouldn't have written a book!" There was truth in what she said. I didn't know six years ago -- or maybe I suspected and, for sure, I hoped -- how time would lead me down another path. Different, but joyful. By declaring myself victor not victim, I used the changes that came with divorce to catapult me into a future of my own design. Time has done that for me. I'm a writer.
Jacqueline E. Luckett is the author of Searching for Tina Turner