Divorce can be brutal on your self-esteem, your psyche, and your emotional well-being. It is a hard-hitting, tough experience in which so much of your existence is tested and questioned. In The Gifts of My Divorce, author K. K. Chappell examines her ten-year relationship with her ex and narrates how she survived the first year of the break-up. The Gifts of My Divorce is a story about growth and change, describing how Chappell and her son navigate their way through the first year alone. It is the story of her journey through the labyrinth of her split as she consciously chooses the kind of life she wants to live. It's a story about her role as the victim, as the survivor, and ultimately as the hero of her own tale. In this memoir, Chappell discusses her transformative journey into self and the gifts she discovered after her ex left. This is a story about the human spirit and the potentials that exist within us all; ultimately, it is a story about love.

The Gifts of My Divorce

Navigating through the First Year: From Victim to HeroineBy K. K. Chappell

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 K. K. Chappell
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-8166-9

Contents

Introduction....................................................................viiOw ... That Smarts!.............................................................1Little Red Bag..................................................................15Emotions Run Deep and All Over the Place ... The Tile Aisle.....................23Go to Group.....................................................................29Extreme Self-Care ... Bah-Humbug!...............................................37A Martial Artist in the Making ... Reclaiming Myself............................47Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Whose Fault Is It, After All?........................58The Road Less Traveled..........................................................71Home for the Holidays...........................................................81A Time for Forgiveness..........................................................89From Pissed to Empowered........................................................97Butterflies Are Free............................................................109The End of My First Year Alone..................................................113

Chapter One

Ow ... That Smarts!

Was he really dead or had I just been dreaming?

I woke up one morning with a damp pillow wet from tears, a stuffy nose, and puffy eyes. I was in that momentary fog that happens between sleep and wakefulness when I remembered I had a horrible dream. It seemed as if it went on all night long. I shuddered as I recalled the dream. Ted had died. I remembered quite clearly, standing alone in the pitch dark, choking on a wealth of tears, as I repeated over and over again that I did not get to say good-bye. Between sobs, I kept repeating that I had to say good-bye, that I needed to say good-bye. No one heard me. No one was listening. No one cared. The finality of his death left me bewildered, confused, frightened, lost, and riddled with grief. He was gone for good. There was no one to help me. There was no one to explain things to me. There was no one to hear my pleas. In my dream he was just gone. The tie severed quickly and cleanly, as if with a sharp knife. And I was alone—utterly and completely alone.

Ted and I had been living together in California for the last ten years. We met when I was thirty-four and he was forty-two. I was head over heels for him, as he was for me. He was a handsome, successful, kind, and caring man with an even temperament that complemented my feistier nature. I often teased him about his laid-back California ways, which differed from my intense New York nature, a difference that was the impetus for many lively discussions. It was a match made in heaven! We had an exciting, wondrous, romantic, adventurous first year of dating. It was fun and he was fun to be with. I liked who he was as an individual, and I liked who he was with me. It was almost a year to the day of our first date that we moved in together. As I drove to his place with my two dogs and cat in tow, an uncomfortable knot started twisting in my gut.

The first year was an interesting dance as we found our footing with each other living under the same roof. Ted had been married before and had a young son. We became an instant family. I stepped into my new role as a co-parent with great enthusiasm. I also took over the horse business his ex-wife had once operated, diving in with the vim and vigor that is typical of me. I never once gave it a second thought. For Ted this shift was easy; nothing had really changed except for the addition of me. For me, it was a bit trickier, especially when I found remnants of his old life in the kitchen cupboards, the medicine cabinet, and even the closets. Shadows of his former life with his wife were littered in various pockets of the house. My stomach would instantly knot up when I found things that obviously belonged to her. Why didn't he get rid of this stuff? Why had he left it there for me to find? I took it upon myself to clean up the incidentals, which meant I gave them to Ted to give to his ex-wife. Hints of hurt morphed into anger when I confronted him with the goods. Although Ted never wanted to see me hurt, he could not understand why this bothered me as much as it did. To know Ted is to know his clutter, and while these were meaningless oversights to him, they were daggers to my heart, with truths I invented that equated to lack of loving me, lack of caring about me, lack of thinking about me—just plain lack. I had never been married and could not help feeling as if I had missed a vital step in this new transition. But time has a way of quelling those knotty feelings, as days turned into months, and months turned into years.

We lived busy, active lives, and those first years were good years as we fell into a predictable routine of work and family. I liked it. Gone were the days of our exciting romance, now replaced by the comfort of daily life and knowing someone well. We liked each other and we had fun together. And while I still maintained my independent spirit, I enjoyed this new life of ours. Ted was always home by 6 p.m., which gave me a sense of security that I had never experienced before. On some level I was puzzled by this, because I had never known such constancy from the man in the family. As a kid, my mother was always there, but my father was not. To see a man come home every day, at the same time, baffled me at first, and I looked upon it as if I were looking into the window of someone else's life. Whenever I heard the crunch of his tires in the driveway, a sense of peace wrapped itself around me.

Is this what men do? Do they always come home?

My father left when I was fourteen, although it is fair to say that he was never really around much even before the final departure. He worked in New York City and would often come home for the weekends because it was easier to stay in the city than commute on a daily basis. Although many men did the daily commute, my father chose otherwise. His weekends home turned into every other weekend, then a few weekends scattered here and there, and then no more weekends. As a kid, I would wait and wait and wait for the familiar white Lincoln to pull into the driveway, choosing to stay home most weekends for fear of missing him—hours spent waiting for my father to come home. I always recognized the sound of his car—the gravelly noise his tires made as he drove in, the hollow thud of the car door closing—and instantly a sense of relief filled me because my father was home. Sometimes, I sat faithfully on the stone wall by the main road, counting the cars that drove by while I waited, convincing myself that the next car would be his. But, many times he didn't show, and I would sadly leave my perch wondering where he was. When he was home, I sat in the living room in the worn-out, brown armchair and did my homework while my mother and father talked in the kitchen. Like a sentry at the gate, I sat in my chair. I listened to the murmurings of their conversations, and although I couldn't hear their words, I sensed a distance between them and wondered why it felt as if something was wrong. And why, when my father gave my mother a hug, did hope rise in my chest?

Ted and I had created a life that was full, one in which we were content. I felt safe and loved by Ted. Again, something that was new to...