My Divorce Had Broken Me Until a Department Store Perfume Woman Changed Everything
In Ann Landers's newspaper columns from years ago, she would often respond to queries involving cheaters, liars and betrayers. She would ask these people to consider this question:
Are you better with him or without him?
I never gave that question much thought until my 30-year marriage was about to end.
It was brutally sudden. In hindsight, I'm sure I knew deep down. But everyone who knew us would have said our marriage was the last marriage that would end in divorce. As for the question, "Are you better with him or without him?" I tried to avoid the obvious answer, the one that was going to break apart my life and the lives of my children, causing me to step off a ledge. I had little to fall back on. I was devastated, heartbroken, scared out of my mind and deeply ashamed. I viewed it as a failure. My own parents had divorced, and I'd sworn it would never happen to me. But life had other plans (as it often does).
It was disconcerting at first—being on my own.
In fact, I didn't know how to be. I stayed to myself. I didn't want to explain. Secrets—his, not mine—had come to light in a messy public way and I wondered how much the neighbors knew. The idea of being gossiped about horrified me. Our hometown community was small and close-knit. Our kids went to school and played sports together. We sat together at games, attended the same meetings, cookouts and parties. In the event of an illness or a death, we'd cook meals for the afflicted family. We helped each other out. But as it turns out, no one brings casseroles to a divorce. They don't even know how to talk to you. Some avoid you altogether. Or if they do approach you, it's only because they want the gory details. I never knew what or how much to say.
But one day, I blurted everything out to a total stranger: a woman at my local department store spraying perfume samples.
"The name of it is 'Beautiful,'" she said. "It's popular with brides."
"My divorce was final three days ago," I said.
And for whatever reason all the rest came spilling out of me, and while I was aghast at myself, she stood, listening, simply receiving my pain with grace and kindness.
I don't remember what she said to me in response, but I do remember leaving that store feeling hopeful, feeling even a surge of joy. She'll never know how deeply her kindness touched my life, but it was from that kind of unexpected support and with the help of a dear friend, my brother and my children, that I was able to rebuild...well, not my life exactly. It was more that I regained my sense that there was value in living it.
I had always been a writer and a gardener, and those occupations sustained me. They're both solitary and requiring of a quiet, focused mind, and I found you could seldom be lonely or heartbroken for long while engaged in either one.
There were times when I truly despaired, when life became a moment-by-moment, breath-by-breath struggle to endure. Everything I had built, known, trusted and loved was gone. I clung to an irrational dream that I could bring my husband and family back together—fix us somehow, but even my grip on that broke too.
Through all that time, I wrote and I gardened, and little by little, I saw that maybe what had seemed to be a total blackout wasn't after all. I found my courage. I learned I was stronger than I knew. I remembered I had been somebody before I was his wife, and that in the aftermath of the breakup I was somebody more than an ex-wife. Neither role defined me, neither could contain me. I was free to discover who I was—my capabilities, my capacity for growth and adventure, for taking risks—on my own.
Along the way, I've come to realize that joy and beauty are essential to living, and it's important to find them within yourself. Having desire is crucial; you have to want to be alive with every fiber of your being. You have to want to be engaged with life—to be thrilled with it—and when you are, the reward is beyond words.
I don't know why my old life was shattered like a glass hurled to the floor, and while the loss of it can sometimes still make my heart ache. I do know that out of that damage, I've pieced together a new life, one that delights me in all the unexpected ways it shows up—like the kindness of a department store perfume lady.
Barbara Taylor Sissel is the bestselling author of CrookedLittle Lies (Lake Union Publishing, August 1, 2015). Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and BarbaraTaylorSissel.com.
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