Revelry by Kandi Steiner
To anyone who has ever felt less than.
You aren’t just enough.
You’re more.
FREE
\?frē\
Adjective
Enjoying personal freedom : not subject to the control or domination of another
The first thing I learned as a freshly divorced twenty-seven year old was that no one owed me anything.
My husband didn’t owe me an apology for any of the horrendous things he’d screamed at me as I packed my bags. The first guy I slept with after being with the same man for ten years didn’t owe me a text message the morning after. My friends didn’t owe me all of their time and undivided attention, even though I desperately wanted it.
No one owed me a single damn thing.
And now, for the first time in my life, I was going to live completely on my own.
I’d gone straight from Mom & Dad’s to college dorms to roommates to a house with my now ex-husband, Keith. For the past four months, I’d been staying with my best friend and business partner, Adrian, but his home didn’t feel like one I could call my own. He had his own family, a partner he was madly in love with, and a brand-new baby girl they’d adopted only six months before I moved in.
I had no idea what I was doing, where I should go, who I should be, and maybe that’s what made me load up my SUV once more and drive an hour outside of Seattle to rent out a cabin for the summer. I didn’t even look at pictures, just called the number listed and told them I was on my way to see the place.
It wasn’t easy for me to leave. In fact, I’d nearly changed my mind after Adrian and I called a meeting with our small but close team at the boutique to let them know I was going to take a small hiatus. We’d started it together right after college, and I’d never missed a day of work. I worked more than what some might consider normal, and I guess that was part of the problem that had landed me where I was.
Still, Adrian had ushered me out the door, ensuring he and the team would be able to handle everything while I was gone. I needed time away—he saw it, I felt it.
“Bring us back a summer line,” he’d said, bright smile on his perfectly contoured face. My designs were the backbone of Ballard Boutique—it was my name and brand, after all. But I wasn’t the only one who had something to lose. Adrian and my team did, too. I wasn’t just doing this for me, but for them, and so I loaded up my SUV with what I thought would be necessary and started driving with the intention of finding inspiration and bringing back a summer line like no other.
It was a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep, especially since I hadn’t been able to sketch anything of worth since I’d left Keith in October. The holidays were hard, and the final divorce hearing in January was even harder. I had hoped that once I emerged on the other side of it, I’d be fine—healed, cured of my lack of inspiration. But I still felt broken, and so here I was, driving to a cabin in Gold Bar.
Now that I was halfway there, windows down and tears drying on my cheeks faster than they could fall, I wondered if I really was crazy.
That’s what everyone had been calling me lately—crazy.
My ex-husband said I was crazy for leaving him. His family said I was crazy from the start. Our “friends” said I was crazy to walk away from such a “perfect marriage.” Everyone was saying it, and even though I should have been arguing with them, I couldn’t. Because the truth was I felt as crazy as they accused me of being.
I had to be crazy, didn’t I? After all, I walked away from a ten-year relationship, a seven-year marriage, and not for reasons anyone around me seemed to understand—except for maybe Adrian. Keith hadn’t been physically abusive, he hadn’t cheated on me, and to everyone around us, we seemed perfect. We posted pictures on social media of us opening his first practice, visiting New York for Fashion Week, sharing sweets at Pike Place, and even just lounging around on Sundays. We were perfect.
At least, we made it seem that way.
No one knew the struggles we had behind closed doors. They didn’t know how my loving husband had begun to resent me and the success of the boutique, especially since he’d always seen sketching and sewing as hobbies. He was always so focused on his own dreams that he didn’t think to take mine seriously. And I was okay with that, for a long time, until the “report cards” as I liked to call them, started rolling in.
Every three to four months like clockwork, Keith would get angry about something and we’d fight until dawn. When I say “fight,” I mean he would tell me every way I was failing him as a wife and I would cry and vow to do better, all the while defending everything he called out in the first place. It took me a long time to realize that he wasn’t angry at me, but rather at himself—for reasons he would never explain to me.
But, even after counseling, and even after the papers were signed, Keith never saw it as an anger issue. He still felt that it was my actions that made him angry, and that I was a selfish woman.
Selfish.
I’d heard the word so many times over the past few years it might as well have been tattooed on my forehead, or maybe across my chest like The Scarlett Letter.
Maybe I was selfish, I wasn’t sure I could argue that point. My dreams were important to me, as was my career, but I still loved Keith. I always wanted him to be the best he could be. I always wanted to help him get there. But somewhere along the way, our love grew black, charred from an angry fire fueled by resentment.
No one ever gets married thinking they’ll end up divorced, and now that I was on the other side of that unfortunate destiny, I had to figure out who I was again.
And I had no idea where to start.
I didn’t know what it was like to be completely alone, and I was scared. I told Adrian I’d be fine, that I was excited to get out on my own for a while, that I needed space. But I’d never known loneliness, not truly. I didn’t know the kind of lonely that seeped all the way into my bones when literally no one in the entire world was talking to me, wondering about me, or waiting for me.
I wondered if I’d survive it.
But something strange happened when I turned onto the roughly paved road that would lead me to my home for the next few months. The fear of loneliness slowly drifted out my open windows, and an unmoving sense of alright-ness fell into its place, a quiet whisper, growing louder every mile until it was a booming voice. I smiled, swiping the remnants of my tears away as my GPS announced that I’d arrived at my destination.