Reinventing My Life

By Dorothy Kissel

On the morning of September 20, 1994, Dorothy Kissell receives a phone call and finds out that her mother has committed suicide. Grieving, she experiences a flashback to witnessing the death of her husband just two years before. There follows devastating pain with the exile by his two adult children at their fathers funeral. This was the step family she loved all those twenty-two years, and her loss of her relationship as Nana to the five grandchildren was overwhelming. Staggering from this family loss, she felt abandoned and totally vulnerable as a new widow and orphan in reverse.

Soon after she was victimized by a clever con man who drained her financially as she reached out to him for comfort. Coupled with her mothers death, she fell into a deep depression, ending in physical and emotional isolation. A second downward slide forced her into a mental hospital for months.

Heightened by tragedy and final triumph, this story chronicles her soul searching, learning to cope, and finally understanding her emotions, helping her to heal. It has been a humbling experience, struggling to overcome tragedy, but she now feels grateful to have found a new beginning by reinventing her world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Mar 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480805972

Dorothy Kissel

Dorothy Kissell returned to college at the age of fifty-nine, and has earned her master’s degree in creative writing while developing this memoir. She lives in Palm Desert, California, with her new husband. She is working on her next manuscript, but hopes to take this current saga to Hollywood and develop it into a movie for cable television.

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Copyright © 2014 Dorothy Kissell.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-0597-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0596-5 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903398

Archway Publishing rev. date: 4/2/2014

To Trevor Agar

and the County Department of Mental Health,

who found the right path for me

to heal and reinvent myself.

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1   Loss

CHAPTER 2   Aftermath

CHAPTER 3   My Beloved Husband

CHAPTER 4   That First Encounter

CHAPTER 5   The Morning of New Year’s Eve

CHAPTER 6   Barbara M.

CHAPTER 7   Gotcha

CHAPTER 8   The Next Assault

CHAPTER 9   Howard the Brave

CHAPTER 10   His Trial

CHAPTER 11   Healing

CHAPTER 12   I Hide Once Again

CHAPTER 13   The Abyss

CHAPTER 14   Advice—Go Back to College

CHAPTER 15   College Years and My New Husband

CHAPTER 16   Reflections on Reinventing My Life

Epilogue

PREFACE

Anatomy of My Story

Aristotle said, The unexamined life is not worth living.

Establishing a double perspective when writing a story based on past events is essential. Writings of experiences of bygone years are almost always penned in the present while reminiscing and interpreting memories.

Important within that history is the opportunity to analyze the meaning of such experiences. The reward comes by creating prose. Therefore, one should use a subjective voice, layering the meanings behind the words as layers of a young onion grow together to make the mature whole.

Then, too, memories are a system of near-infinite complexity, designed for revision as much as for replication. I know that some details are lost, usually in ways that serve the self in the present and not the self of ten or twenty years ago. Therefore, the writing of those details cannot be an exact record of the past, but an understanding of their engagement in the world.

Can anyone believe that memories are fixed like snapshots in one’s personal scrapbook? Therefore, my initial conundrum is, Can I remember things as they really happened?

I’ve been told that innocence is fictional. Yet so many stories have been written down before an awareness of potential mistakes in judgment develops and before a full actualization of the ensuing tragedies occur.

If we share our stories of living with others’ lies and deceit, should we not showcase such abusers and their lack of empathy for their victim? Then, too, is it not more profound when that victim struggles to survive?

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Many consider writing, thus creating, to be difficult. I disagree. I found that my writing became a friend who helped me to grow each day. In the beginning, I touched the surface of the empty pages of my notebook. They waited patiently to fill up. The blue-lined sheets allowed me to touch my carbon point across their surface. They gave up their whiteness for me to use them in my attempt to pour out my emotions. They did not complain. They absorbed all the anger and frustration, as well as the bursts of strength that flowed from my depths.

And, they did not demand anything in return.

As we learn in physics, every action must have a reaction. This holds true for the heart and mind of humankind as well. I have tried to instill my reactions through reflection.

Finally, I understand why writing is such powerful medicine. I composed, speaking to my reader, but just the act of sliding a pencil across each page was the salve for my dark turmoil or height of joy.

Sharing My Story

I am short to average in height, once sharp, solid and strong. Then I became a victim. Of fate? Of wrong place, wrong time? Of destructive choices?

I write it all down in the hope that, by sharing my story, I can touch the hearts of those who would understand through tribulations of their own. For others, it may bring forth a touch of empathy for this narrator. In essence, it is my battle with experiences thrust upon me both by fate and by my poor judgment of people. As a consequence, demons haunted me and threatened to destroy my very soul.

As my chronicle developed, it began to reveal the tragic injury of my soul and its mutation to near-total destruction. The wounded body may heal, but how does one endure without a healthy soul?

Can a soul be coaxed back to life?

Each time my words broke through, I was changed. The former me that I was threatened to collapse. I feared I would lose control and become a stranger to myself. But I moved forward. I created more. My mind heard the words and their rhythm, at times staccato but more often long and drawn out.

I felt obligated to share the feeling that I could not punish myself, but only strive to heal. I believe I have unburdened my soul with the telling of my saga.

Then I had to look at the shape of the whole. Was it balanced? Were there important underlying questions I had to revisit?

I could not shortchange the events thought of in a moment of insight, but I had to painstakingly unfold them into the here and now. As I continued to write of those events, they were still a part of me. So I fought their breaking through to the surface to haunt me. I continued to write more, to mold the soft clay of jumbled thoughts into a recognizable entity and hoped not to find too much quicksand in this task. I can consider those past emotions and know I have come through it all.

I have not abandoned my passion in life—not even to sacrifice those memories for a new, safer place. I know that my sense of adventure still lives.

Now I must ask myself, Can my story feel alive for others?

I hope that my readers step outside their familiar histories and share my story for a while. Yet I cannot expect them to share my feelings of rage, frustration, and my stumble into depression. I will not beg for help or sympathy, but hope they can find some commonality—a sharing of humanity. Finally, I hope I can intrigue my audience, for a little while at least.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my sister and all the dear friends who were smart enough and possessed the empathy I needed to help me through my darkest days.

First to my sister, for saying, I forgive you, which helped lessen the guilt for what I had innocently, but devastatingly, done to her and her family.

Next I thank my cherished friend Sharon, who tapped on the door of my darkened bedroom to see if I was still breathing in there. She is my first and longest-lasting friend, who stood by me, shouted at me to revive, and helped to abate my burdens when I needed a friend the most.

Then there is dear Howard for needing me more than I had the strength to help myself.

Next is for another friend, Steven, who cared without one word of criticism, for his accounting support throughout my court ordeal with my stepfamily.

Then there are my current friends—most of all, dear Rita. We are Siamese twins without the physical attachment. She is another sister I had always hoped for.

Finally, to my new husband as we share and care for each other.

CHAPTER 1

Loss

September 20, 1994

M y phone rings. It is the ungodly hour of six thirty. The sun has not announced itself fully on this September morning. There’s a chill surrounding me. Is it the sound of the phone trying to reach me that is ominous, or just that I am shocked into wakefulness too early?

I stumble out of bed and try to clear the fogginess of sleep to reach for the phone on my desk.

Hello.

Who is this, please, I ask.

This is the Westside Home for the Aged. I’m calling about your mother. You must come over to identify her body. We found her in bed, and it looks like she killed herself during the night.

I panic. What happened? What have I done to her?

I’ll come right over.

Shock, then guilt. Am I to blame? How can I hope to deal with this tragedy?

CHAPTER 2

Aftermath

M y sister and I are in shock from my mother’s tragic death. She flew three thousand miles to be at our mother’s funeral and still wears her black dress. But I opted to shed my dark covering and slip into a robe. We sit, ragged and damp from the funeral, in the deep leather sofa in the den of my condo. We go over the burial papers in slow m otion.

The bond between us was never strong, and now that both our parents are gone, I fear we will drift further apart. I have always been the daughter who stayed close to Mom and Dad, especially when they moved out west near me in the 1970s. I had taken responsibility when their health failed, and I feel the deep loss of them wrapping around me like a boa constrictor, tightening its grip as it slithers upward, coming nearer to my throat at every turn.

I look up to gather some emotional distance from the sadness of today and raise my eyes to look at the opposite wall with its floor-to-ceiling shelves of books. It has taken me many years to gather this collection that I love so. Exciting novels of adventure stand next to travel books and textbooks from art and political classes I took at our city’s university over the years.

I dim the lights now, even though it is an overcast day that still threatens to offer rain. This softens the atmosphere and helps to add some tranquility for my sister and me.

The phone rings, piercing the silence. I reach sideways and pick up the receiver.

Hello, it’s Jay. I just heard about your mom from Harvey. I—

You killed her! I shout. "You stole it all, every last penny Mom had. She couldn’t survive without that money to support