Sculpting Lillian

By Iris Pachler PhD

Since her divorce, people in Lillians life have said such things as Be happy its over, Now you dont have to put up with him anymore, Enjoy being single, I wish I had that type of freedom. Lillian wants to punch these people, as all of these words are bullshit, they dont describe her experience at all. She thought it would be just like any other relationship breakup she had experienced in the past, with the usual feelings of anger, sadness, even heartbreak, eventually simply being able to let go and move on. But here she is, feeling what can best be described as disorientation. Yes, there are commonalities to a relationship breakup, especially a long-term relationship, but she is much more confused than she had ever been, doesnt know who she is anymore, why she chose this person in the first place, how to be single when she was sure she would spend the rest of her life with the same person. Considering this confusion, Lillians post-divorce journey includes casual sex-dates, followed by more confusion, digging into her past and childhood for answers, and eventually the decision to attempt healing. Lillian has to find herself, understand her motivations, triggers, fears, insecurities. In short, this process is one, big, fat shit storm. Pride and pretences have to be left behind for Lillian to get in touch with her authentic, messy, and complicated self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514469842

Iris Pachler PhD

As a psychologist, Dr. Iris Pachler knows how messy, confusing, and downright heartbreaking a divorce and its aftermath can be. She understands this disorienting journey not just from a professional perspective, but from her personal experience as well. The aftermath of a divorce is anything but pretty, triggering a person’s deepest fears and insecurities. Iris grew up in Austria, navigating the adventurous and at times treacherous childhood and teen years before relocating to California as a young adult. After dedicating her time to being a stay-at-home mother to her three children, Iris obtained her PhD in clinical psychology, eventually opening her private practice. After guiding clients through their life transitions, leading and facilitating divorce support groups, and surviving the termination of her own marriage, she started to create the fictional character of Lillian to capture the colorful journey of divorce recovery.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Denial

The pesky streetlight is shining through Lillian’s window, creating shadows of moving tree branches on her walls. It must be around 5:00 a.m. as Lillian continues to stare at the ceiling and walls and releases a heavy sigh. At times, these branches are soothing, creating a sort of meditative state, allowing her to focus on the different shapes and the gentle swaying, with her thoughts becoming softer and drifting into the background, eventually giving way to her dreams.

But not tonight. Tonight, she can only focus on the streetlight. She rolls over to face away from it. The light continues to penetrate her shut eyelids. She tugs the corner of her duvet up to her face to block it. Tossing and turning, she turns her head to look at the man lying in bed next to her. She studies his perfect facial features and his strong chest as it rises and falls with every breath. He doesn’t seem disturbed by her restlessness at all. Hours earlier, Mario gave her exactly what she had asked for—thoughtless, passionate sex—giving her mind the rest it needed. Now she wants him gone. He is not even restless, nor is he snoring, like most men do, instead sleeping peacefully. But she can’t sleep with this near stranger next to her. Can I push him out of bed? I want him gone! she thinks, feeling much angrier than she probably should, given that she invited him here. But staying the night was not part of the invitation, and Lillian thought this was understood. Apparently, Mario did not understand her unspoken rules of mindless sex. Yet she is sure that he wanted nothing more on his end.

She had texted Mario around 9:00 p.m., just as the loneliness and emotional pain became too much to bear. What better distraction from this pain than a handsome man she had met at a wine tasting with friends only a week prior? When her friends were involved in a lively conversation about—who knows about what? Lillian often loses focus lately—her attention drifted to Mario, who was pouring wine samples behind the counter to the few wine connoisseurs in the small tasting room. During a moment when he had no customers, she walked up to him, engaging only long enough to find out that he was twenty-eight, seven years younger than she was, and spoke in a delicious Italian accent. In these few minutes, she let him know with a soft touch of her hand, lingering eye contact, and her phone number scribbled on his business card that she was looking for only one thing. He had texted her a few days later, only for Lillian to reply that she was inundated with work, but that she would contact him soon.

Soon turned out to be five days later, 9:00 p.m. on a Thursday night. At 10:15, there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, he greeted her with his wonderful Italian accent.

Hello, gorgeous, I’m happy I got your message today. And before she could respond, he picked her up, pressed her against the wall, and kissed her. Her pain and the feeling that she wanted to crawl out of her skin with discomfort at the new reality she was living left immediately. The deep, long, sensuous kisses were interrupted only for him to set her down and start tearing away her clothes.

She reciprocated quickly by stripping his plain white T-shirt over his head. As she tugged at his belt, she playfully moved him closer to the bedroom. The rest of the clothes fell in the door frame. He picked her up once more and threw her onto the bed. The thought Just the medicine I had hoped for ran through her head after which everything became a blur. Lillian purposefully focused on the heat of this night, the heavy breathing, fingers running through her hair, sweat dripping off her body, lips gently but firmly sliding over her thighs, hips, belly …

A few hours later, Lillian lies next to him, wishing him gone. She gets up and goes into her small bathroom. How did I end up here? A far cry from the enormous master bathroom she had shared with her husband and the additional bathrooms throughout the 3,500-square-foot house. She had spent too much time hiding in those enormous bathrooms, crying, sobbing, indulging in her sadness, knowing she had to change something, but not knowing how and when. This bathroom is just big enough for the sink, toilet, and bathtub, and just big enough for one person to lie on the ground—if she ever decides to return to the position of sobbing on the floor as she did in her old house. Of course, the idea behind the divorce was that she wouldn’t have to return to such desperate hiding-sobbing-indulging strategies.

In her new living quarters, this is also the only bathroom in a one-bedroom apartment. She had attempted to make the space her own, buying a shower curtain and carpets in a soft lavender color with matching towels, something her husband would never have approved of.

She stares in the mirror where her reflection meets her with puffy eyes underlined with dark circles, no longer allowing any attention to be drawn to her deep-blue eyes. What a sight. After she separated from her husband five months ago, she cut her bangs—one of the pathetic attempts she tried in order to change and deny her current reality, maybe even pretending to be someone else. As she looks in the mirror, she has to brush away whisks of brown hair, with her bangs falling down into her eyes and the rest of her straight bob starting to touch her shoulders.

What a mess! I need another haircut, and thank God today is my day off. She would have never contacted Mario had it not been a day off. Well—let’s be real—she would have contacted him, but also would have felt desperate for sleep around 1:00 a.m. and would have kicked him out then.

Logically, Lillian knows how to deal with stressors in a healthy way. After all, as a psychotherapist she helps people every day through their difficult times. Currently she is not much of a success story or inspiration for her clients. These days, her way of coping is to use distractions, often called short-term relievers in her line of business. These usually take the form of substance abuse or overeating, but for her they mean casual sex and overexercising intermittent with chocolate binge eating. She can do without substantial food, but chocolate is at times the only substance that can reduce her anxiety, even making her look like a madwoman when she searches her cabinets in desperation for remnants of said deliciousness. She looked like a madwoman more often these days than she’d like to admit, in situations far outreaching her chocolate raids.

Right now, the look in the mirror presents a view that leaves no doubt that her body shows signs of overexercising and, yes, undereating, while being consumed with inhaling anything made of, dipped in, or brushed with chocolate. Her face looks hollow, and her cheekbones protrude more than they should. Her chest is bony, with no extra flesh to create any softness.

She has always been on the thin side, with a pudgy phase through her late teens—the start of said chocolate addiction. That was the stage of life that started off her obsession with her weight, attempting more diets followed by binge eating than she could count. Sometime during her teen years, she switched to a semibrief stint of three years of uneducated vegetarianism, which changed her habits from binge eating to undereating (except for chocolate, her drug of choice), bringing her back to a desirable weight, which by no means suggests that she is healthy.

Lillian admires women who are soft, have curves, and carry their curves with confidence. She finds this softer look to be more feminine. She wishes that she could find a way where she no longer needs to work obsessively at being too thin.

As Lillian stares in the mirror, she sees her image reflect the damage she is inflicting on herself during this phase of her divorce. She is willing to use any temporary fix that will work for her, part of denial. She will eventually get around to doing the real work of emotional healing. But for now she needs a Band-Aid, something to take away the pain for brief moments in time—sex, exercising, and chocolate.

Denial has its place. It allows a person to continue functioning, at least on the surface. It allows a person to show up at work, buy groceries, clean the apartment, and occasionally make a social appearance. Denial works … for a while.

After a long, hard look at the sad picture in the mirror, she splashes some water on her face, dries it with her hand towel, and then quietly sneaks back into her bedroom to rummage through her dresser drawers to find a sports bra, T-shirt, and running pants. She puts them on and then nudges Mario. To her annoyance he rolls over, groans, seems to wake for a second, but then slips back to sleep. She nudges him harder, and when he slightly opens his eyes, she whispers, Sorry, Mario, but I have to be at work in a few hours, and I want to get a run in. I need you to leave. Blatant lies.

Are you serious? You get up in the middle of the night? He asks in a raspy voice.

I’m sorry, but this is my routine, I should have said something last night. I’m sorry. What she is thinking is, Son of a bitch, hurry up and get the fuck out of my bed and apartment! I want to get back to sleep! He slowly gets up and starts to collect his clothes. Lillian watches him impatiently as he picks up his underwear and pants in the doorway to the bedroom and clumsily puts them on as he slowly walks toward the door where he finds his T-shirt.

He gives her a kiss on each cheek and says, Call me, and walks out the door.

Finally! Lillian turns off all the lights, takes off her running clothes, and slips back into bed to get a few more uninterrupted hours of sleep.

*     *     *

Lillian slowly opens her eyes. Immediately following comes an uncomfortable queasiness in her stomach that usually greets her in the morning these days. Her body simply refuses to allow her to fully live in denial, constantly reminding her that something is wrong. It was her decision to get a divorce, to visit a lawyer, to sit down and admit to her husband that she had filed for divorce, to have him served with divorce papers.

She peels herself out of bed, feeling as though she has a hangover; strips the T-shirt she had used as a running diversion earlier this morning over her head; and puts on a pair of pink shorty-shorts that she uses as pajamas. Dragging her feet, she walks to the refrigerator and finds its contents comprise milk, a couple of cups of Greek yogurt, and some baby carrots that have gone from wrinkly to liquefying in their plastic bag.

If she were a client of hers, she would spend some serious time examining her lack of self-worth that allows her to withhold nourishment and push her body to sheer physical pain with exercise, not only refusing care and nourishment, but actively seeking punishment. But if she were a client, she would have to examine her choice of husband as well, which even at the time of her marriage spelled nothing but future suffering. Who knew that going through a divorce and being faced with her own demons would bring her closer and closer to clients she could never relate to before? She now understands how creating pain also reduces pain. The young woman client she is seeing who routinely inflicts pain upon herself by cutting on her arms and thighs to reduce her emotional pain is one example. Lillian may not be cutting herself, but the muscle spasms and utter exhaustion from running until her body has nothing else to give create a release she had never known before. It may not be a healthy version of coping, but it is coping. Better than falling apart, crawling into bed, and never emerging again.

She pulls the milk carton out of the fridge, grabs a box of honey Cheerios, pours them into a bowl, and drags her feet to her couch. From there she can nearly see her entire domain: the entry door where she was greeted so passionately last night and a small kitchenette. If two people were to attempt to cook at the same time, they would continuously bump into each other, being more cumbersome than helpful. The door to the small bathroom and her bedroom door again prompt flashes of clothes being torn away and strong hands picking her up. Through the open bedroom door, she can see her queen bed (heavy breathing, sweat, lips, hands …), a dresser, and a desk that is stacked high with work-related books. The living room contains the tan fabric couch she is sitting on, a matching chair, a small coffee table, the TV stand, and some shelves.

Her husband had offered her a small couch from the sitting area adjacent to the dining room in their ginormous house. But when she moved out, she decided to leave everything behind. This was not some noble act to avoid depriving him of any prized possessions, but because she needed to leave behind anything that he ever touched. She did not want to sit on a couch that his ass had ever left an imprint upon or eat off dishes that his saliva had tainted.

When she went to the store to choose a mattress for her new queen-size bed, she attempted to buy the same brand as the one they had shared. As she tried it out in the large warehouse-type mattress store, the familiar feel of the soft, foamy texture immediately transported her back in time to when she still shared a bed with him. Toward the end of their relationship, her routine was to use numerous pillows to create a barrier between her husband and herself to ensure that she would not touch any part of him inadvertently and so that under no circumstances would she feel his breath on her at any moment. The attentive sales representative looked at her with bewilderment when she jumped out of this familiar model as if she had been stung by a bee, possibly even making a sound that could have led him to believe that she was.

As she is sitting on this non-ass-imprinted couch with her bowl of cereal, she can’t help but allow her mind to wander back to the days she moved out of her husband’s house. Funny, how I think of it as my husband’s house. We both decided to buy it and spent over a decade living our lives together in it. Richard wanted her to be a housewife to see him through his cycles of anger and depression. Lillian could not live up to that standard, so she decided to attend college, something she never did when she finished high school.

She had always assumed she was stupid, with poor grades as evidence. So she made no attempt to further her education at the time. What she didn’t realize then was that she may not have been stupid after all, but that skipping school and finding herself in a peer group where alcohol was freely and excessively used, might not have contributed to a positive learning environment.

She worked as a secretary after leaving high school, hating every minute of it. She tried different companies, but the outcome was the same: She was miserable and would frequently return home in the evening to cry at the recent memories of such fascinating tasks as bringing her bosses coffee and being the proverbial dog to be kicked when her bosses’ bosses gave them a hard time.

Today she realizes that the abuse her bosses dished out only confirmed the self-worth she had failed to develop through her childhood. That she is incompetent, that she will never amount to anything, and that she deserves to be treated like dirt are messages that she has gotten used to. As she was receiving these messages at work, maybe in a more covert manner but nonetheless being the same, they kept chipping away at her already almost nonexistent self-worth.

This low self-worth was fertile ground for her dysfunctional marriage to Richard. After settling into a codependent relationship for a few years where Lillian attempted to meet all of her husband’s needs, she decided to attend college. She found her passion in psychology, shifting her focus from her marriage to pursuing a career. Apparently, her focus could be channeled not only into intense workouts and self-loathing, but also into seeking a career.

This shift was probably the beginning of the end of her marriage. The marital conflict became more intense with daily screaming matches and accusations of her selfishness. Lillian’s focus intensified as she moved through her college classes quickly, frequently pleading with the counselor to help her find solutions to get through school even faster before her marriage fell apart completely, interspersed with sessions where she sobbingly confessed that she may be dropping out tomorrow, being unable to handle the stress at home. Both Lillian and her marriage were falling apart.

She knows that she has to examine her former marriage in more detail. She needs to evaluate why she chose this man, what she needed from him, and what she contributed to the relationship. But this time has not come yet. Instead, she is sitting alone in her little apartment with what feels like a hangover that is simply a sign of not enough sleep, trying to find her way out of this thick fog of denial, which only allows her to mask her pain whenever possible, put one foot in front of the other, and drag her feet