A Woman Reborn
A lighthearted and fanciful story of a downtrodden middle-aged woman embarking on a journey of sexual discovery.
Chapter 1 - An Unexpected Friend
Jane sat in a cramped bathroom cubicle at work trying to keep her crying as quiet as possible.
It had been an almost impossibly stressful year. The start of it had been finding out that her husband of twenty-six years had been cheating on her for several of those years. Worse, he hadn't even attempted to try and salvage their marriage, suggesting instead that they get divorced. The bastard had even told her that it should be her that divorced him, as she had the more legitimate reason.
The suggestion had seemed reasonable at the time, but later she had wondered if he just didn't want the hassle of having to fill out all the paperwork himself.
John had left two weeks later. He didn't tell her where he was staying and she didn't ask. It was a week after he had left that she had gotten a call from a moving company to arrange a date for them to pick up John's belongings. She was incredulous at the fact he was actually expecting her to sort through his stuff and presumably box it up for him as well?
For a few days after hearing that John expected her to do his packing, the mounting sense of despair that she had been feeling was briefly eclipsed by an angry sense of injustice. It was because of this anger that the day before the movers were due to arrive, she went through all of their shared belongings and sorted out John's stuff. However, instead of boxing it up like he expected her to do, she merely piled it up in a large mound at the end of the front lawn.
The following day as she left for work in the rain, she smiled briefly as she drove past the soggy pile of his belongings. It might have been petty of her, but this small token of revenge felt justified.
When she got home that evening she was surprised to see John's pile of belongings was still at the end of the lawn. Either the movers hadn't turned up or they hadn't wanted to have to deal with loose items. But she tried to tell herself, it was John's problem, not hers.
When she left for work the next morning she tried not to look at the sad pile of belongings.
To her relief, it was gone by the time she returned that evening.
Her sense of relief didn't last long though. Even though she hadn't gotten around to starting the divorce proceedings yet, on the doorstep was a letter from a lawyer John had employed. The letter merely let her know that the only thing John wanted in the settlement was half the value of the house.
Jane felt crushed. There would be no way that she could buy John out, which meant she would have to sell the house and find somewhere else to live.
Now, almost a year to the day that she had received her first letter from John's lawyer, the final decree for her divorce had arrived in this morning's post.
She had thought that receiving the final decree would be a relief, but instead it felt as though everything that represented her entire adult life up until this point had just been made irrelevant.
The simple paper form had just informed her that that period of her life was now over.
So, what was she meant to do now?
That simple question had scared her badly when she had first asked it of herself.
It was probably the thousandth time she had asked herself that question since John had left, and so far she hadn't been able to come up with a good answer.
When she had married John at the age of eighteen, he had been the only man she had ever been with and for better or worse, she had been faithful to him for the entire twenty-six years.
One of the most frightening things that kept coming back to her was, did this mean she was now destined to spend the remainder of her life alone? She felt that it was too late to start over again and wasn't sure if she had the strength to try, or even wanted to.
It was thinking about the futility of her life and the deep injustice that consumed her that had led her to find solitude in this bathroom stall.
Eventually, once most of the hurt of her current situation had worked itself out of her system, she managed to stop her mostly silent crying. Dabbing her face with her hankey, she tried to make herself a little more presentable whilst at the same time listening to make sure she was still alone in the bathroom.
Finally, having gotten herself back under control, she unlatched the cubicle door and stepped out into the empty bathroom.
Except it wasn't empty.
Kim from accounting was standing by the hand basins and watching her with a mixture of concern and embarrassment.
"I'm sorry, I didn't want to pry, but I thought I heard somebody crying and I just wanted to make sure you were OK."
Jane had never really had occasion to speak to Kim before as they moved in different circles. Kim was a popular and outgoing woman... and well, Jane just wasn't. Also, even though Kim was the same age as her, maybe even a year or two older, she had a reputation for going out with several different men, many of them younger than her. She wasn't the sort of person Jane would normally associate herself with.
However, the honest concern that she had heard in Kim's voice was touching in its sincerity, to the point that it nearly started her crying again.
"I'm fine, thank you. I just need to get a bit of cold water on my face" she said hesitantly walking towards the wash hand basins.
"If you want to talk about it, I'm willing to listen. I'm not sure if I can help, but it's often better to talk." Kim was looking even more embarrassed now, but she had made the offer anyway.
"No, it's OK. I'll be OK... but thanks for asking."
Becoming increasingly embarrassed herself, Jane quickly tidied herself up in the mirror before making a quick exit, pausing at the door to thank Kim again for her concern.
For the rest of the day, if anybody else noticed that she was still upset, nobody mentioned it.
*******
That evening Jane went back to her two-bedroom apartment, and although it had been advertised as "compact", which was usually a euphemism for "cramped", it still felt too large for just one person.
She had attempted to make it more homely since moving in two months ago, but no amount of redecorating could convince her that it was her "home", especially not after living so many years in the same house with John.
She just felt so cut off from everything that had anchored her to what was normal.
Her husband had gone, her home had gone, and if she was honest, she was beginning to wonder if her own sense of self-worth was about to leave, if it hadn't gone already.
Her work was currently her only anchor, but whilst it fulfilled her on a professional level, it no longer satisfied her personally. It wasn't a replacement for the other things she had lost in her life.
Jane was an engineer in an aerospace development company called Commsnet. The company designed and constructed satellites for an ever growing list of clients as space became the new business frontier. Her specialty was structural integrity, basically balancing the competing goals of structural strength against minimizing weight. She was good at her job and never made a fuss, in fact, that seemed to be the motto of her life. She never spoke up in work meetings, just as she had never complained about John's indifference to her for all those years.
She ended up going to bed early. There wasn't really anything to stay up for.
******
The next day Jane sat alone at her desk. She had tried to focus on her work, mainly as a means of trying to block everything else out, but the constant thoughts about how much she had lost and how little she had to look forward to kept returning to distract her. She was so distracted that it took a while to realize that the woman from yesterday, Kim, was stood in front of her desk.
"I said, I was just checking to see if you felt better today?" By the tone of it, Kim had apparently already asked her once before, but Jane had been so caught up in her own little bubble that she hadn't heard.
"Um, yes, I'm OK. Thanks." She didn't really feel OK, but it was just the polite thing to say when you didn't want to bother other people.
"OK. So, I'm heading out for lunch, do you want to join me? I know this quiet little place nearby which makes a mean panini."
Jane politely declined the offer, she wasn't really in the mood to socialize.
But Kim seemed undeterred. "Look, if you come to lunch, you won't need to talk, I'm more than capable of talking enough for both of us. I just thought it might do you some good to get out instead of moping around the office."
Jane was about to deny that she was "moping", until she realized that was exactly what she was doing.
Afterwards she wouldn't be able to remember why she had decided to go with Kim that day, but it turned out to be a decision that would end up changing the course of her life.
******
Sat in the small eatery, Jane sat in silence as Kim, true to her word, managed to talk for both of them. Jane wasn't really listening to her, it was just comforting to feel part of a conversation with another person, even if she wasn't really contributing to it.
The food arrived and the one-sided conversation briefly fell off as both women ate their lunch.
Eventually the silence was broken by Kim, who was now looking more serious.
"So, do you want to talk about what was upsetting you yesterday?"
Jane had the sense the question wasn't intended to pry, instead it appeared to be asked in kindness and concern. And all of a sudden, Jane did want to talk about it, in fact for the next half an hour the story gushed out of her like stagnant water being flushed from dammed river after the dam had been broken.
She told of how her life hadn't been good for years, she told of her hurt at finding out that John had been unfaithful to her and how the hurt had gotten even worse when he left her. She finished by saying that she didn't know what she was going to do now. Life seemed so grey and meaningless, she couldn't remember the last time she had been truly happy, and didn't see that changing any time soon.
In the silence that followed Jane's emotional confession, Kim seemed to be taking her time analyzing everything she had been told, before finally delivering her assessment:
