It was the sock drawer that broke me. Left half-open and completely emptied, somehow it signified the final, irreversible death knell of my marriage, a hard stop in a meandering nightmare that had been going on for months. It shouldn’t have been a surprise – I’d been away travelling in China for a week, and I’d agreed with my husband that he would move his things out while I was away. Somehow, though, I hadn’t properly prepared myself for the terrible emptiness of unclothed hangers, no coat on the hook and a bathroom devoid of any products but mine. Looking at the wooden tallboy my mum bought us for a wedding present, two of the drawers suddenly empty, it was the first tangible moment of realisation that it wasn’t just our marriage that was over, but the life we had created together and shared for 13 years. Nothing prepares you for the trauma of divorce. As I stood in the half-empty bedroom, the reality of what we had done crystallised. Friday night drinks in our local pub, Sunday morning walks in Regent’s Park, that easy back and forth through the day, someone checking what time I’d be home and what I fancied for dinner, all of that was suddenly gone, crumbled completely like some black hole devouring itself until an entire galaxy has disappeared. I remember sinking down on our bed – just my bed, now – and sobbing: the kind of choking, gut-deep grief where you become unable to express the emotions rising in your body. I sobbed because we had failed, because we had loved each other once, and then our love faded and finally died. Neither of us had tended it or fought hard enough to keep it alive. And I sobbed the next day, and the day after that, when I would wake alone, go to work and come home to a silent, empty flat that would only come alive with the TV or radio. I suspect everyone who gets divorced has a moment like this. For so long it’s an unthinkable end point. Even as you’re inching towards it, you still can’t quite believe you’ll ever reach that stage. Disentangling two lives is more complex than we ever imagine – a cat’s cradle of stories, moments, possessions, financial arrangements and everything in between. And that was almost what broke me more than anything: the realisation that after a long, difficult year, I would have to find the energy to begin again, brushing away the ashes of a life that no longer existed. I wasn’t wrong to be apprehensive about the weeks and months to come. Every day brought something new to manage alone, from health concerns to finding a plumber and suddenly being the single woman at get-togethers. I remember going to Ikea to buy a new set of dinner plates and thinking: what is my taste? If I am me, just me, what do I like? It was sobering to realise how much of my sense of self I’d lost along the way. Now I look back at that time as the most challenging – and most valuable – period of my life: five years of being single, when I slowly grew into the woman I had never quite become. It wasn’t easy. When friends or family came to stay, I’d often find myself in tears after they’d gone, the flat even more creakingly empty after a sudden burst of life. I struggled with feelings of inadequacy and failure, compounded by my now ex-husband’s almost immediate immersion in a new relationship and circle of friends, giddily shared on Facebook. But slowly, my world brightened. I took a new job, went back to university and finally moved out of London to sunny Hove in East Sussex. Most importantly, I learned to rely on myself, to trust that whatever happened next, I would be able to cope. Fifteen years later, I’m happily remarried (having sworn I would never marry again), my third novel is about to be published and, crucially, I am content – a state that always eluded the younger me. I don’t feel like a failure, I don’t feel like a divorcee. I am just me. I wish I could have told myself, sitting on the edge of the bed that chilly October Friday, that the empty drawers and unclothed hangers signified not just the end of something, but also a beginning. I didn’t know it then, but what lay before me was the chance to discover who I really was and what I was capable of – an extraordinary journey that would take me to a far happier, healthier place.