When Endings are Really Beginnings…

In Jennie's Kitchen | Love & Marriage

A kiss is not just a kiss. And in this case, a pen is not just a pen. Thirteen years ago today, we gathered with 31 friends & family at a brownstone in Chelsea to celebrate our wedding. Ink flowed from this pen, bought at KC Arts in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, to hand address each of those invitations two months prior at a kitchen table in North Truro, where they were mailed so they’d have a Cape Cod postmark. It’s those little details that make a life.

Honestly, after 10 years I thought he’d never ask me to be his wife. I’d done quite a good job convincing him, and myself, I was not the marrying kind. Love is messy, too inherently transient, not necessarily in nature but in its ability to maintain and adjust expectations.

Sixteen months after we said “I Do”, we were reading divorce laws. See, our wedding day wasn’t an end game, it was the beginning, and I think if Michael were here to share his thoughts, he’d agree that we both missed that part.

The night we came home from our wedding he settled onto the sofa to watch the Yankees-Red Sox playoffs (rooting for the Yankees because he loathed the Red Sox). Not my idea of a wedding night, but I missed Isabella, so took a quick drive up to my mom’s to tuck her in while he watched the game, knowing we had three more kid-free days in NYC.

We spent the next three nights watching more playoff games while I dreamed of long, lingering dinners, catching a show or two. I didn’t realize it but the seeds were sown right there for what would happen 16 months later. Instead of telling him what I needed, I retreated. Without realizing it, I’d given up before I even started.

He fought for us. He convinced me we had many more innings left to play. We learned something more important than how to talk and listen over the course of three years with our therapist—we learned how to hear each other. And what I learned during that whole process is that I’m worth loving myself, and being loved by someone else.

Thank you friend for not giving up on me, on us, on love.

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5 Comments

  • Lisa

    I love your honesty. I hope this gives hope to someone who needs it, as well as the resolve and conviction to fight for what is worth fighting for. I know that you’re glad that you both fought and did the hard work that love requires.

  • angelitacarmelita

    No a kiss is most definitely not (just) a kiss, and love is most definitely messy and it is always better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all. Remembering the love and the highs, make the low’s somehow (and sometimes) bearable. Being alone is rarely sought, but somehow makes you strong. Loving one’s self I think is the hardest thing to do, but the most rewarding. xoxo