is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
October 12th
Sunday, October 12, 2008 
I need to acknowledge this day. I didn't want to, at least after I gave up my idea to have a big dinner party and finally open up the wedding china sitting in my storage space. And then again after I decided that I wasn't up for a night out with the grrrls to see Dirty Dancing and then cocktails that make my head dizzy and then ache.
Instead, I wanted to have a quiet weekend with my boy, to enjoy the sunshine and falling leaves and maybe make some time to just be still.
As the weekend floated up to meet me, I realized I was slipping into conversation with my friends and family.
"This weekend is my wedding anniversary," I said a few times over the course of a few hours on Friday.
And they all made a funny scrunched up face that I could detect over the phone and said, "Ohhh."
"Yes," I said each time. "Ohhh."
I
didn't want to say it out loud, but I did. I wanted to acknowledge it
in some sort of meditation or prayer, but the words just came and I
released them into conversation and the universe and the warm October
air.
So I did what I do when I am feeling whatever this way I am
feeling now and I made it into something funny. Or I tried. I asked
those friends on the phone and on Facebook if it was a better idea to
buy myself another china setting or whore shoes to acknowledge the day.
It wasn't that funny, really. What is funny is that I've lost interest
in the china and I buy whore shoes to acknowledge Tuesdays or that DSW
opens at 10:00 a.m., not to tell the world I am so not celebrating still being married.
You know, I am not sad.
And I am not sad that this is the day I chose to marry the man I am now
divorcing. I don't regret the decision or the day. In fact, it was an amazing, beautiful, blissful day. The pictures show that on our faces and I won't forget that.
I've packed those albums into a box for Lil E so that he has tangible ways of knowing -- and possibly, remembering -- that he was born out of that same bliss and commitment. I didn't need to see them today or give a nod to any of what was in the air that October 12th.
Today, I needed to acknowledge my sadness that there is another wedding anniversary when I want so much for this all to be done. I needed to say out loud that I am happy and thriving and still very angry about how shitty last year's anniversary was, full of lies and show and a desperate hold on what was...just air.
So now, I've said. To my friends. To my family. And then in a clipped conversation to the Almost Ex, which went like this:
"I
wanted to call and acknowledge this day." Followed by silence on the
line. And then me, speaking into the nothingness yet again. "We don't
need to say anything else, I just wanted to acknowldge that this day is
this day."
"Yes," he said. And that was it.
All that was left was to give that ubiquitous acknowledgment to myself.
And
so I ordered myself two dozen flame-colored long-stemmed roses. I chose
not to get the lavendar and aubergine bouquet so startlingly close to
the one I carried down the aisle and I was immediately drawn to. No, I
chose the ones that will be bright and fiery and a big ball of sun in
the middle of the room.
On the card I wrote what my therapist reminds me every three weeks:
Jessica,
Forgive. Release.
And then I added a line from a song that's been playing in the background of all this talking:
Finally, I signed it unapologetically, from myself.
Jessica.
To me, from me, it feels done now. No need to be down or depressed, just to say, "Today is October 12th."
Reader Comments (8)
Your heart is fierce! And today is October 12, 2008 and I thank you for sharing this with us.