This is a place I can tell you – from the bottom of my heart – that I never, ever thought I’d be. I grew up with parents who were married, and still are. My friends’ parents – nearly all of them – were married, and still are. Kendrick’s parents too. Married. For life.
So even though divorce is apparently something that happens to half the couples out there (at least), I never thought it would happen to me. Because I never saw divorce as an option; not even close. No matter how bad things got – and from time to time, they did get there – I honestly couldn’t imagine ever pulling the trigger, so to speak. I imagined saying those words as the equivalent of setting off a bomb in the very center of our home: an unthinkable. A tragedy.
And then I did just that. Blew us to pieces.
I’ve been writing about what it’s like to go through a divorce more or less in real time ever since – despite the fact that it’s uncomfortable and scary and maybe even a bad idea, given my belief that I should never, ever write about something until I’ve come to peace with it in my own mind. And the reason I’ve been doing this is…well, first of all, because it turns out I’m categorically incapable of writing about anything else, when this huge thing is the thing that’s happening, but also because I think it’s important. I know it’s important, in fact.
I so hope it’s even a fraction as helpful to you as it is to me. Because to me, the fact that I can write about this – talk to you about this: it’s everything.
