Despite the fact that my year was devoid of any formal writing, I did do something that was a little bit more private, but still captured a day-to-day point of view. After my wedding, I began to travel at least once a month and I wanted to keep my brand-new marriage blossoming while I was away. At first, I bought cards for my husband, left them in places he’d find them while moving about his routine. I left love notes under his pillow, on the kitchen table, anywhere I could discretely place them before calling myself an Uber at 5AM. Cards started to get expensive and build clutter, though, so I moved to sticky-notes. I placed funny one-liners where I’d usually insert my usual commentary: “Cereal is not dinner. Make yourself something substantial,” above the stove and “Good morning handsome,” on the bathroom mirror.

Yet I wanted something more meaningful than little yellow paper cutouts scattered around my house. Although humorous, they didn’t allow me to put my feelings on paper- I wanted to have something that my husband could read through more than once, if tinges of loneliness struck. So I bought a journal and started writing him a page or two before each work trip.

As time passed, the journal evolved in a special way. One night I was frustrated and couldn’t organize my thoughts in a manner that made sense to my husband. I asked for some quiet time, and sat in the other room with a pen and paper on my lap. I wrote six pages, played out the pros and cons of my argument until I was no longer angry. My husband read the prompt later and we talked through the issue, calmly and rationally. The journal dissipated a “first year fight” before it began.

I then started documenting memories, plugged in little details of our weekends together, remarked on his delicious meals, thanked him for making my coffee in the morning. It was my way of bringing life to our routine.

We had family living with us over the summer and alone time was scarce. It was amazing then, to do dinners with a crowd and then retreat to write the things I couldn’t say out loud in my trusted journal. When our godson was running around our kitchen playing with his toys, my little book sat inconspicuously in our mail organizer, keeping secrets about my own hopes and fears regarding our future children. I’d write, my husband would read, sometimes we’d talk about the topics, and other times, we would let the sentences stay written.

Although I have started blogging again, I do not want the journal to be forgotten about. It allowed me connect to my husband in a special way through our first year of marriage, and now we can look back and revel in our highs and lows. I want to continue to document where we go, how far we’ve come, in a way that is not exposed to the world but solely to each other.

A new year is right around the corner, and this morning, I am turning to a fresh page…