Tonight, I sit on a balcony in Berlin. The air is warm, the tree-lined view peaceful and the buzz from the street floats all around me. This is where I now live. This is my new life.

I find it hard to believe that a year ago to the day I was moving out of my flat, driving home to my parents to hand over my car keys, and head off on my summer adventures. Headed to Greece and to all that followed.

A year on, I live here.

16 years ago, to the day, I met my husband. Or rather, I already knew him, but we finally got together. This was always our anniversary. This day in June. And while we were married for a few years, also in June, this date was celebrated more years than our wedding anniversary. This date was also the day before his parents wedding anniversary. This date has always been important.

Two weeks ago, I received a letter that I had been expecting and dreading. Finally, our divorce was being processed. There was a date for the court hearing. That date was, and is, tomorrow.

This date remains important. So, to mark the last day of my married life, and to try to accept that this final push to get my new life over the line has finally arrived, I have decided to honour this day.

The opening of that letter was like a dagger to the chest. So many repressed emotions came to the surface, tearing at me, consuming me in a grief that I had not felt previously. I felt bereft and so confused, that three years on I could still elicit such strong emotions to something that had become the new normal. And remember, I left him, so why did I feel so sad? Because it is sad. It is loss. It is pain. It is all the things that go with the human experience of loving and losing someone, even if you chose to lose them. As the days passed and I got used to the fact that I was days away from becoming unmarried, I realised that much like we had marked the way into marriage with our wedding, I needed to mark the way out of it too.

When we first ever discussed getting married, before we were even engaged, we spoke about marrying in the Italian town where we eventually did get married. Only we spoke about Church. He was for it, I was against it. It was a really big sticking point, mainly because I didn’t consider him to be religious and neither did he, yet he felt marrying in a church important. Years later when we were actually engaged, the idea of church never returned and we married in a castle, metres away. It also poured it down that day. A sign perhaps, although in Italy, the saying goes Wet Bride, Lucky Bride. Perhaps.

Marking the day of getting unmarried has become my way of coping with the finality of divorce and the end of my marriage.

I booked the day off work and asked myself what I needed. What felt like the right way to spend it? I could only come up with one answer and it completely confused me. I wanted to go to church. I wanted to go the Dom. The most sacred site in Berlin. Not because I have found God, as religion knows him. I have found my God in the shape of a bigger power that I trust and have handed my life over to, but he or she is not the father of Jesus. Church though, came to me, because I wanted to be in a quiet, sacred space. This date is a solemn and serious one. It deserves to be spent in a fitting place, and for me that place is church. I also feel oddly compelled to honour my husband all those years ago and acknowledge him in his calling to celebrate marriage in church, be it the beginning or end.

So, tomorrow morning at 11am, when our names are read out in a court room full of strangers who know nothing about our story, I shall be honouring it. Sat on a pew in church. Recognising that we shared a beautiful time together. That our love for each other, may have taken on a different form, but it remains. That we were married. That we entered into a lifelong bond, but one that broke. I will honour him and all that he is. I will honour myself and all that I am. I will honour the home we shared and the cats we cared for. I will honour our families who love us both. I will honour the friends who came to Italy to see us marry. Those who are no longer in my life and those who still are. I will honour all the years we spent together. And I will honour that we were married, and that we no longer are.

And then I will get up and leave that church. I will walk down the aisle, unaccompanied. This time there will be no wedding party to receive me. No one to throw confetti. No one will take my photo. No one will hug me. There will be no kisses. No tender moments.

But there will be love. And there will be celebration. For in honouring we celebrate. And I plan to celebrate that I was once married. I will have got unmarried and it was time.  I will go find a bar and order myself a glass of prosecco and raise a toast. I may no longer be a bride or wife, but I am a strong woman who has started over and is making a life for herself here, in a new city. And that is worth honouring and celebrating today, on this most special of days: the first day of my unmarried life.