The months leading up to Casey and Jane's separation were fraught with more negative emotions than they had ever experienced together combined. There were pleas, offers for compromise, and Casey's daily begging with Jane to try to make things work. And there were questions... so many questions. Jane had been mulling over her discontent the previous spring and summer, the inner turmoil and battle within herself raging silently as she worked things out in her own head. She loved Casey, and cared for him as she always had. But she was not in love with him. The life she thought she could lead when she agreed to be his wife was quickly dissipating before her eyes, the life she had sworn to herself that would be enough.
As Jane had said "I do" so many years ago, she knew that she was entering a commitment that was sacred, and she took her vows seriously. In her mind, she fully believed that a marriage could survive without her being in love with the man she took as her husband. He loved her, she knew and could feel that he was absolutely in love with her. That alone is what she felt would sustain them, and if they were fortunate enough to have a family, that's all she would need. She decided the day he proposed, that without doubt, it was safer to keep the love of her family than risk losing them by loving who she actually wanted. After all, family was permanent. Love could leave her at any time with nothing but a broken heart, but her parents and her brothers-they were there for life.
A long as I pretend to be who they want me to be, she thought. Jane did not fool herself into believing that her family's Catholic faith was a matter of convenience, an accessory to be used or abandoned at whim. It was deep-seated, rooted, and engrained in their identities as people. Their morals, values, and ethics all hinged on the Good Book and the tenants of Catholicism that were drilled into their fresh little minds at an early age. Faith came without questioning the alternative; it came with questions, for sure, but never a doubt that it would be absent from their lives. So many antiquated practices and teachings were wrestled with in Jane's mind after every Sunday mass, and were never really settled or dismissed, but continued to roll around in her mind like a loose pinball arbitrarily pinging from one obstacle to the next. Never settling, never finding their way back home.
The summer before Jane moved away from Casey, an awakening of sorts began to take place within her. This wasn't an epiphany or sudden enlightenment that one associates with such a revelation, as Jane had unequivocally discovered in her adult life that light bulbs don't actually go off over one's head at such an awareness. Life was nothing like she imagined, like nothing she saw her friends and family live, and thankfully, not always like what her career exposed her to. Life was sometimes beautiful and poignant, with moments of genuine love and affection interspersed with everyday monotony. The flip side of the coin is that life can be brutal, heartbreaking, and sad, with longer moments of loneliness enveloping those everyday mundane motions. For years, it seemed Jane frequently lost to the fates' flip of that coin, enduring trauma, loss, and tragedy more often than not, and succumbing to hidden loneliness behind her happy facade. The years she put into her marriage and the oath to herself to put other's feelings before her own saw years of hard work held fast by an odd, contrasting dedication to be something she wasn't. She vowed to herself to put her wants aside forever... or as long as forever could seem to her, and assuredly for as long as Casey wanted her as his wife. When Luke was born, this commitment became easier. Being a mother seemed to soothe Jane's dissatisfaction with settling, and she had to put very little effort into mothering. She wanted children so badly, for so long, and the reality of having her own child that needed her checked all her boxes of life's desires, for the moment. Olivia came along soon after, and life actually felt good. Jane thrived as a mother to her small children, feeling needed and loved by these two tiny people who depended on her to sustain their lives. She felt as though her life finally had purpose. The events of her past that she longed to forget became blurry, barely-there and easier to dismiss than before motherhood. She simply didn't have time to focus on herself, when there were diapers to be changed, kids to be fed, bathed, and put to bed. How could she think of the memories that haunted her when there were precious, chubby-cheeked angels telling her that they loved her, calling her "Mommy"? They were the antidote to the venom life had dispensed to Jane Rizzoli, the fair trade for a life resigned to not being in love.