I am not a big wearer of jewelry. What I wear is simple and has meaning. When I was younger, I changed out my earring often for fun, dangly earrings a lot. I actually have 5 holes collectively in my ears. I pierced 3 of the holes myself as a tortured teen with a stitching needle, thread and an ice cube. I am sure I was doing it to be cool. Since I have had my baby, I do not think I have ever wore any earrings in my second or third holes of my ears. I am one of those lucky people who can never put in earrings and the piercing always stays open.
When I was admitted to the hospital in the fall, I took out the small, diamond studs I had been wearing daily for years and have not put them back in. I had taken to wearing them when I was an inpatient nurse, getting tangled up with my stethoscope and hair on my dangly earrings. When I waitressed, we could not have earrings larger than a quarter. Since we had to wear our hair pulled back, I did find wearing “fun” earrings helped somehow. I felt like it gave me some sort of a personality. In the hospital, despite wearing these earrings day in and day out for years, I did not want to be responsible for these tiny precious earrings. I was afraid of the unknown. I was afraid I would lose one and never be able to forgive myself for it.
I kept on my rings when I was admitted to the hospital. I wear two. One is my wedding band/engagement ring. They are sautered together. The other is a ring I bought for myself to celebrate putting myself through nursing school. I used to make weekly payments on it at the jewelry store and try it on. They are like my safety net. I idly play with them and spin them around my fingers when I am nervous. I pull them off and on. As my weight has gone down, my engagement ring has become increasingly too large for me. One morning I woke up, and it was missing off my finger. I panicked. I found it under the bed, where I can only assume the cat had batted it.
The garnet ring signified to me a great struggle and what I had overcome. It is made to be antique looking, surrounded by small diamond flecks. When I put it on layaway, I didn’t have enough money for the layaway but they let me do it anyway I promised to come in and pay on it weekly. I had never been so drawn to a piece of jewelry. I don’t know what it was about it that I loved so much. It seemed a simple statement of my success of becoming a nurse. Looking back on it, though I did not know it then, it is of a similar look to the pins your receive at your pining.
I worked so hard to make it through nursing school. I would go days with little or no sleep, working nearly every hour around the clock to go to school all week. I would do homework while my kid was at the gym or practice or sleeping. While I waited at the bus stop, I would have homework out. If I sent them to the after school program, I would do homework then. I was lucky enough the town we lived in had received a grant so I didn’t have to pay for the after school care. It was such a big help. Not one that I don’t look back on and still give thanks for. I had friends that I could drop them with at ungodly hours when I had clinical, or my mother would spend the night with me.
While I was in nursing school, (RN)my grandmother died. It was a huge blow to me. She had a steady decline in her health over 10 months leading up to her death. She was a stoic woman, not one to complain or ask for help. She didn’t understand medical lingo. I didn’t give her options about me going to appointments with her. Everytime she was in the hospital I held vigil. I would barely leave her side. She didn’t understand what was going on, she would get argue that she was fine enough to go home and at other times get combative not being in a normal environment.
When she was dying, I was able to get her home on hospice. She had been asking for her dog repeatedly in the hospital. Once she got home, she uttered a few non sensical words, went to sleep and never really woke up again. My family was there, but I was the one tending to her. They were scared. I was scared too, but she wasn’t herself anymore. She needed to go and be with my grandfather. I wasn’t scared of her dying, I was just scared of life without her. She was so important to me. Death is part of life. She died a day later in my arms.
I technically failed out of nursing school based on an attendance technicality. I had missed a week of school while my grandmother had been in the hospital. I didn’t miss my clinicals. I had it backwards. I could have missed clinicals and made them up(for a fee) but missing class wasn’t ok. It didn’t matter there had been a death in my family. Had I personally been ill and had a note, my absences would have been excused.
I appealed the failure and won. I had to retake the final for that class. No matter the grade I received, I could only pass with the lowest passing grade. I didn’t care. It was still passing. I would be able to graduate. I also got the school to change their bereavement policy. It was curious to me that we were learning to take care of others; learning about death and dying in the humblest ways, yet when we experienced it firsthand, it was held against us.
My engagement and my wedding ring. I can’t part with them. I don’t know how to. My husband immediately took his off, I think the week he threw me out of the house, if memory serves me right. My eyes fill up with tears just thinking about taking them off. I have tried for short periods of time to take them off and it makes me anxious. They have become a part of me, somewhere in me, how I identify who I am. I never thought that I did. My engagement ring is more beautiful than anything I could have ever imagined. My husband had it made, based it off the ring I wear. There is a delicate diamond inlay in the back of it, that I loving call the mullet. Once we were married and I got my wedding band, it turned out I was wrecking the engagement ring my spinning it on my finger, over the wedding band. That is why they are sautered together.
We were just starting our life together in so many ways. In so many ways, we had become an old married couple. For the latter, I think he resented me. Having a combined family together is no small feat. Having kids that all love each other is something else entirely. I know that’s something he doesn’t and won’t ever appreciate. I’ve heard horror stories or combined families where the kids hate each other and don’t get along.
I always loved his kids. Not as much as I love him. They filled a void in my life I didn’t know I had. They helped me feel whole. They gave me that family I had been looking for my whole life. The one I didn’t quite know I was missing. He gave that to me through them. They have a mother though. I’m not their mother. I respected that, perhaps overly so, because of my own personal issues. I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes at any point with them.
I felt like I could talk to my husband about concerns with the kids; all of them. It turned out he just harbored resentment toward me about things I said over the years. I would play bad cop during instances at home so he wouldn’t have to with them because I knew he couldn’t. With my own child even, who I have at best, a difficult relationship with, he was, and is still, the savior. I thought he was my safe space. I should have kept my mouth shut. He could say whatever he wanted at any point about any of them. I don’t even remember things he said. I know he said bad things about them. They’ve done bad things. Mine in particular. What I remember though is me letting him be the good guy and me being the bad guy.
With those two rings, it means to me a life of commitment, with ups and downs. The bad and the good. My life was upended by him. I feel like Jay Gatsby just being smitten, blinded. Except I’m not living a life shrouded by my own lies and deceit. They’re clouded by his, leaving me to wonder how much of our life was real. Did he ever really love me? What was real? Was there a point?
There may have been no point to it for him. It may have been a cruel joke. For me, the kids, and our parents, it was real life. Those rings bonded us together. We became unlikely victims of a cruel joke of his mind games. Knowingly or unknowingly, he lured us in and captivated us in different ways. He held us at arms length while he continued his real, twisted life; all the while living his family life to everyone but him.
I’m not sure the depth of his disordered mind, but I am sure of the effect of it has had on me. He had wrecked my life. He has shattered my life. I may never be the same again. Those two rings are my life preservers, not letting me learn to swim in the ocean of life to shore. Until I can figure out how to get out of them, Im always going to feel like I’m drowning in these rings.
I decided I should get something significant of the kids for a replacement ring for my wedding rings. I asked my step-kids if that was ok before I even looked at rings. When I went into the jewelry store, I was sobbing before I even started. The owner helped me. I explained through my tears what I was looking for. At that point, I didn’t know. What I knew what, I was looking for something to replace my wedding rings when I was ready to take them off.
We looked through everything she had in the case. Mother’s rings didn’t quite seem right. They all seemed too gaudy, or the stones didn’t look right together. Everytime I took off my ring in the store I sobbed. I tried on at least a dozen rings. The owner was so patient and so kind. I felt foolish, but I knew it was something I had to do. I had to be ready for.
Getting just a ring for my kid didn’t seem right. Getting just any ring didn’t seem right. The bands seemed an ok fit for what I was looking for. Nothing seemed right at all because I don’t want to take off my rings, because I don’t want to lose my husband. It seems like I’m admitting some sort of horrible defeat. That I failed. That I did something wrong.
I questioned if it was something of a status symbol with my ring. What it all comes down is simple. I love my husband. Flawed as he is. I didn’t ask for any of this to happen. He hasn’t asked me what I want. He has made all the decisions of everything happening. I’ve had to just succumb to this is my life. That he has ruined. I’m not diluted. I’m aware what’s going on. I know he’s not coming back. There’s not a back to come to. He hasn’t talked to me about it. He just decided and what I should do with my life. So, I’m trying to plod on. I’m not doing a good job. Everyday without him is hell.
I bought three plain bands with the kids birthstones in each band. I sobbed the day I picked them up. The clerk looked so confused as she told me how beautiful the rings were. I drove around with them in the car for a few months. They are in my used armoire now. Still in the bag, wrapped up. I don’t know when the day will come when I will wear them. When it does though, they are ready and waiting for me. Which is what I want for him to be doing.
Never had a white picket fence 