In 2008, a Hawaiian wave sucked my trinity ring right off my finger. I’d had that ring since I was 12, and though other rings came and went, I’d held on to that ring for 14 years. In vain, I searched through the surf, digging beneath the sand. Later, my friends jumped off a 25 foot rock. One came out with a bloody face. I comforted myself with the old Chinese superstition — that when you lose a small item of worth, the Universe has bargained for you. Something larger has been spared.
In 2010, a watch I’d been given in 2003 stopped for something like the 6th time since I’d owned it. Unlike the past instances, I did not take it in for repair. I took the watch off and placed it in a drawer. My skin was smooth and white underneath. For days I circled my wrist with my fingers, feeling for its nakedness. I could not get used to looking at my phone for the time. A friend asked me why I didn’t just throw the thing away. It was, she argued, representative of a past that I was trying to detach myself from. I couldn’t, I said. I was far too sentimental, despite everything. I would feel worse knowing that it lay in a landfill somewhere.
I am a sentimental person, and objects take on significance for me that make it hard for me to part with them. The routine of wearing the same articles everyday in itself makes these items precious to me — add on a particular symbolism, and the loss of these items are difficult indeed.
After I lost the ring, I didn’t try to replace it. I wore it on my left index finger, my thumb used to rolling it up and down my knuckle. To this day, I catch myself rubbing my index finger, searching for that roll. A fourteen year habit is hard to break. Nonetheless, I told myself that one day I would want to get married, and I would have to bare that finger eventually, to make way for a different type of ring. I mused that a man who cared about me, who paid attention, would replace it for my other finger.
I also mused, long before the watch went into the drawer, that a man who understood the significance of the watch would also seek to replace it.
I am a silly girl.
In the end, my father bought me a watch for Christmas, not knowing anything about the significance of a watch. That same Christmas, my sister bought me a replacement ring — too big for my fingers — but I was touched nonetheless. Yesterday my aunt presented me with two versions of the ring she had once given me, one too big for any of my fingers but my thumb, the other too small for any fingers but my pinky.
There is some sort of moral in here, about family and about items and irreplaceable history and about letting go. About the people you dream about loving you one day versus the people that already do. It is so easy to want to reserve a small part of you for later, to save a portion of yourself for somebody who you haven’t yet met, hoping that they will love you better than those already around you. But good people are already paying attention, already loving you, already making note of the small things that leave a big mark when they leave your world.
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I can apologize for the things I am, that I am still trying to change. But at the end, I can only be the best version of myself. Maybe I’m still far away from that, maybe I still have a ways to go. But I am a sincere person, I try to remain faithful to my conscience and my heart, to love the people I care for to the best of my ability, and I can only do the best I can do to fix the mistakes I have made. I forgive easily, and so I want to be forgiven. But it’s been hard for me to learn to forgive myself.
The worst thing I have ever done, by far, is not to love myself better.
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