June 22nd - The Wedding Ring in 2021 entries
- June 22, 2021, 12:36 p.m.
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- Public
Once I thought I loved someone enough to marry them. She was an expensive woman; she loved money and having a lot of it, but she did it on her own. The biggest obsession for her were trinkets and knick knacks and just random items you could buy in pawn shops. One night, drunk, we talked about the future - would we work as a couple? - would we start new lives, stop serving people for tips and move on to a new place and start new lives? Who needed a ceremony with family and friends? We had vices, addictions, what better way to keep the secret marriage than elope in Vegas where we could have a quick wedding, drink, gamble and admire pretty women all weekend?
We used to go antiquing and pawn shopping all over Wisconsin when we dated. It was something I’ve only ever done with my family and her. I knew that she wouldn’t want an expensive ring to start out, we were still planning on me bartending and her dancing, so she wouldn’t want to wear it at work. I figured she’d be all about getting a hand me down or a pawned ring just for the quirky sentimental story. Finding the ring was going to be easy, I thought - the perfect little odd pawn shop existed about 20 minutes from my parents home and when I went to visit them I stopped in. When I walked in that store it was like a scene out of a movie where you get the light that shines down from the sky and the chorus in the background. The ring was a gold band with three small diamonds, nothing fancy or expensive but I figured it’d do the job, and the size was perfect (luckily I brought another ring from her ring finger to size it) Fast forward, and its been told on here, but there was something in me that just wouldn’t let me go through with marrying Heather.
Flash forward to a couple weeks ago, I was looking through some shit that I hadn’t unpacked since moving over three months ago and I come across the notebook Heather left me full of notes, stories, hate letters - and the ring which was wound into the wire binding of the notebook. Surprised to find these is an understatement - I was convinced that I left them in an end table, with all the other notes, letters and souvenirs from other relationships, in my now totaled and scrapped car and that I wouldn’t ever see these relics from my past again.
I gotta say, after seeing them, I’ve been keeping the ring in plain sight on my coffee table - I’ve needed reminders of worse days on the streak of bad ones I’ve been having this June. I can’t even remember why I stored them away from the rest of my pandoras box of messy relationships but its twisted for sure, ‘cause there’s days where I have wished I could just call Heather up to come whisk me away into the night, and there’s been nights where I’m tragically thankful I am unable to run to her.
AnOrangeZebra ⋅ June 22, 2021
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