musings on cursed jewelry

 I've never been the kind of woman to ask for jewelry. 

I wear a ring that my mom bought me when I was 16 in Norway, a sterling silver replica of a Viking Queen's ring pulled out of a grave. It's seemed to have grown to my finger. My mom has the matching one. My wedding ring was 40 dollars from Costco, and I bought it for myself. My engagement ring was a divorce ring bought by a man who used to beat the shit out of the only family member on my partner's side that I ever loved. It's never fit me so I don't wear it. I don't tend to like rings. I break firewood with my hands and scramble over fences. Rings get snagged and rip. I grew up in a family where the bills were paid with manual labor. I remember the first wedding ring of my landscaper father hooked up on some wired root ball, the way it almost ripped his finger off and the look of his dark red blood forking down his finger from the rent in the gold. His second ring, he gave to a beaver walking down the center of a moonlight river. He still has his third. You don't buy nice rings for such a man. I'm my father's child. I'm more likely to be walking down a river in the middle of the night than to be given a little banded nest of diamonds that cost more than the nicest car I've ever owned.

I asked for a ring this year - it felt so scary to do, even dropping the hint. It wasn't the kind of fancy ring that one would spend a paycheck on, but I liked it: a blood milk moon stone in a pretty setting. Of course, it was cursed, and of course, I don't have or deserve it now in the hellscape alternative universe nightmare that's become my life. 

I've thought of that often in the last few weeks - not the ungifted ring itself, but the sense of absence. Maybe I would be a better kind of woman if I wanted those kinds of trappings, or if wanting them, I asked for them, or being desired, was in a situation to receive them. In stronger moments, I've thought about buying it for myself, my own meager moonstone ring. I could buy it and pretend someone who loved me wildly and thought I was priceless and didn't hate me had bought it for me. Or maybe it would be better to imagine it was something I had gotten myself: a strong statement of my own self-possession, the message "I am worthy" despite what I feel instead. In a real way, I don't even have the 200 bucks the stupid ring would cost, so it doesn't matter, but I think of it.

I had an anxiety fidget ring with a wired stone I'd bought for 10 bucks in a witch shop in Occoquan, but I literally ripped the stone out of the holding flicking it too hard the last few months. I think I'll unwind all the wire and bury it in my yard.