You'll often hear me say that I do not believe in marriage. I think monogamy itself is something a bit unnatural physiologically, and while I do believe in commitment, the idea of legally marrying someone seems confining to me. You don't need to be labeled a wife or husband to be able to love another person. The ceremony itself is a bit of a ownership right with papers being signed, legal officiating, and the ring exchange. Those rings have often seemed like a brand to me. It's an outward sign to the world that you are a possession, you belong to someone else. I hate that. I hate being trapped, and feeling like property makes me feel trapped. Until today. Today, I took our rings to Tiffany's to be cleaned. When I returned to pick them up, they removed the husband's ring from a small velvet pouch, but not mine. My heart began to beat a little bit faster as I waited for whatever they were about to tell me. It seems that when they were cleaning mine, one of the diamonds fell out and they would need to send it off to be repaired. The estimated return date is in 15 business days. I don't know what happened in the minute it took them to tell me this, but I began to feel a strange sensation of loss I couldn't quite recognize. Suddenly, the idea of going without this ring for so many days felt like an overwhelming burden.
This ring. This symbol of ownership. This ring I have looked at so many times, twisting it round and round my finger and thinking how much I'd like to not be property. In that instant I felt grief for something I claim never to have wanted in the first place. My eyes teared up, forcing me to look away as they asked for my address and told me that they could ship it to me or I could pick it up from them. My hand felt so incredibly empty and as I walked out of the store I began to feel almost shameful, as if I were impersonating someone I am not. How can a physical object come to signify not just a bond, but a life. without that ring I am not the same person. I miss its weight, it's sparkle, it's symbolic connection to a man I love more than any other person on Earth.
What is funny to me, is that many days I have taken off my ring while baking or cleaning and forgotten to put it back on. I have actually gone days without wearing my ring because I took it off and kept forgetting to put it back on my finger. I would remember suddenly as I drove away, or looked down at my own hand while paying for groceries, but would forget again once home and within steps of retrieving it. Today was hardly the first time I have not worn my ring, but the effect it had on me was completely foreign. Maybe it is because Jeff is currently in Iraq and the distance is so great that our rings are my only true physical connection to him. Or maybe my ring has become a physical extension of myself and when I found out that it was damaged I felt it as a physical blow. It hurt me and it saddened me.
When Jeff deployed to Iraq, he gave me his ring. This is partly for safekeeping and partly because there are so many things a ring can get caught on that it is unsafe. I have worn his ring on the middle finger of my right hand every day since he's been gone. Tonight I have his, but not mine and I feel unbalanced. I feel alone and wounded. What does this say about my cavalier attitude toward marriage? How can I still proclaim to prefer a mutual emotional commitment to a legal one, if the symbol of that legality is now so damned important to me?
Relationships are vulnerable and so much more fragile than we realize. Yes, love is strong, but sometimes it is not enough and yet we stay in a situation out of fear or habit. So while you may still be technically together, the loving relationship that brought you together is actually dead. In that case, it is not strength keeping you together, it is fear. Love can hurt. It can wound, it can be selfish, it can be cruel. Love is part of us and we are also capable of all of these things as well as the goodness we usually attribute to love. A ring that we wear to symbolize the strength of our love should not be vulnerable, because that means that we are also capable of weakness.
I have made some horrible decisions since being married. I certainly have said incredibly cruel things to my husband and I have put my needs ahead of his on more than one occasion. Yet, somehow, none of those things seemed to hit quite as close to home as suddenly not having that ring on my finger. I no longer have the comforting thought that once I return home I can simply slip it back on from wherever I forgot it. It is physically beyond my reach and in the hands of strangers. These people, whom I will never meet, are suddenly cradling the relationship I have not always been sure I wanted. I feel like our love is in their hands.
Rationally, I realize this is ridiculous and a bit hysterical and yet I still feel it. I have a choice to take off my ring. Every time I put on lotion or dye my hair I can decide to put myself first and remove that symbol. Each time I go out with friends while my husband is away, I could easily decide to ignore my commitment and go out without that symbol of ownership on my finger. We get to make that choice and while I do not got out without my ring, preferring instead to lambast our societal weaknesses and personal insecurities exhibited by legally binding our life with another, I know I could. Now, it's as if someone has taken that public symbol of our commitment away from me. Having it forcibly taken reminded me how lucky I am and how easily it could slip away should Jeff choose one day to stop putting up with me, or even worse, if something should happen to him.
My ring is a symbol of a choice I made. A choice to love a man with flaws and habits that may not please me. A choice to spend every day with another person. He is not perfect because he is a real person. I am lucky that I get to complain about what I see as a patriarchal ritual. I have friends and relatives who do not even get a chance to choose to be married. They are gay or living alone after the premature passing of their loved one. These couples do not have the chance to twist that ring around their finger and scoff at tradition and ritual.
There are days I miss being single, but I get to miss them rather than endure them. I don't know that I would make the same choice if we had the opportunity to do it over again. Perhaps, I would choose to simply commit emotionally and not legally or maybe I would live out my days playing the field. It does not matter. In this life, I choose marriage. That damn ring of mine is as much a part of my life as Jeff is and I want to keep them both close to me. Just as I would not one some stranger's hands fondling the husband, I don't want them on my ring either.
This is a silly and over-emotional response to something that is normal in the jewelry world, but I still feel it and that makes it valid. I have been too arrogant in my life, feeling invulnerable and selfish about some things. I assumed Jeff would never leave me, even when I probably deserved it, but I never stopped to consider what it might feel like if he was simply taken away. I felt that today in a small way and it scared me. I promised never to take him for granted and now I know I have. It's not diamonds that are forever, it's our ability to choose. Free will is the reason I am married. Not the Army and not society. I married a man I love because I wanted to. And maybe I wouldn't do it again, but I'll never be ashamed to be a wife or to wear that ring another day of my life, because the day I am is the day I'll know I don't deserve in the first place.
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