It sits at my throat, where the words come out. It is a talisman, a reminder, a symbol (that I would burn into my skin if I could, if I had the guts for it), my scarlet letter.
How it can be all of those things, and beautiful, and belong to me is incredible.
It almost makes me feel bad, the cost of it, both ways. It came with a huge struggle, a decision that every so often I still wonder about, but don't regret. That's not what this is about. What's done is done.
Instead, let's say the years had gone by and the memories were fading and I had reached a dead part of my life, in which I had burned off all that I could and stood back looking at the charred remains of my life (it was the second time; the first being connected to the thing that woke me up, that made me alive and the diamond I wear at the base of my neck).
The paper was gone, all gone. The trinkets, the things, they disappeared to taste and time. The day to day stuff was gone in a poof, almost like when you push a pin into a very full balloon it doesn't deflate slowly, it pops with a surprise from the pressure. The last thing left was a white box with a cheesy satin-esque fabric (despite its highbrow upbringings, it had some issues with classiness). It lasted three or four moves, it sat in the same spot after each move, temporarily in a box, then it resumed its spot in the lower left hand of my topmost dresser drawer. Every time I opened the drawer, I saw it, and pulled it close to me and then pushed it away.
I had an idea, to take the diamond out.
At first, it was suggested that I get another to match it and make earrings. Even though part of me flushed a little at the idea of my wearing diamonds atop posts in my ears (to be poor, really really poor, there are certain things you imagine you'll never see and that is one of mine), so I demurred, besides, I didn't want to buy another diamond. I wanted to make the one I had something else, was all.
After some pondering, it was newly suggested that it could be flanked by a red gold circle and the thinnest and most delicate of red gold chains and meet at the nape of my neck in a clasp. Initially it seemed ironic that I could adore something that was so not me, and be such an obvious symbol of being chained, which is exactly what I could not stomach of it in the first place. It was almost so repulsive that I hated it for a time. I instantly hated it. Any chain on my neck shouldn't be delicate, I insisted, and it made the diamond look too big.
The diamond, it amuses me. When I met it for the first time, inside the ring, it seemed so small. It was, in comparison to what usually lands on the left hand ring finger. And yet, the more I got used to it, I realized it was perfect. It suited me just fine. I didn't want to be like anyone else with a giant rock, I could go for a tiny rock and be satisfied. Even now that it has belonged to me (before it was just a thing I wore) it seems to be what I would have chosen all along, despite the charred ruins of my life.
Because it wasn't accepting the size that turned me into won me over, even though that seems likely, it was another thing that emerged in changing it to something else, a surprising thing; because I was informed, I was chided, that the diamond had been chipped somehow, during the years it rested on my finger, amid the trials and tribulations of the cafe, but it could've happened anywhere knowing me (it would be gorgeous if it happened on a keyboard while I was typing frantically away, to him especially, but any of that, really). And then it belonged to me and I belonged to it.
Well before then, they had gifted me the red gold earrings I wear everyday. A similar reaction occurred, and one might step back and look into a mirror of mirrors and see that inside each decision I make from hate, I have always honored more purely than that made from love. I learned I secretly love all that I abhor. The day that I am able to love without limits, to love without justification, to love without reasons, I will have found transcendence.
With the earrings, the necklace is whole. It makes sense with them. Strange, when I received them, that was the last time I saw him, I think, or what I remember. More importantly, it was a point in my life when the old and new met and clashed, and I saw the truth of things, and I grew up with a strange realization, despite who I had been and where I came from, I could wear pretty things, I could be beautiful, and I could be happy.
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