Repurposing Your Pain
This time last year I had in my possession 3 wedding rings, 2 wedding dresses, 1 engagement ring and no significant other. Allow me to explain. The wedding ring I wear on the ring finger of my right hand is my Aunt D’s wedding ring that was given to her by my Great Uncle Teddy. More about this ring will be written in my memoir. The other two were the rings my ex-fiancé and I bought that had had our fingerprints engraved on the insides. Those were kept in their original ring boxes in an important place for about three years. At some point, after having the fingerprints seared out by a jeweler friend, I began wearing the wedding ring I had bought for him on my left thumb. I liked the aesthetic. However one day, I lost the ring and I wasn’t even mad about it because it was the least valuable ring to me, even though it was the only one I bought with my money and cost a good couple paychecks. Truly it held no sentimental value and I didn’t care to see it go.
Captured by Kalia Blake
My high school graduation dress was technically the first wedding dress I ever bought. It came from David Bridal and was an elegant dress. On a couple occasions, I dreamed of eloping and reusing the dress to spare expense. Then there was my gorgeous actual wedding dress that I said “Yes!” to in a whirl of excitement surrounded by my closest friends at J. Andrew Bridal – which I have since tried to sell. It’s presence, clad in a gigantic pink puffy bag, caused me acute distress to see for so long.
Captured by Kalia Blake, my J. Andrew’s wedding dress
My engagement ring is the one I have a complicated relationship with because I actually wore it on my hand as part of a promise that was broken. Every now and then I’ll take it out and wear it for a bit because it is so pretty and I love it, but if I’m not careful I can find myself becoming sentimental and hating the fact that it was given to me on a false pretext.
Last but not least: the wedding ring that was bought for me, that I never got to wear. Originally, I had attempted to sell both wedding bands that we had bought together. Unfortunately, I wasn’t offered more than $20 each for both of these UNWORN rings that were bought for over a thousand dollars! (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s a worse devaluing percentage than driving a car off a lot.) There was no way I was going to part with it for a mere $20 so I held onto it. For four years. Until I had the brilliant idea to turn it into something special. My industrial earring.
When the idea to repurpose it came to me, I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. The gold itself didn’t do anything offensive; it was the idea of holding onto a relic of a promise that was never fulfilled that was uncomfortable. It seemed to others and a bit to myself, that I was still holding out hope that I would one day reconcile with my ex and finally get to use the ring as it had been intended. Instead, I gave it to the same jeweler friend who melted it down and turned it into an industrial earring, complete with added pearls on the end.
Captured by Kalia Blake
Similarly, our pain, our hurt, also gets repurposed. Sometimes we hold onto it for a minute because we can’t bear to part with it. The downside to holding onto it is that open wounds have no chance in hell of healing, and are often accompanied by other unpleasant emotions like bitterness, anger and unforgiveness. In my opinion, that is an awful lot to carry and gets quite heavy. Other times, we want to part with it immediately but what we get in return for that isn’t always the best trade off. Forcing yourself not to feel an emotion isn’t a true parting, in fact, doing so increases the odds of a great, huge blow-up to happen later. (As evidenced in my life by trying to maintain a relationship with a man who broke off our engagement while I pretended that was fine with me, which led to my suicide attempt.) One of the things I was continually told when I was GOING THROUGH IT was that “God doesn’t waste our pain.” At the time, I can't lie, I didn’t really find much comfort in that. I kept wondering what good could come of it. Well it took a few years for me to finally find out.
Captured by Kalia Blake
In January, one of my instagram followers slid into my direct messages. She shared that she was having suicidal thoughts and asked for my prayers. After a couple weeks of talking, I found out that we shared some similarities in our heartbreak stories. With that experience, I was able to encourage her from the perspective of someone who has been through some of what she has gone through. If I could only help give hope to just one person by sharing what I went through, then it was worth it for me. I’d go through it again knowing what I know now.
I had a beautiful ring collecting dust that I turned into something useful to me. Something that could be used to adorn my ear and make it more beautiful. You know what other usefulness my pain brought me? Empathy for others. The ability to sense quiet distress at times. A heart for a gigantic group of people struggling with their mental health. A heart that desires to help those people by inspiring, encouraging and giving hope to them. The ways in which my heart has transformed has adorned me and made me more beautiful, despite the fact that it took a whole lot of ugliness to get here. And that’s the beauty of upcycling.
A hand selfie, my Aunt D’s wedding ring
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