Psycho Emotional Drama
Today I lost an earring.
My parents gave me a pair of earrings for my birthday. Today was my first time wearing them. They are posts with rather large gemstones in them: rainbow topaz, set in white gold. (See, princessy, right?) They are beautiful and different. When you turn the gems, they sparkle with pink and purple and gold and green and turquoise lights.
I don’t buy stuff like this for myself. My parents seem to have decided that I need semi-good jewelry. (I think they feel sorry for us because we still have hand-me-down everything.) Anyway, their princess likes jewels, and so, periodically they give me nice pieces. And I love it.
I got home from the gym tonight and discovered that one of the earrings was missing from my ear. I retraced my steps, called the gym, even drove over there to look in the aerobics room for it. No earring.
Here’s the psycho part: I cried like a baby for having lost this earring. I sobbed. Something inside me snapped — something hooked into all my normally lidded feelings of worthlessness and pulled them all out into the open air. I felt like a child who had done something terribly wrong and disappointed my mom and dad. I berated myself for my irresponsibility, for being a loser, for not deserving to possess anything so nice. I thought, My parents gave it to me. How could I lose it already? What a fool I am. I don’t appreciate all the things people do for me and give to me. I don’t deserve any of it.
I went home again after checking at the gym and scoured my house. I found the earring a few minutes later. It was on the bed where Lucas and I had a tickle fight earlier this afternoon. See, I panicked when it was gone, and totally forgot we had played on the bed. I even found the earring back among the covers.
So, now it’s all better. Crisis averted. I don’t have to admit to my mom that I lost it. But wow — what a lot of emotional crap the experience dredged up from inside me. I still feel awful. Guilt sucks.
June 13, 2006 at 1:45 am
You just forgot to look in the place where you did your most important work today.
It happens.
June 13, 2006 at 3:52 am
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think things like that too sometimes. So, I guess you aren’t the only psycho… 😉
June 13, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Oh man! I would have cried too. I’m so glad you found it, because you *do* deserve to have things that make you feel like a princess. (The cherished kind, not the spoiled kind)
June 13, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Well, to carry the stereotype out to the end, I think if you were a princess (in that yucky way, not in the good way) you wouldn’t have been upset by losing such a beautiful thing. You would have expected someone to replace it without question. What I read here is how much value everything has to you, from a beautiful piece of jewelry to a clump of mud to a crayon drawing by your son. And how much you appreciate the generosity of your parents, who enjoy spoiling you.
Sometimes it’s war in our hearts and heads; sometimes our fear and self-loathing win. Sometimes I think it’s all about living to fight another day. Sometimes I think it’s what you have to go through to get to the peaceful parts of yourself.
Love you. And I’m glad you found it! I can’t wait to see them.
June 13, 2006 at 4:02 pm
When I thought I lost the pearls S gave me I freakin lost it. I couldn’t even tell her, I was rushing through the house like an epileptic raccoon. And the exact feelings you described were crushing, I was afraid. But then I found them, S had put them away a little differently than I would have and if I had asked her I would have found it much earlier but I was too scared and ashamed. It amazes me how quick I am to feel that I failed, and how willing the demons of self-loathing are to spring at me. If S had lost something we would look for it, I would be angry or think she failed but when it’s me it instantly means I suck.
It’s hard to be a person.
June 13, 2006 at 4:03 pm
that should read wouldn’t be angry or think she failed
June 13, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Thanks for the compassionate responses, everyone. I feel much better today! I just think it’s wild how wickedly I turned on myself when I thought the earring was lost forever.
I just called the gym to thank David, the nice worker who helped me look for my earring yesterday evening, treated me with compassion and didn’t laugh in my face while I cried, and sincerely wished me luck in finding it. He could have asked me what the hell I was thinking wearing a nice pair of earrings to a workout joint. He could have told me that the gym is not responsible for lost or stolen items and therefore it wasn’t his problem. But he didn’t. I called him to thank him for being so human and kind to me, a complete stranger, when I was feeling so low. I could hear him smiling on the other end of the line.