I no longer wear jewelry, but I used to wear a variety of
pendants, a
bracelet, and a couple of
rings. Over the years, many pieces have been lost or became unwearable.
The
bracelet, which was a
coil of silver, was the first to go. It was a gift from my best friend in college. I still have it and it means a lot to me, but my wrists are no longer as skinny as they used to be, and I now find it uncomfortably tight to wear.
Here's a list of
pendants I own or owned (all were
silver, except for the stag):
- a pentacle: lost somewhere in Virginia
- a replacement pentacle: I still have it but never liked it as much as the first one, and never wore it very often.
- an ankh, which I like but was never especially important to me, so I didn't wear it often. I still have it.
- an "Om": This was my favorite and the one I worse most often, almost every day. I lost it a few years ago--I have no idea when or where. I assumed I had just misplaced it and it would turn up eventually, probably when I was cleaning, but it never did.
- a crescent: This one is my second favorite. I always got compliments on it, and men seemed to notice me more when I wore it. I still have it.
- a stag: Celtic Stag Pendent - Round (I think maybe next summer I'll start wearing this one again.)
I stopped wearing my pendants not long after I stopped wearing my rings (see below) because in spite of having worn them for several years, the silver chains began to irritate the skin around my neck.
I had two
silver rings:
- The one I wore on my right hand had a pink triangle within a black circle. I liked it, but it was nothing particularly special. I forget why i stopped wearing it.
- The one I wore on my left hand was a pentacle. This is the only piece of jewelry I have ever owned that I never took off, even when sleeping or showering. The reason I stopped wearing it is described below.
One night in...February? March? 2006, I woke up in the middle of the night with this terrible pain shooting up my arm. This pain made the ring uncomfortable to wear, so I took it off. I didn't initially think the ring was the cause of the pain, but over the next few nights the same thing kept happening, and then my arm started to hurt in the daytime, too. Eventually I noticed that my arm only hurt when I was wearing the ring--not immediately after putting it on, but definitely if I wore the ring all day, and sometimes within a few hours. So, I stopped wearing the ring for a while. Whenever I tried to start wearing it again, the pain came back.
In April 2006 I was at a conference in Arizona. One night at dinner with my colleagues, one of them asked why I was no longer wearing the pentacle ring. I told her about the pain and she laughed and joked that the Goddess had rejected me. The thing is, I think that might be exactly what happened. Within a few months, I lost my libido (which I've written about elsewhere on this forum). Within a year I started to get depressed (and have been depressed ever since). Concurrently with the loss of libido and the development of depression, over a period of several months, I gradually lost any sense of a spiritual dimension to existence and any awareness of the Divine. I became an atheist, not because of a rationally achieved conclusion that God doesn't exist, but because my connection (if there ever was one) was broken, my perceptions changed, and I simply stopped believing.
I thought my pentacle ring was in my jewelry box, but I just looked for it and it's not there. I have no idea where it could be, but I find it rather curious/interesting/disturbing that it has disappeared.
)
