silver or gold

a tale of acceptance/choosing my jewelry preferences

Young women—brightly entering their late teens to early 20s, on the cusp of adulthood with the eternal promise of finding oneself—must make a decision that will carry them throughout their lives. They will, one ordinary day, choose whether they will wear silver or gold. I don’t know anyone who has switched halfway through their lives, much less someone who doesn’t have a preference passed down from a much, much younger version of themselves. We choose, semper immortalis, to be enshrined in one or the other.

Mine was silver.

But I, believe it or not, stepped off course.

In a series of events that ended in a boy down on one knee, I ended up with a brilliant, but, 14 karat gold ring on my right hand. Admittedly, I had asked for it. I dreamt of it. I prayed for it. I quite literally picked it out. All of it—the baguette diamonds, the starburst shape, the gold, the gold, the gold. The betrayal of myself was me.

Practically overnight I stopped wearing the .925 that had catalogued most of my life at that time. The wishbone ring, bent awkwardly out of shape from constant and reckless wear. The initial necklace, a stylized A in Helvetica. I turned my fingers green from thinly-plated rings and purchased hoop earrings that irritated my sensitive earlobes from nickel underneath the facade. My body was, quite literally, rejecting the change. Years of adornment one way, and one choice upended it.

And so was my life, the day my fiancée and partner of 5ish years, called to end our relationship. I kept the ring, against my better judgement. As a testament to my willpower, I still wore it. I felt it was my god-given right to. It was my trophy to all the pain and suffering and injustice dealt upon me. And it was a piece of jewelry! One that could barely pass as an engagement ring, at least not obviously. I felt as if I could rewrite the history. There was no sentiment attached to it, not really.

Right?

The inanimate laced with nothing but intimacy, but, but, but.

I likely wore it for a year afterward. Justifying the action to anyone who felt bold enough to ask, I felt comfort in the anti-conformance. But, like anything that loses meaning, it soon became shelved away—tucked between the memorabilia of thrift store discoveries and gift shop souvenirs. Between then, I lived. I wrote new stories, edited and deleted versions I didn’t like. I became unrecognizable from the person who rushed to get married at 22.

The shift to gold, however, was still hammered into me. The return back to myself harder than I anticipated. In one last-ditch effort—a sardonic push from the universe—my final showing of that ring ended with me and my roommate cutting it off my poor swollen finger with fencing pliers. Sayonara.

It seems I could only break my curse by nearly-lost extremity.

It’s hyperbole, but it’s nearly impossible to not see the threaded lines between a relationship that had a crumbling foundation and a seemingly innocuous, but deliberate resolve to go against something that is often heralded as fundamentally “you.” For a good portion of our relationship, I was pushing down the person I wanted—needed—to be, until I couldn’t anymore. And I guess, neither could he.

The irony is not lost on me that gold is known for it’s high malleability. The capacity to shift and shape to what’s needed, to fit the part at nearly every whim. What surprises me more: Silver is too. Most jewelry, regardless of their type of metal, is combined with an alloy (usually copper) to strengthen the material. There’s, almost always, a third component.

In my quest to better understand what went wrong nearly three years ago now, I come back to this bedrock. The third. If we’re talking semantics, silver is far more likely to be true to itself, at a whopping 92.5% for sterling objects. Gold rings, on the other hand, cannot take the wear and tear of being entirely gold. A 24-karat-whatever is only 58.3% pure, genuine, certified gold. I’ve never thought to put numbers to how watered down I had become in my relationship, but 58.3% sounds about right.

Recognizable enough, but not exactly whole.

The thing about breakups? They teach you, sure, but they also unlatch the universe of possibilities. Certainty, be gone. All you really have left is that bedrock—that stronghold—that damned third—the very thing that binds the essence that is you, together. Maybe that’s more important than silver, than gold.

I’d be lying if I said I was settled on which is right at my core. If we ask the world of unfeeling color analyses, my Brazilian heritage and summered-tan will forever prefer the golden glint. Despite the baggage sounding it, I still wear gold, and am unlikely to rid myself of it. Silver, however, will always carry that familiar nostalgia, comfort, the feeling of returning from home after being gone for so long.

Perhaps I, like those god-forsaken ores, have melded into something else entirely. If there’s anything I believe wholeheartedly, is that I am an amalgamation of all the love I’ve given and received. The continuous learning and unlearning, growing and changing, melting down of finite pieces into one whole have made me into the person I am—and one I’m proud of.

Still, a few weekends ago, while roaming around my quaint college town’s fall festival, I decided to splurge on something new. A two banded adjustable ring, hand-soldered, all of my own choosing.

You want to guess the metal?

Silver.

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