Earring loss in terms of various stages is mentioned here. Girls can relate to it and some of the aspects of losing an ear ring are clearly defined in this article.
Stage 1- Realization
Have you ever heard that tingling sound that occurs as and when an ear ring falls down from your ear? It is uncertain and scary. After all who would like to experience earring loss and feel the emptiness. Something similar happened to me while I was in the office. Something fell off my hair’s breadth and I knew it was happening. It was one of those cheap shiny kind of faux diamond drop but I loved it right from the time I saw it on a closing sale of neighborhood shop.
Stage 2- Mourning
Research in 2017 state that American spend average 2.5 days per year looking for misplaced items & spending $2.7 billion a year replacing the items. Especially when these items are earrings, the sentimental loss is stricken. The loss of earrings is extremely special given the horrible truth of loneliness.
Nancy B Kennedy, a renowned author said, “You feel really bad because the other one is right there, shaming you for losing its mate.” She even created a Facebook page called My Lost Earring, inspired by the loss of one of her glass seagull earrings which were gifted to her by her husband.
Lauren Sagar, a multimedia artist in Manchester, England, had similar experiences after which she realized the numerous single earrings that she had gathered. Ms. Sagar recalled, “When I started asking, almost instantly, women and even some men understood what I was saying.” Ms. Sagar said, “It seems like a silly little thing but I found that people had a huge emotional attachment to their earrings. They were inherited from grandparents. Or signified an important period in someone’s life. Someone lost one on her honeymoon in Venice; it fell into a canal. That’s why they don’t get rid of the remaining ones. They were universal stories of love, loss and growing up.”
Stage 3. Denial
With the earring loss, I became a bit crazy. Just to find that tiny piece of jewelry, I crawled under office desks, dug into shoulder-deep through trash, searched the bathroom, checked with office security. In all, I moved every piece of furniture, checked out every piece of clothing and looked through the entire house so as to avoid the terrible earring loss. The earring didn’t appear and then I took to jewelers online who could create similar jewelry. As the country replicates hundreds of earrings annually, I thought of opting for the same but the heavy cost involved couldn’t justify the purchase.
So it was time to reaching back to the internet where a new range of Martha Stewart-esque ideas for earring repurposing and matching leftovers or getting extra piercings was discovered. I needed exactly the same ear lobes or nothing at all. So I discarded this idea and tried moving on.
Stage 4. Reaching Out
With new year came new hope. I posted a photo on Ms. Kennedy Earring Loss Page, named as My Lost Earring. I was warned that matches could take a lot of time and I should not be discouraged. Ms. Kennedy explained that site users had the authority to give away or sell one in a set they own, so as to help other users. She herself convinced jewelers to provide name-brand replacements. Her page was the home to heart wrenching stories, like that of a bereaved mother, who lost one earring in a pair her 15-year-old daughter wore before she died and found no match.
I also tried Reddit looking for buyers and sellers on the crafts website Etsy. Again I posted a photo captioned as, “Did anyone know a jeweler who could duplicate my earring?” Luckily a Redditor responded, noting that the earrings were rectangular, Swarovski zirconia. I at once ordered them. They were larger than mine, but gave me the satisfaction of the replacement that I never expected to find. Finally, my Earring Loss was to end.
Stage 5. Acceptance
Even after getting the replacement, I had lost my original pair of earrings. Further turmoil about the earring took me to Peter Walsh, an organizer & an author of a book called “Let It Go”. He asked me a simple question, “Why did the jewelry matter so much?” I took some time to think. I literally was sad when the store I bought them from were closed. It was among the best places in New York City I’d loved browsing in earlier days, bookstores, art stores, home design stores, all closed now. The transition has made me sad.
Further Mr. Walsh asked, “Then how much is about the earring and how much about something bigger?”
To which I answered, “The passing of time. The shift we’re going through. In some ways, the earrings represent that. Maybe you won’t entirely get over that grief.”
Hearing my answer, he reminded me, “You still have an earring. Why love it less because its form has changed? When you think of it, you’re thinking about a negative. Make it a positive. Pin it on your blouse. Frame it. Frame your five best single earrings.”
It was definitely a new concept for me, but why not try the same. I’ve followed Mr. Walsh’s advice and taken out my zirconia singleton and its pals out of a drawer, with a plan to bring them together in a necklace.
In the meantime, my Etsy earrings were delivered from London. For the first time when I wore them to the office, a cashier in the cafeteria looked up and exclaimed, “I love them!” And it felt like a small bliss.