The Ring On My Right Hand

Some things end without becoming mistakes.

I have known what it feels like to be truly loved.

I think that is important to say, because sometimes we spend so much time talking about unhealthy relationships, heartbreak, and the people who hurt us that we forget to talk about the people who loved us well.

I had that once.

But it didn't come first.

Before that love, I spent eighteen years in a relationship that taught me a very different version of what love could look like. It was the relationship in which I raised my four children and built much of my adult life. When it ended in 2013, I had to begin figuring out who I was outside of it.

And then, later, my life showed me something completely different.

My second marriage taught me what it felt like to be loved well.

For nearly five years, I knew what it felt like to be adored. I could be completely myself. I felt wanted, accepted, beautiful, and safe in who I was. There was passion, friendship, laughter, travel, adventure, and a feeling that I had finally found the person I would spend the rest of my life with.

I didn't have to wonder whether I was loved.

I knew.

That marriage still ended.

And its ending broke my heart in a way I didn't know a heart could break.

For a long time, I couldn't understand how something that had contained so much love could possibly end. I thought losing that marriage meant losing the future I had finally believed was safe and secure.

Years later, I understand it differently.

Something can have been beautiful without being meant to last forever.

Something can end without becoming a mistake.

And someone can have loved you deeply without being the person who ultimately walks beside you for the rest of your life.

I don't need to destroy the memory of that marriage in order to move beyond it. I don't need to pretend the love wasn't real simply because the ending was painful.

Instead, I choose to keep what it taught me.

That is why there is a ring I intend to wear on my right hand.

I don't wear it because I am still waiting for that marriage to come back.

I'm not.

I don't wear it because I haven't moved on.

I wear it because I have.

It isn't a declaration that I am still married. It isn't me waiting for the past to return.

It is a reminder.

I have been loved deeply.

I know what that feels like.

I know what I deserve. And maybe most importantly, I know now that being loved well should never require me to stop being myself.

But knowing that hasn't made me immune to getting hurt again.

I wish life worked that way.

I wish once we learned a painful lesson, we simply graduated from it and never found ourselves standing anywhere near it again.

That hasn't been my experience.

Recently, I found myself in a relationship that brought old insecurities back into places I had spent years healing. I reacted in ways I wasn't proud of. I participated in conversations that became cruel and hurtful. I said things that didn't represent the woman I want to be. And I allowed another person's words to make me question things about myself I thought I had settled a long time ago.

When it ended, one of the hardest things I had to face wasn't losing the relationship.

It was looking at myself and thinking:

How did I get back here?

I had worked so hard on myself.

I knew better.

More than that, I had experienced better.

And yet there I was.

Maybe somebody reading this needs to hear what I eventually had to tell myself:

Growth does not mean you will never find yourself in an unhealthy situation again. Growth means you eventually recognize that you are there.

And then you choose what happens next.

I can apologize for the things I said that don't represent the woman I want to be without accepting responsibility for everything that happened.

I can acknowledge that another person was hurt without pretending I wasn't hurt too.

I can remember beautiful moments without using them as justification to remain somewhere that is costing me my peace.

And I can walk away without needing another person to agree with my reasons for leaving.

There was a time when I thought losing that marriage meant I had already experienced the greatest love my life would ever give me. I thought that chapter closing meant the best part of my story had closed with it.

I was wrong.

That ending eventually created room in my life for things I couldn't see at the time.

During those years, we traveled and enjoyed a life that, in many ways, was comfortable and full. Had that marriage continued exactly according to the future I once desperately wanted, I honestly don't know whether I ever would have stopped long enough to ask myself what dreams were still waiting for me.

One of them had been waiting since I was seventeen years old.

I became a funeral director.

It was something I had wanted for almost thirty years. And somehow, after an ending I once believed had taken away the future I was supposed to have, I finally went after a dream I had carried nearly my entire adult life.

That realization has stayed with me.

Because maybe losing one future didn't mean my life had gone wrong.

Maybe there were still parts of me I hadn't become yet.

Maybe there were dreams I still needed to chase.

And maybe something can have been wonderful and still not be where the rest of your life was supposed to happen.

That has taught me something else about endings:

Sometimes the future we are devastated to lose is making room for a future we haven't met yet.

I don't know what my romantic future looks like anymore.

Maybe someday I will fall deeply in love again.

Maybe I won't.

For the first time in my life, I don't feel an urgent need to answer that question.

Because being alone and being lonely are not the same thing.

And there is an enormous difference between saying, “I am destined to be alone,” and saying, “I will no longer sacrifice myself simply, so I don't have to be alone.”

If love comes into my life again, I want it to add to the woman I have become.

I want to laugh. I want passion. I want ridiculous chemistry. I want friendship and tenderness and someone who can't wait to tell me something at the end of the day.

I want to feel adored.

I know now that I am capable of having that kind of love because I have already experienced it.

But I also want peace.

I want to be able to speak without being afraid of what happens next.

I want vulnerability to remain vulnerability and never become ammunition.

I want two people who can hurt each other's feelings and still care more about understanding the hurt than winning the argument.

I want to remain myself.

And I know now that those things aren't asking too much.

I've experienced enough life to know that love isn't perfect. People aren't perfect. Relationships aren't perfect.

I certainly am not perfect.

But love should not require you to disappear.

So, I'll wear that ring on my right hand.

Not because I'm looking backward.

Because it reminds me how I want to move forward.

It reminds me that I have experienced great love, survived devastating loss, made mistakes, started over, accomplished dreams, gotten hurt again, and still found my way back to myself.

It doesn't represent a person I am waiting for.

It represents something I refuse to forget.

I know what it feels like to be loved well.

I don't know who will walk beside me next.

Maybe no one needs to for a while.

Because I've finally learned that peace isn't the empty space between relationships.

Sometimes peace is the thing you were looking for all along.

So, I'll wear the ring on my right hand, not as a promise to my past, but as a promise to myself:

I have been loved deeply.

I know what that feels like.

I know what I deserve.

And I will never again abandon myself just to keep someone else.

And if you are somewhere in your own life wondering whether you are asking for too much—to be loved, respected, heard, safe, and still completely yourself—I hope you remember this:

You are not asking for too much.

Don't abandon yourself trying to convince someone else to choose you.

Choose yourself, too.

Pinky Promise.