I’m baaaack…
THE STORY
…This has been literally the longest absence I’ve had from the blog since I first started blogging six years ago. When I last posted two weeks ago I really thought I was in the right headspace to blog. However, I apparently wasn’t quite as stable, for lack of a better word, as I thought I was.
If you follow me on Instagram then you may already know that last week I lost my wedding ring; I went to put my rings on Monday and it wasn’t there with all of my other rings. That in and of itself would’ve done a mental number on me on a good day, but the loss of the ring coupled with the steaming hot mess I was already dealing with pushed me off the proverbial cliff. Oh, and the shower broke on the same day, so that was helpful.
I officially consider all of last week a complete and total loss. I was angry, I was sad down to my soul, I was absolutely and completely lost. I spent the entire week crying, raging and swearing. A lot of that was done by myself in the backyard because I was trying really hard to not take it out on everyone else. I knew that I’d lost it at home. All of my other rings including the enhancer band for the wedding ring were on the ring holder post on the shelf by the kitchen sink exactly where they belonged so that meant the ring was somewhere in or around the house. Every single waking moment was consumed by looking for the ring or obsessing over piecing together the last moments I could remember wearing it so that I could figure out where I was when I took it off.
Because of everything else that was happening, in my head, the lost ring became a metaphor for my life. FYI…I am not being dramatic here; theatrics are not my thing. This is simply how I really really felt. The way my brain (and my heart) saw it, I hadn’t just lost my wedding ring, I had well and truly lost my life as I had come to know it. It was far from perfect, but it was my life and it was gone.
And that damn lost wedding ring was that ambiguous reality made tangible. I absolutely had to find it. The crazy switch had been flipped in my head, and I wasn’t thinking straight. At that point I felt like if I didn’t find it everything would just implode and any hope that I had of finding my way back would vanish. Finding the ring was the light in the darkness; it felt to me like it was my only hope.
I quite literally tore my house apart. Tore. It. Apart. There is not a single appliance that wasn’t moved (by myself I might add…desperation apparently makes me a she-beast). Drawers were completely emptied, carpets were lifted, furniture was moved. I emptied the entire outside garbage dumpster piece by piece. I went through every single pile of dog poop by hand (wearing rubber gloves of course) every day for three days. All of this was to no avail…the ring seemed to have vanished.
Oftentimes when I have a seemingly unsolvable dilemma my brain is quietly working on it subconsciously and eventually one day I wake up and a light bulb goes off. Thursday morning when I woke up, I went to the kitchen got my coffee and reached into the cupboard above the shelf that I keep my rings on to get my allergy medication, just like I do every morning. Since I’m elfin-sized I can reach the medication, however I cannot see the actual bottom of the cupboard. If I need something that’s farther back in the cupboard I have to stand on a chair. I put the medication back and was standing there sipping my coffee when something told me to get on a chair and look in the cupboard.
There it was. My ring. Sitting in the cupboard right at the point where my line of vision was cut off if I wasn’t standing on something. It was like I was a five year old on Christmas morning. I was squealing and jumping up and down. I woke my daughter up with my ring shoved in her face screaming, “Look! Look what I found!” I texted my son, I danced around the kitchen.
Why was it there in that cupboard when every other ring that I own was on that damn ring holder? Why was that single ring in a place that I would’ve never for any reason normally put it? I seriously do not know. What I do know is this. Finding it meant that everything is going to be okay. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but it will be okay. Things may be different than they used to be, but they will be good again. Before losing the ring I wasn’t sure that anything would be alright ever again and now I know with certainty that just like everything else, I will get through this.
The universe works in mysterious ways and there are messages everywhere if we open our eyes and pay attention. I believe that the ring was my wake up call from the universe. It was the kick in the ass I needed to get me back on track. Had I not lost it I would still be numbly going through my days on autopilot pretending that I was fine while missing all of the moments that matter. Instead I am now appreciating the little things again, like having my rings to put on each day. My husband however thinks it was the universe telling me that I needed to clean behind all of the appliances…which I admit might have some validity…
THE OUTFIT
How freakin’ cute is this sweet little boho wrap dress that I found on Amazon? Summer dressing doesn’t get any easier than this. It comes in a ton of colors, but being me, I was immediately attracted to the shades of pink and cream in this one. It’s super lightweight so even when it does finally warm up (see, I’m optimistic that it’s going to warm up at some point) it will still be cool enough to wear. This is one of those dresses that can be worn on a super casual grocery run so that you still look good, but not over the top.
I styled it with my cream colored Freebird ankle boots, but it’s just as cute when worn with flat sandals. Dresses are always an iffy proposition for me since I’m small on the bottom and broader through the chest and shoulders than a girl my size would normally be. In light of that I sized up to a large, but I do think a medium would have fit a bit better. I didn’t exchange it because a) I’m lazy, and b) since it’s a wrap dress I was able to adjust it so the little bit of extra size didn’t matter.
Like I always do with a wrap skirt/dress situation, I used my Hollywood Fashion Secrets Fashion Tape to secure the skirt and protect me from any rogue updrafts of wind.
THE TIP
If you don’t already own clothing tape, get yourself some. I use my Hollywood Fashion Tape a lot. It’s the perfect solution for wrap skirts, but it also is a life saver when you have that one gaping opening on a button down top. I found mine at Walmart, but it’s available at a lot of places. Amazon even has a nice three pack of it which I’ll be purchasing myself. That way I’ll have an extra to throw in my purse should an on the go fashion emergency arise.
THE LINK UPS
Check out the weekly link ups I participate in for even more fashion and style ideas…
Dress: Amazon; Boots: Freebird
