This article discusses earring loss in terms of its several stages. Girls can identify with it, and this article clearly defines several aspects of losing an earring.
Stage 1- Realization
Have you ever experienced the tingling sensation that comes as an earring drops out of your ear? It is frightening and uncertain. Who, after all, would want to lose an earring and feel empty? I experienced a similar incident while I was at work. I could feel something slipping off my hair’s width as it happened. Even though it was a cheap, glittering fake diamond drop, I fell in love with it the instant I saw it at a neighborhood shop’s closing sale.
Stage 2- Mourning
According to research from 2017, Americans spend an average of $2.7 billion annually on replacing lost items and spend 2.5 days per year looking for them. The emotional loss is especially acute when these objects are earrings. Given the terrible reality of loneliness, the loss of the earrings is more poignant.
Famous author Nancy B. Kennedy once stated, “You feel particularly horrible because the other one is standing there, humiliating you for losing its companion.” After losing one of her glass seagull earrings that her husband had given her, she even started a Facebook group called My Lost Earring.
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 shoulder-deep through trash, searched the bathroom, and checked with office security. In all, I moved every piece of furniture, checked out every piece of clothing, and looked through the entire house to avoid 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 reach 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 the same ear lobes or nothing at all. So I discarded this idea and tried moving on.
Stage 4. Reaching Out
A new year brought fresh optimism. I uploaded a picture titled “My Lost Earring” to the Ms. Kennedy Earring Loss Page. I was told that matches can go on for a long time and not to become frustrated. Ms. Kennedy clarified that users of the website have the right to part with or sell a piece of a set they already owned to assist other users. She persuaded jewelers to offer name-brand alternatives on her own. Heartbreaking tales like the one of a grieving mother who couldn’t find the matching earring in a set her dead daughter, 15, wore before she passed away could be found on her page.
In my search for customers and sellers on the arts and crafts website Etsy, I also checked Reddit. Once more, I asked on social media whether anyone knew of a jeweler who could make a copy of my earring. Fortunately, someone on Reddit commented and pointed out that the earrings were rectangular Swarovski zirconia. I ordered them right away. Although they were bigger than mine, I felt satisfied because I had finally found a substitute. My earring loss would finally come to a stop.
Stage 5. Acceptance
Even after receiving a replacement, I still couldn’t find my original earrings. Peter Walsh, an organizer and the author of the book “Let It Go,” was the source of my further anxiety about the earring. Why did the jewels matter so much, he questioned me simply. I pondered for a while. When the store where I had purchased them closed, I was very sad. It was one of the nicest neighborhoods in New York City that I enjoyed shopping in the past; however, all of the bookstores, art galleries, and home décor shops were now shuttered. I’ve been depressed about the transition.
Then, how much of this is about the earring and how much is about something broader, Mr. Walsh continued.
I responded, “The passage of time. the difference that is taking place. The earrings embody that in certain ways. Perhaps you won’t fully recover from that grief.
When he heard my response, he said, “You still have an earring. Why should I love it less because of how it has evolved? When you consider it, you are thinking negatively. Make it a success. On your blouse, tack it. Justify it. Your top five single earrings should be framed.
It was undoubtedly a novel idea to me, but why not give it a shot? I’ve taken my zirconia singleton and its friends out of a drawer by Mr. Walsh’s advice to combine them into a necklace.
My Etsy earrings arrived from London in the meanwhile. When I wore them to work for the first time, a cafeteria cashier looked up and said, “I adore these!” And tiny happiness filled my chest.
