In the days after the breakup, I must have taken the wedding ring off my finger, put it in some box and then put it away properly.

Maybe some kind of protection mechanism.

Or out of spite.

It must have been an automated, ostensibly pragmatic process.

Because I can neither remember it nor have access to emotions if I want to put myself in this situation.

It is therefore not surprising that I woke up recently, on the very first anniversary of my departure, and wondered where the ring I once loved had gone.

Before I found the box in the farthest corner of an overcrowded dresser drawer, opened it and looked relieved at the harmlessly sparkling diamonds, I dismantled the apartment as if I wanted to fight vermin or demons.

It was a bit like constantly fending off sympathetic will-be-again looks and helpful-you-will-find-someone-yet phrases.

The relief was also the end of a feeling of guilt, because I had been sure for hours that I had misplaced the ring somewhere out of anger or sadness during the time of my worst lovesickness, then intentionally lost it out of the will to distance myself and fantasies of empowerment and finally because of the progressing recovery and with simply forgetting its existence after gaining a new self-confidence.

Or, as fatally stupid things happen, accidentally disposed of, sucked in, scrapped.

It would have been a fascinating mystery without an answer.

Frustrating, nerve wracking.

But ultimately a good story.

Kind of like it had been with the man.

Both ring and man, and this realization then stings my heart, have become meaningless in my life.

And that's good.

Of course, when the man left, it didn't feel like it.

When the man decided to leave me in the apartment they shared and to start a new life of his own, that is, with another woman, in line with the heteroman cliché, I could not imagine a year later looking at the ring with pleasure, but him but at the same time to be evaluated as what it is: a relic of a beautiful, but bygone time.

You can keep it for a while, maybe wear it again, sell it or create something else out of it.

No matter how I will deal with the expensive piece in the future.

The man is gone.

I'm alone.

Singular life is not the same as insurmountable loneliness

That means I'm single.

More precisely: I am a financially independent, totally independent woman in her thirties.

I live in a big city, date occasionally, enjoy shaping my life with myself.

Some confuse the singular life with insurmountable loneliness and ravishing despair, and this may be the basis of screenplays and mantra-like bolted heteronormative relationship structures.

With small apartments, miserably intense relationships with sofas and bad tables in restaurants.