Pomba Gira’s Dance — The Concrete Heart
I bought my own wedding ring yesterday.
Buying rings for our wedding, like the wedding itself, has been fraught. I can’t wear standard unadjustable rings due to swelling in my hands due to rheumatoid arthritis. I am allergic to damn near everything but silver, and I refuse to pay thousands of pounds for something in a rarer alloy. I don’t like diamonds, and I find standard bands really boring. I used to love wearing rings, and adorned myself regularly with piercings, earrings, and bracelets. Over time, my body reacted more and more violently to metals and chemicals, and so the ear piercings had to go, the body piercings had to come out, the hair dye had to stop, the tattoos went unfinished, and the rings went into a box, never to be worn again.
My partner never wears jewellery but he wanted a very particular ring, so he bought it himself. It’s a beautiful band of a rose-coloured wood from Brazil in a silver setting, and it encompasses his spirit perfectly. We started wearing rings two years ago as symbols of our love and unity, but our promise rings are very different, and mean totally different things. To him, marriage and relationships are eternal — he never dated much, and only had one serious relationship in his life with the mother of his children.
But I’ve been married and divorced. I’ve dated extensively, even disastrously. I’ve been in abusive relationships of every imaginably stripe, and so I learned to encase my heart in concrete, and stopped giving myself fully to anyone because I was certain it would only get pulverised. My promise ring was a rough, primitive moon with a garnet cabochon set as a star in the centre. Because it’s adjustable, the garnet can be distanced from the silver crescent. And that, too, is very much an aspect of my spirit.
I can’t get too close — this could drift apart at any time.
I have kept myself very guarded in our relationship, more than my partner is aware of (although he does on some level realise this). We make it work, although in my head it is still more like plaçage. He is endlessly devoted, I am lovingly tolerant.
We’ve discussed marriage but both of us balked at the sheer effort and planning of a wedding. Gods, it’s a faff. The more we entertained the idea, the more we considered just eloping somewhere, but even that was pricey. My first marriage was in a civil court, with four bemused witnesses. It was clinical and grey and didn’t match anything I’d be brought up to believe about weddings; no fairytale setting, no dances and receptions and well wishing and laughter. The last thing I wanted was another wedding in a courthouse. It felt to me like a wedding in a court was going to end up there again someday. How could it not, if you couldn’t even be bothered to spend the money and effort on doing something beautiful for a day?
So we put it off. We’d look back at the idea again, or I’d bring it up, he’d forget and it would sink back down beneath school runs, sinks with dishes, laundry piles and drives in the countryside. I stopped pressing and figured if he really wanted to do it, he would book it. The fact he wasn’t doing so meant he didn’t really want to get married at all to my mind. In any other relationship I’ve ever had, that would be perfectly true, but my man has ADHD. He doesn’t remember anything unless he’s put three reminders in his phone. I’ve seen him forget things he was looking forward to all because he forgot to put in a reminder.
And I didn’t press — why didn’t I press? A part of it was beautifully described by a piece I read some years ago called the Mabon Bride (read it, it’s bloody brilliant). I used to be a wild and free creature; hair dyed brilliant red with the way out clothing to match and a septum piercing. I’m a Forest Witch, semi-feral and only partially domesticated, spooking at any loud noise or louder crowd. No one sees that part of me outside of our house; I’ve even toned that part of myself down for my partner as it clashed with his Calvinistic sense of order.
I was afraid; I was afraid of being crushed. Afraid the whole thing would eventually fall apart like every other relationship I’d ever been in. I’d already glimpsed things in our relationship which had set warning bells off in the pit of my stomach, niggles which rang like death knells
Finally, my partner booked our marriage announcement, and we went through all the steps. He has been positively giddy about the wedding, but I’ve been ambivalent. I’ve had to sit with this quite a bit lately, peeling back the layers and scar tissue to figure out what’s going on.
I’ve done marriage before. It ended badly, and to me the whole idea of marriage is now tainted. Legally, it would help us a lot by removing barriers for insurance and travel to Europe as he is European. If we get it done then I can get a passport in my new name and won’t need to go through a name-change and more documentation. I don’t want to not marry the man — I have finally gained enough self-awareness to say ‘no’ if I wasn’t feeling it.
So…what? What has been going on with me for the past six months? Why am I sexually ambivalent and even more ambivalent about coming together with the man I know I’ve been looking for my entire life?
As is my custom this year, I turned to Pomba Gira. I unwrapped her vessel, lit candles, offered rum, turned on her pontos on YouTube and sat down to give myself a pedicure, washed my face and twisted up my hair as we had our conversation.
“This is all fear, honey-chile. You know it, right? You think you can protect yourself by not giving any of yourself. I’m gonna suggest a different way; go buy your wedding ring.”
I’ve already bought my wedding frock — I wanted something different enough from the everyday to not feel like the clinical just-another-day a civil wedding can feel like, but not different enough I could never wear it again if I liked. We already agreed we didn’t need another ring to signify our marriage, but when the paperwork was signed a week ago for our announcement, I shifted my promise ring over to my right hand. I didn’t really know why until I sat at my mirror.
I wanted a wedding ring. Properly wanted one this time. Not a ten quid bit of silver like my previous ring, not a simple band of silver either. I wanted something unique, something that spoke as much about me as it did about us as a couple.
But why? If I was so ambivalent about the wedding and marriage itself, why was this important?
“Think about it for a bit; y’all know why.”
I decided to give it a go, as Pomba Gira’s advice hasn’t been wrong yet. So after some dedicated searching on Etsy, I found a ring I couldn’t look away from. It ticked all the necessary boxes — silver, adjustable — but it ticked my aesthetics as well. Its cabochon is an ellipsoid piece of opalised pipe wood. It’s what wood dreams of becoming, if it wanted to be sparkly. Like my general aesthetic in rings, it’s a primitive piece, treated with oxidation for an aged, not-so-polished appearance. It’s hand-hammered in a spiral with a flat small spiral set balance by the opal on the opposite side of the ring.
It’s absolutely perfect and I love it. I bought it without even saying anything about it until after I paid for it. But I was still trying to figure out why I’d done it until I really sat down and picked it apart.
Like my partner’s ring, it has wood and silver — but the wood has opalised. It’s a primitive piece with an iridescent eye balanced by a silver spiral. I won’t be able to hide that ring, so the sheer size of it as my wedding band, loud and proud, jarred against the feeling of ambivalence I’ve been swimming in for months.
Unlike my partner, I don’t view marriage with stars in my eyes. Relationships are work. And I’m too old and experienced to believe in storybook love anymore, the kind of ‘immortal souls forever who would die without each other’ thing romance films and books really should answer for. I’ve been divorced. I’ve been dumped. I’ve been abused and beaten.
And I lived. I lived even when at the time I wasn’t sure I would. That has been Pomba Gira’s lesson the entire year, after all: survive. But not just survive — she wants us to enjoy it, to get right down in the excess and drunken laughter and truly live. If you’re worried about getting your heart broke, so what? You survived the last time. You’ll survive again.
I’d bought this ring for the same reason I’d bought the dress. I didn’t want an expensive dress I will only wear once and then shove in cabinet somewhere. I didn’t want something I’d have to dig out and sell on Ebay if the marriage collapses. I wanted a dress I could wear whenever I wanted because it’s a nice, custom frock and I love it. It’s the frock for our wedding, but it’s also my frock.
This ring being so individual, so unique, so me even if it has the meaning of being our ring, it is still my ring. It is a ring I would wear even if things didn’t work out, rather than throw it into a gutter on the day I left my ex-husband. It would be my ring even if we broke up messily or clean. It would be my ring no matter what, and I will still wear it because it was my ring before it was our ring. I searched for it, I chose it, I paid for it because I wanted it. And come what may I will endure, even if our marriage doesn’t. I will opalise, I will perform alchemy upon myself, and I will shine.
Does it sound like I’m already planning for the end before the beginning starts? I wondered that myself, but I came to another conclusion. There was a choice before me; I could either continue to dunk my heart into layer upon layer of concrete, or I could crack it wide open. I’ve already done divorce — it sucked, but I lived. I have been dumped in a hundred different ways, and I still lived each time. There is nothing this man could do to me unless he physically kills me — and as I’ve lived through men who tried, I don’t rate his chances. I could hoard my love and lock it away to only give a little bit to my partner out of fear, or I could release all the feels I have because I know I will survive. I can be fully happy without worry. I can fully love without fear, and I can do this because I already know if the worst comes to it, I will endure and shine.
So, why skimp on love and trust when I know this truth? Why cower behind a shell and give up my adornment and my sense of flair merely because it can be difficult to go through the effort? How about this time I really fling myself fully into this marriage because I have nothing to lose?
I took a hammer to the concrete, and I freed my heart.
This wasn’t an easy process, and the only reason I am where I am right now is due to digging deep into emotional habits hampering my practice and my life. That took months, y’all. It was one of the reasons I called Pomba Gira in the first place. But here I am, ready to bloom and grow and give my best to life. It’s not a perfect relationship. It’s not a perfect situation. Even so, we make it work, and we continue to improve on our communication and checking in with each other.
More importantly, I learn to be a better partner by not putting my love in an iron cage no one has a key for. My partner deserves to reap the benefits of my fearlessness, come what may. We are in a partnership; it may not be the stuff of fairytales, but it is good, I am happy, and I am grateful.
So, in this new year by my Woofolk reckoning, I wish for all of you to engage with courage. To take a hammer to your concrete hearts, and crack it out of its shell, one fragment at a time. Don’t rush…but don’t wait, either.
