LOVE-LOST NECKLACE
“The necklace reminds me that I could build a big, interesting life.”
Adriana Wong might be persuaded to give up this significant object… but we’ll need your help. Read the following nonfiction story, then SUBMIT YOUR PERSUASIVE RESPONSE HERE.
When my brother called to say he’d found a big plastic bin labeled “Adriana” while cleaning out our abuelita’s Elmhurst apartment, I didn’t think much of it. She had lived there for 55 years before moving to Florida to stay with my uncle, and now my brother and his growing family were preparing to move in. I figured the bin was just old papers and random keepsakes I’d forgotten I even owned. As I sorted through it, I found a necklace I had received almost 20 years ago, during a time of my life that was full of wonder, upheaval, and confusion.
My college boyfriend bought it from a street vendor while we were backpacking through South America. We spent hours on bus rides, stopping in towns and cities from Quito to La Paz and back, wandering through open-air markets and sleeping in cheap hostels and seeing beautiful natural wonders. It was my first time visiting Ecuador, the country my father had called home until he’d emigrated to the states as a teenager. I felt both connected and completely out of place.
This was my first time traveling like this, it tested who I thought I was and what I believed was possible for my life. That necklace reminds me of that romantic relationship, but also my relationship with the world and with the idea that I could build a big, interesting life… even if I didn’t yet know how.
The necklace also carries what I didn’t know then: that I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. At times, I was lifted up as the “dream girl,” someone special and amazing to be with. But I was also someone whose personal things could be searched without warning, whose smile at a passing stranger could be twisted into an accusation of cheating, whose smallest choices could become evidence of betrayal. I thought for a long time that this was what love looked like, this was what passion looked like. Our relationship lasted 3 more years and only ended after I found out they had been cheating on me for years. The necklace is a reminder of how I once stayed in unhealthy relationships simply because of the time I’d already invested.
I donated or tossed nearly everything from the bin, except for the necklace. Which holds two truths: that I was once a young woman learning to be brave in the world, and that I was someone learning how to leave when something wasn’t right. I’m not sure which outweighs the other.
— ADRIANA WONG
Please SUBMIT YOUR PERSUASIVE RESPONSE HERE.
You can commune in person with this object (and 10 others) at solo exhibits in Kingston (NY) from August 15–September 1, and at a group exhibit — at Camp Kingston — from September 3–10. The object essays will be read aloud, and the most persuasive responses announced, at the GIVE IT UP project’s wrap-up party (open to all) on September 10. Join us there!
Just loved reading about all the meanings of this necklace--namely, all the ways it represented how you were liberating yourself and not liberating yourself. And isn't this so often the way, these things that represent to us how we're stepping out of our known selves and stepping further into them? Thank you!