Band of Gold

I wait in the darkness of my lonely room filled with sadness, filled with gloom, hoping soon that you'll walk back through that door and love me like you tried before.

Mark and I didn't have a wedding. We got married on a Thursday at City Hall with our best friend, Shaela, as our witness. We told three people beforehand, including said best friend. It would've been four, but my dad was in a meeting when I tried him at work. The three of us celebrated with lunch at Yard House, and then we carried on with our usual schedules. We clearly didn't put much thought into it, but I liked it that way. It wasn't about the event; it was about us. There was no need to incorporate lots of stuff or people into the situation.

What mattered to me was that we gave each other our word to be there for better (Things were better before we got married.), for worse (They forgot to mention 'worst thing ever'.), for richer (We missed that boat.), for poorer (We mastered this one!), in sickness (Oh, my.) and in health (This disappeared with the 'better' from before we got married.) until death do us part (Death do us part... shotgun-to-the-forehead do us part... same same.) 

Shaela, being the most thoughtful person ever, brought a ring I could use in case I wanted the experience of him putting a ring on my finger while saying his vows. If you know me at all, I'm sure you're not shocked to discover that I did NOT because that would be too cheesy for my cold Irish heart. The miracle of me even considering marrying another human being far outweighed any need for ceremonial silliness. Plus, we were too broke to afford any of that. But even a surly New Englander can be swayed, which is why we ended up at a jewelry store a few months later.

At that point, I was already wearing a beautiful diamond ring that my mom had given us as a gift. She had some studs and a necklace lingering around and had them made into a gorgeous ring so that she could start a family heirloom. Truly, it's stunning. I love it. It's a tiny size 4 1/2 for my ridiculously skinny ring finger. It sparkles and shines. It's noticeable. And it made me feel that when people saw me, they knew I belonged to someone, even if it wasn't from Mark. It's not an engagement ring and didn't come with a proposal, and wearing it alone was a bit odd, since we were actually married and were never actually engaged. Also, Mark wanted his own wedding band so that the guys on base would know he was married. It made him proud, I think, like he'd leveled up.

I mean, OBVIOUSLY he leveled up. I'm fucking awesome, and one can't help but increase their own awesomeness when with me. Duh.

So we went to Jared!

Lies. We went to Zales. It was at the mall, and they were having a pretty spectacular sale coupled with a military discount. We even did the smart thing and got a Zales credit card with 0%APR for six months, which was just enough time to pay off the rings.

More lies. It was more like this:
I, Maggie McGonigle, insecure twenty-something with a history of trying to fix men in a losing battle with myself to prove that I am worthy of love, got a credit card. Mark Garcia, child disguised as a young adult with a secret history of gambling and a delusional desire to do illegal things in order to provide for others to prove to himself that he is worthy of love, didn't have good enough credit for his own credit card. Or basically anything.

This was not the first poor financial decision we'd made as a couple; it was just the first one we made while married. And it was less than $1,000, what with all the sales and codependent impulsiveness. Picking out rings was way more fun than I had imagined it would be. It didn't take us all that long, and we wanted to leave with the rings that day, so choosing anything that needed to be resized was not an option. But it was all downhill from there.

In short, and probably completely devoid of shock value, we didn't get the rings paid off in those first six months while there was no interest. I have no idea how much Mark gambled away or how often. What I do know is that during those six months, I barely made the minimum payments while having to scrape money together for things like groceries and gas. I budgeted in every way I possibly could and then thought that I was the one who had done something wrong when my card got declined at the commissary after Mark had apparently blown all the money on who knows how many rounds of poker or blackjack or whatever it was that he played. It's plain old embarrassing having to leave bagged groceries at the store because you don't have enough money to pay for them. I'm a grown woman with a Master's degree, and I couldn't even afford discounted food from the commissary on more than one occasion. And it wasn't until almost a year later, and several more failed attempts to buy groceries, that I even found out that he'd been gambling.

I haven't the slightest idea what else I thought he was doing or where all our money was going. Boy, oh boy, I was oblivious. 

But I loved wearing those rings. I took them off to shower, run and sleep. Otherwise, they lived on my left hand. Interestingly, Mark would notice if I didn't have them on, yet it was somehow okay for him to not wear his at times. It even disappeared for several weeks at one point not long before his suicide.

This is the part where I no longer want to think about any of this because it's too upsetting.

I originally started writing this post over eight months ago, but it stayed an empty draft because as soon as I created it, it occurred to me that he had probably gambled his ring away or pawned it so he could go gamble that away. I don't know. What I do know is that on the day he died, after SWAT was gone and the medical examiner had taken his body out of our apartment, there was a female police officer who gave me a bag of his possessions. They also offered me the shotgun because they legally had to, but it was too big to fit inside the bag.

That was a joke. HA! But not the part about them offering me the gun. They really did that, and I'm fairly sure that my response was a death stare.

Inside the bag were two things: his cell phone and his ring, both splotched with blood. (Don't worry; the police officer was as mortified as you now are when she realized she was giving me Mark's things covered in his own blood and promptly took them back to clean them.) He had been wearing that ring for at least a few weeks before he died, after it mysteriously got left at his mom's house for over a month, according to what I assume was one of his many lies. Whether or not it was the one we originally got, I do not know. Mark's wedding band had a dent or chip on the edge that I remember being big enough that I could feel it; the one I have now does not.

Needless to say, that ring hits a nerve. Or several. Even before considering that it maybe wasn't the original, it pissed me off. The thing with gambling is that it can get progressively worse in a short period of time. Paying off that Zales card shouldn't have been very challenging, but new debts and expenses popped up at alarmingly fast rates. Mark somehow always managed to take all the money out of my account and lose it in elaborate tales so asinine that I can't bring myself to repeat them to anyone. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I wasn't able to pay ANY of our bills. I had to give up some of my own goals of working from home as a private ESL teacher and go back to teaching at my old school. Working a regular job was in no way a hardship, but I sacrificed a lot of things I'd been working towards because Mark wasn't able to keep his part of the deal in order for me to go after what I wanted. This added to the bitterness, so I didn't take kindly to calls from collectors for all the bills that couldn't get paid. Every time I got a call about that stupid bill for those stupid rings, I was livid. And embarrassed. And I hated myself for being so stupid that I'd gotten myself into such a mess. Abusive relationships mess with your head and have you believe it's all your fault.

The calls finally stopped almost a year after Mark's suicide because I was FINALLY able to pay the collectors off, at least for the Zales card; the rest are lingering. Those rings have added more stress to my life than I care to admit. I never wanted rings. I didn't need them. That's not why I got married. And though I often miss wearing them, now they mostly make me sick to my stomach if they're on my hand for too long. Sometimes I get an urge to wear them and occasionally do. I've only worn the diamond ring from my mom out of the house a few times. I wore my band for a week or so not long ago, and it was nice. Until it was maddening. They usually sit in a small box I made for some of Mark's things, right next to the ring the cops gave me at the same time they offered me the shotgun he used to kill himself. Much like pictures of his face, I generally don't want to look at them, at least not for very long. 

But I have no plans to get rid of them. I love them too much.