I shook my wrist; the charms on my thin, silver bracelet made a ringing, clarion sound that pinched my ears. Each little trinket on my bracelet represented a past lover of mine, a collection of jewelry that adorned my body and soul. A guitar, a skateboard, and a deer skull. The three people were as different as their representative charms: a red-haired guitar player who practiced while I mesmerizingly watched, a freckled skater who held me as I stood on his board, and an adoring, and a calloused-hand hunter who cleaned each animal with attention and care, just as he tended to me. Each person had features and hobbies that contrasted each other and each treated me disparately, but they all had the shared experience of loving me.

I was an obsessive teenager, always yearning for relationships and adoration. Love tore through me like nails impaled on a foot, and I would be so doting towards one person that all others appeared as dull as tarnished, worn metal. I worshipped them as one devoted to a deity would. I memorized the minuscule details of their face; the inflections of their eye color, the location of freckles on their skin, and the texture of their hair. And, even years later, I remained obsessed. The charms dangling from my wrist were a reminder that I’d never move on from past break-ups, no matter how other areas of my life matured. I’d always be trapped in the period when my heart lurched out of my ribcage and I suffered for months, then years, after a relationship ended. The bracelet had belonged to me longer than I had belonged to any of my lovers.

Then, on a fateful evening when I’d been overwhelmed to my breaking point, I was forced to remove the bracelet. It felt as if the doctors were incising my skin as they cut the rusted clasp. Then, they took my piercings, the laces of my sweatpants, and anything else I could’ve used to hurt myself. I was in the mental hospital for days, pallid and unresponsive like a ghost. On the car ride home, clutching bottles of medication and my ruptured heart, I released the broken bracelet through the window. I needed to move on, reconfigure myself again as if melting used metal and creating a new charm: one that depicted a small, lonely girl with decades ahead of her.