Can I put an earring on a milk carton?

I'm struggling with acceptance today, or for the last 25 years. I lost an earring.

I know, enough said, right?

I got this very fancy-for-me pair of hand-made earrings at the local arts and crafts open-air market, shaped like music symbols (totally not a musician so I can't tell you which symbol. Suffice to say they are sexy).

I feel a deeper sense of loss and sadness than one silly pair of earrings seems to warrant. I mean, come on - I'm no stranger to loss. The life-changing losses I have experienced have taught me how to accept that some things just don't go right.

So why am I struggling? Because I really, really, really want to find this earring while recognising that it is the most ridiculous thing in the world to be sad-faced over. And I am coming to realise that the most traumatic loss I have faced in a long time is one lone, lost earring. The silliness of it doesn't lessen my sense of sad, but I can remember a time when I'd trade all the things of value -from shiny new earrings to every person I've ever cared about- for five more minutes with a dead loved one, or to repair that friendship I utterly destroyed in a moment of stupidity.

Perspective, right? The heart doesn't have physical memory of being broken. My brain remembers more serious losses, but the brick-wall of numbness and time cushions my heart and makes it susceptible to getting bruised because I lost a goddamned earring.

So, acceptance. And, apparently, some perspective. 'Cause, you know, some people can't afford shoes.