You Too Have a Pearl Within You
By: Roughly Ru
Tags: Mental Health Awareness, Mental Illness, Mental Health, Personal Growth

The history of pearls and their marking of significant occasions has been a theme in my life. For my Bat Mitzvah, my nana gave me a classic string of white pearls. For my 25 birthday, she gave me a light pink necklace of freshwater pearls. On my 28th birthday: pearl earrings. Even others know of my love for pearls. When I left my job at MoMA, my going away present was this beautiful tri tier necklace of gold and pearls. I. LOVE. PEARLS. I have lots of fake pearl jewelry, as well, but the delicate, classic nature of the real deal has long been a fascination to me.

So it was not surprising when I went down the rabbit whole of the internet one night to learn about how pearls are made. And I feel deeper in love. In fact I keep an open tab on my browser in my phone for how they are made so I can look at it and remind myself of the power of persistence at any time in my day.

If a small irritant, like a piece of sand, makes its way into an oyster or mollusk, the mollusk is bothered by it. They naturally make nacre to protect themselves (it also covers the inside of their shells). The nacre coats the irritant and the layers build up over time and create the pearl. The oyster takes a bad thing that snuck into it and creates beauty. It naturally knows what to do to protect itself and thrive. We need to be more like oysters. I don’t mean “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade” (though maybe you should and add a spritzer :) ). I mean: take something that seems like a negative threat to your life, a mental illness, and use your natural power from within to create beauty and thrive.

If you have a chemical imbalance, or you had a tragedy occur that caused PTSD, or any other host of possibilities that lead to difficulty with mental illness, it’s easy to internalize it as a fault or defect inside you. But what if you thought of it as an irritant that causes you to use what you have already inside you — courage, strength, hope, a sense of humor, an amazing ability to help others — to create something bigger that brought joy to yourself and others? I don’t think oysters have the brain power to think that a pearl is beautiful or an item of monetary worth, but I think they are courageous and brilliant in their own right to create, from what could be deemed as painful and horrible inside them, a thing of beauty. They have an irritant yet persist onward. You might think you don’t have those traits of courage or strength or hope (and more), but you do. We all need to be reminded of that.

There have been countless mornings where I wake up and think I can’t do this. There have been endless amounts of late night phone calls or texts noting my instability and self doubt to carry on. How can we remind ourselves in these moments of misery that we can create? That we have what we need inside of us to create beauty out of our lives? How can we remember in our moments of great agony and anxiety, where just breathing is a chore, that we are capable of more? For me, I’m visual, so I try to wear a pearl (or costume pearl) everyday. I love the real ones because they aren’t perfect; you see their ridges, their unevenness, their own unique shapes. I stare down at the pearl and think: a being was able to make something out of a seemling misfortune, so can I. It does not always work. Some days my anxiety or moods get the best of me. Sometimes I reach for a bottle, a binge, a remote, a credit card; whatever might take the momentary edge off my pain. But those are fixes to escape myself. Not to deal with myself. Dealing with myself requires more effort, less noise. More self-awareness, less self-hatred. More understanding, less numbing. For when I’m trying to escape, it’s because I see my insides, my mind, my being, as a problem. I don’t see it as something I can use to create in this world. I don’t see it as a solution.

I don’t think there is an easy way to remind yourself of the beauty and power within. And if you know of any, please tell me ASAP! I don’t think there is a piece of jewelry or a magical phrase or person that will snap you out of your moments of despair. I can look at my necklace and still have such anxiety that I am physically sick. But I think it’s in those moments after reaching a low point- after crying, hurting, numbing, feeling- after and in the midst of that pain, is where the strength of a symbol lies. As you pull yourself up off the bathroom floor and crawl into your bed, you see something or hear something or touch something, and it brings you back. Back to the truth that you can. And maybe that night you won’t see the truth. Maybe it’ll take a day or week or month. We don’t know. We just have to connect to others and within, to rebuild and remember that we do have it inside ourselves to make things better, we are worthy of a life of beauty and possibility.