Keepsakes (genre assignment)

Keepsakes:

What is it? I look at it...Shrouded in the typical clichéd symbolism of all jewelry. Everyone knows what it means or what it is supposed to mean. The Journey. The trek through the never ending trials and tribulations of love. It’s meant to be a representation of how love starts small and keeps growing until the end. It's hopeful. It's thoughtful. It's bright and shiny and full of optimism.

I've never been a true optimist and I haven't been hopeful in years.

See, we started out so big, like the bottom of this pendant. Bigger than this, that's obvious. Better than this.

Before I met you, I was weak and naive.

You were a force and together we were a hurricane, slamming into the coast. I could do anything with you by my side and you finally had someone to listen to your stories and wipe away your tears without judging you or spilling your secrets. It was you and I....We were resilient…Not unlike this large diamond. I thought we were stronger than anything because nothing is harder, stronger, than a diamond.
But then I met her.

She cut me down with her accusations and the seeds of ignorance you had planted in her mind. She cut you down with her nagging and name calling. She spilt all of your secrets. She used them to form weapons. She cut us down with her undeniable truths. She cut us down, not enough to kill us completely, but enough to convince you that you should leave…

But like that little pendant, something keeps us attached. You came home. You always come home. No matter how many times she tries to separate us and kill us, you come back. You always leave, but you always come back.

But we are no longer a force…Each time you return just a little bit smaller, just a little weaker, just a little bit less of the man I once knew.

I’m waiting on you. I’m attached to you like the settings of these stones. I’m holding us in place until the day you finally make a decision. Until you finally gain the courage to build us back to the force that we once were. I’m holding everything in place, but the settings and the chains are weakening with time and wear. The little arguments and the little jabs at each other’s soft spots wear at the bond. Her manipulations and her lies are adding to the stress. She tells you one thing, bending you. She tells me another, bending me. Even the strongest of metal will succumb to enough heat and pressure. Eventually, stress points will form and everything will snap. It has already started.

But for now, it holds. The settings, the chain, the bond. Everything is in place. Everything stays right where it was the day it was given to me.
But one day…