My parents feared earrings would corrupt me – I didn’t listen

I have a box of orphaned, broken earrings in my wardrobe which I cannot bring myself to discard. They represent the tantalising prospect of micro-reinvention, much like a new haircut or an Instagram filter. Novelty accessories distract from my aversion to make-up, intricate skincare or a personal grooming ritual.

Raised on a diet of anime, manga and the (now defunct) Dolly and Girlfriend magazines in country Western Australia, I spent my teens longing for a heart-shaped face, huge eyes and a pixie look. My parents feared piercings were a gateway into illicit behaviour and dangerous compulsions, so I raided my grandmother’s collection of vintage clip-on earrings.

Perhaps there is something to their fear. In the 1999 novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, the protagonist (played by Scarlett Johansson in the film) pierces both ears at the painter Vermeer’s request and experiences a transgressive, sensual rush at this spike of pain and the shared intimacy of sitting for a portrait. In my early 20s, I finally had my ears pierced at a pharmacy.

My orphan earrings project an optimism.

Some of my earrings are sourced from Melbourne’s artists markets in Rose Street, St Kilda, and Williamstown: a miniature half-peeled banana, a button-sized stud clad in cherry cloth. At a Kinki Gerlinki outlet, I acquire metal giraffes, suspended from their necks by silver loops. One giraffe was decapitated on an outing and is lost. The pink doll chair earrings are likely manufactured with a cheap alloy – the enamel keeps flaking off and the studs make my earlobes ache.

The box contains my nature era, with engraved leaves and laminated banksia seed pods. Large hoop earrings with woven tribal patterns feel homely and comforting against my neck. My brother’s ex-girlfriend gives me fluoro aqua polymer earrings, a circle with a glitter wave shape hanging off it. As a late-in-life migrant, my grandmother enjoyed Australiana – May Gibbs’ iconic depictions of gumnut babies, watercolours of chooks by little CWA ladies, Ken Done-like touches on a large, round clip-on.

Losing an earring echoes with something ecological – like the separation of a bonded bird pair. Continuing to keep the oddball collection is an unspoken promise, that I will restore them to functionality. That they will be repaired. Perhaps even paired again. Colleagues from my former workplace scour the pavement for a missing earring after I speedwalk to Federation Square from Exhibition Street to attend a launch. I don’t recall the particulars of the launch – just their heads angled down as they traced my steps, the kindness of their endeavours.

At another workplace, I wear a feathered dangler in one ear which falls to my collarbone, and a seahorse stud in the other, and a colleague diplomatically comments on how I’ve cultivated a “quirky barefoot persona”. Perhaps this is code for “career-limiting move”. My radical act of shoelessness in the office stems from a medical reason: relief for my bunions.

Melbourne tolerates some variance in the standard corporate attire with its generous, eclectic tastes. A friend from Canberra sends me surreptitious photos of locals spotted on Smith Street and Brunswick Street – the pyjama-quilt-look, clashing of patterns and colours, the sheer ragged normalcy, that they aren’t trying to impress anyone or go anywhere – takes her breath away.

These orphaned earrings represent my former selves. They are relics in a personal museum. They remind me of the aftermath of a relationship break-up when I wasn’t sleeping well. I hadn’t washed and I went to a bar with a friend to commiserate and felt awful that I hadn’t worn earrings to distract from the hot mess I was. Under her sympathetic gaze, I could almost feel the longed-for accessories manifesting. My friend has this Patti-Smith-like enigma, an unnerving ability to listen and be present, and gives long hugs that seem to alchemise our time together into moments of poignancy.

Looking at the collection is like re-reading old diaries. Sometimes the experience is excruciating – my tastes and opinions are different now. In my juvenile diaries are recurrent themes of social shame and inadequacy, an obsession with the trivial, a chronic attraction to unavailable, scornful young men. My earrings paint a more innocent optimism – that with visual change can come a more permanent, internal one.

Lily Chan is a Melbourne writer.

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