Honestly, Sandie

Gemstones 24/30

Violet sapphire is one of those stones that cannot commit to one color.

Put it in daylight and it leans violet. Put it under warm light and suddenly it is purple. Same stone. Same center. Different room, different conditions, different version of what people swear they are looking at.

Which is a fun little metaphor for the way women get treated when they finally stop agreeing with the story everybody else is telling.

I met this stone before Washington was even a thought. She had married into a family I had known forever, and I came up to the Tri-Cities for their wedding in the fall of 2000 as a young California girl with a tiny bit of common sense and a whole lot of confidence that I was probably right about everything.

She and I bonded immediately.

We were different. At least, that is what I thought. I was loud and impulsive and always one bad decision away from turning an ordinary night into a story people would tell for years. She was subtle. Clever. Gentle until she needed to be strong. The kind of funny where she could sit there silently for twenty minutes and then drop one sentence that took the whole room out at the knees.

Then she got pregnant. I got pregnant a few months later. Her oldest was born in June of 2001. Mine was born in October.

So there we were. Two young moms with babies, no sleep, and the confidence of women who had not yet been humbled by teenagers, taxes, custody court, church politics, or the price of groceries in 2026.

I came up while pregnant. Then again with my daughter when she was two weeks old because I was operating on confidence, hormones, and terrible travel planning. We visited more after that. Me, my mom, my baby. Sometimes my sister.

When we decided to leave California, the Tri-Cities got tossed into the conversation. We looked. It clicked.

I still do not know why.

I love this place in ways I cannot explain. I also have a running internal list titled “Reasons I Should Move Somewhere With Trees and Less Wind.” Both things can be true.

We moved here the last week of June in 2010 thinking we had built-in people. Family close by. Kids who would grow up together. Friends for us. Cousins for them. A whole little life already waiting on this side of the state line.

Happy bullshit.

The Fourth of July was the last time we were all together before everything came apart.

We did not know what was happening in their house. We did not know how much had been hidden. We did not know that while we were standing around eating food and pretending life was normal, she had already reached the edge of what she could survive.

She left that week.

And before anybody gets twitchy about the word “left,” let me be clear: she did not leave because she was flaky. She did not leave because she was dramatic. She did not leave because she needed attention or wanted freedom or could not handle marriage.

She left because there comes a point when someone can tell you they love you all day long, but their behavior keeps handing you a completely different answer.

That is where people start calling women crazy.

Which is fascinating.

Because a woman can spend years trying to explain what is happening behind closed doors. She can be polite. She can be careful. She can protect everyone else’s image. She can shrink herself down into a reasonable little package so nobody has to feel uncomfortable.

Then one day she says, “No.”

And suddenly she is unstable.

She is dramatic.

She is bitter.

She is confused.

She is “not herself.”

No, sweetheart. She is finally herself. You just liked her better when she was easier to manage.

I was new here when everything exploded. I was still tangled in family loyalty, church loyalty, and the kind of culture that teaches women to keep the peace even when the peace is built entirely on their silence.

One day, I was asked to be the middle person because there was a no-contact order. I picked the kids up from her place and drove them to him.

I hugged her goodbye. Told her I loved her. Put her babies in my car.

Then I got home, handed them over, and learned she had been served.

While I was driving her children away from her, someone had gone to her door and handed her paperwork saying he had full custody.

Go ahead. Sit with that one for a second.

Because I have.

For years.

I hate that I was part of it without knowing what I was helping carry. I hate that I did not see the whole picture sooner. I hate that I did not plant both feet on the ground and draw a line so deep nobody could pretend they missed it.

I told her once that she would not lose me just because I was connected to his side of the family.

I meant it.

Then life got messy, people got louder, church got involved, family stories got weird, and suddenly we were all standing in different rooms looking at the same stone under different light.

Some people saw violet.

Some people saw purple.

Some people looked straight at her pain and decided it would be more convenient to call it a personality problem.

That part still makes me want to throw furniture.

She is one of the most loyal people I have ever known. She is quick and funny and soft in the way strong women are soft. Not fragile. Not breakable. Just unwilling to become cruel because somebody else was.

I saw her last year at my husband’s company party. Her husband is kind. Sweet. Different. He looks at her like she is not a problem to solve or a story to control.

There was distance between us.

I felt it.

I earned some of it.

I still miss her.

I miss the hotel room at my sister’s wedding where we stayed up too late making flowers while the guys went out drinking like the world had not already given them enough confidence. I miss her one-liners. I miss the ease. I miss the version of our friendship that could have been bigger if I had been braver when it mattered.

Billy Joel’s “You May Be Right” is funny until you have watched someone get called crazy for refusing to keep living inside somebody else’s lie.

Because that is the trick, isn’t it?

A woman can spend years being patient. Careful. Pleasant. She can explain herself with charts, bullet points, screenshots, prayer requests, tears, and the full director’s cut. She can make herself smaller so nobody has to deal with the fact that something is wrong.

Then she leaves.

Then suddenly she is unhinged.

She is unstable.

She is dramatic.

She is “not herself.”

Sure. Fine. Put it on a T-shirt.

Maybe she was crazy. Crazy enough to believe her kids deserved better. Crazy enough to stop calling control “love” just because it came with a wedding ring and a church smile. Crazy enough to walk out of a life that looked acceptable from the outside and was costing her too much on the inside.

That kind of crazy has saved a lot of women.

Violet sapphire is valuable because it is not a throwaway purple stone. It is durable. Brilliant. Rare enough that people notice when they find one. It shifts under different light, leaning violet in one room and deeper purple in another, but it never loses its center. Same stone. Same strength. Different light.

That is why I chose it for her.

She has always been beautiful, but not in the fragile, please-handle-me-carefully way. She has value because she held onto herself when people around her were trying to rewrite her. She stayed soft without becoming easy to control. She got out. She rebuilt. She found a life that looks like somebody finally understood what they had.

And I cherish this friendship more than I know how to explain, even if I do not get to wear it around every day anymore.

I wish she was a daily carry.

I wish I could call her when something ridiculous happens and hear the one-line response that makes the whole thing worth surviving. I wish our kids had grown up in the version of the story we thought we were building. I wish I had stood closer, louder, sooner.

But violet sapphire does not need to sit on my hand every day to be precious.

I know what it is.

I know what she is.

And I hope she knows that somewhere under all the years, the distance, the family mess, the church mess, the court mess, and the absolute happy bullshit people tell themselves to sleep at night, I still see her exactly as she was.

Not crazy.

Just finally free.