The Ring Of Ire

Do you have a wedding ring? Or any totemic ‘thing’ that means a lot to you? Most of you? How would you feel if you grew fatter and fatter, to the point where you could no longer wear it, or use it, where you had to put it aside, and so somehow, in your mind, diminish the nature of you?

I married d on 29^th September 2004, and – being that kind of couple – both our rings had been engraved, inside and out, with words and phrases that resonated with our relationship, our connection and our shared journey from the improbability of getting together to the impossibility of staying apart.

So imagine how I felt, about 18 months ago (roughly five and a half years into our marriage), when my fingers reached the point of thick, fat, sausage-advert succulence that meant I could no longer comfortably wear my ring. It bit into me, leaving deep red welts, and restricting the blood flow to my fingers-ends, and while I fought the reality of it for a while, 18 months ago, I gave in, and gave up, and took off my wedding ring – at the time presumably forever.

I stood it for about six months. Six months of missing it, of having, if you like, ‘Phantom Ring Syndrome,’ of twisting the space where it had been beneath my fingers, knowing it should have been there, hating the fact that I had brought this separation on myself. It was a separation from myself, really, from who I am and what I am, and what I understand to be true about myself.

Then, about a year ago now as we counted down to our annual holiday in Amroth on the West Coast of Wales, I cracked. I went to our local jewellery store chain and said “This used to fit. Doesn’t now…make it so”.

They brought out their ring-sizers, and it turned out that my ring-finger had actually inflated by four whole sizes. They could make it fit, they said, but only by adding more gold into it, and therefore getting rid of the engravings. I didn’t care, I said, I’d get it re-engraved, I just wanted it back on my finger. I was who I was, the size I was, and that was something that wasn’t likely to change any time soon, so I was biting the bullet, accepting who I was, and re-establishing the love-totem on my newly squidgy finger.

And so I did. When we got back from our break, I got the enlarged ring re-engraved by the original engravers, and reclaimed the fullness of my self as d’s husband, and felt more than a little pleased with myself, all things considered (Erm…you may have noticed, I have what might be called leanings towards feeling more than a little pleased with myself. This is the git that I am. Deal).

So it’s really rather irksome to report that, officially as of last night, the ring is now too damn big for my ring finger!

Yeah, yeah, I know, positive, blah blah, progress, yadda yadda yadda, but still! It’s been loosening for weeks now, but last night, it actually slid off my ring finger completely. While I had it in my hand, I figured I might as well experiment, and yep, sure enough, it fit my middle finger perfectly. I’ve gone up a finger!

Now I know what you’re thinking – big deal, get it shrunk, take it as a positive sign and get on with your life, you whiney ass, right? But I’m soooo far from done, and changing the ring was, on some level, a traumatic experience…it was like if someone said they’d take away Stonehenge, and bring it back to you in a couple of weeks, changed so you could use it. You’d be grateful and all that, but somewhere in the back of your mind, the idea would persist that they’d had to change it somehow in order to give you the benefit. And somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s the idea that I don’t want to wear out the number of permissible changes to the original item – oddly, and irrationally, as if, if I change it too many times, it will cease to be my ring, or cease to mean as much as it does to me. And even weirder and more irrational than that, the idea evolves to claim that if it changes too much from my original ring, it will somehow mean my marriage itself has changed beyond comfortable recognition, and I don’t want to risk that.

Hey, whaddya want from me – totemic items are never rational, and I might be Mr Logicboy Atheist Rationalist McNo-Guff, but I’m a human being, and we’re none of us immune from the power we give to such totems. So, if it’s all the same to you – and I know it is – I’m going to keep wearing the ring until I absolutely can’t wear it any more, and reduce it only then, because we’re still only 2.5 stone into this experiment – there’s a whole seven stone left to go (almost three times what I’ve already done). That’s a whole lotta sausage-finger shrinkage left to do.

I’m writing this on a train back to London from Wales, and the recent motivation-leakage has had its ass well and truly kicked. I’m sooo back, it’s almost frightening – and tomorrow begins a whole new phase. I have acquired a sackful of cunning plans, and I’m fairly fizzing with the energy to put them into place. Bring on the Jerry Lee Lewis music, it’s time to freaking ROCK!