In the morning, I woke up to find my finger had become swollen, trapping the ring where it was. I knew I had to get it off, but after several tugs it became clear that it wasn’t going anywhere. I was both hung over and in a state of panic, watching my finger swell and go pink. I judged my middle fingers side by side, to see if I was overreacting, but I wasn’t. The one with the ring had grown wide and red. I rubbed butter from the fridge onto my finger, but the ring would not budge. My panic swelled; suddenly there was nothing more important than getting this ring off. I didn’t even know how. YouTube videos on my phone told me there were several methods for getting a ring off. First I found Windex and sprayed my finger and tugged at it, but that did not work. Other videos I watched suggested icing your finger and keeping it raised, which I did for ten minutes while searching for the nearest fire department or jewelry store on my phone, both of which were listed as places to go to get rings cut through. But I didn’t want to cut off the ring. That felt sacrilegious—the clearest indicator that I had not properly respected my marriage at all.

I was in no place to handle larger lessons here. I was just trying not to cry. Ice did nothing to get the ring off; in fact, it just exacerbated the pulsing of my heartbeat in my finger, and made me believe that the swelling was only getting worse.

I found a man on YouTube who assured me that he would be able to help me get the ring off. He had 650,452 views, and so I believed he had some kind of answer that had proved helpful to others. His method matched up to the directions that the American Surgical Association had posted on their own page. It involved dental floss. Their instructions felt opaque to me in the height of my distress, and so I searched out someone who could show me what to do. The man on the video spoke in soothing tones, neither downplaying my trauma nor making me feel stupid for making such a mistake. He said, “This may sound silly, but if you don’t want to have your ring cut off you can use an item that is found in most bathrooms.”