I ran to the bathroom and found dental floss that had been collecting dust. The man had made a show of sliding the dental floss under the ring and wrapping it all along his finger until he reached his knuckle, which he took great care in circling with floss until his skin wasn’t visible anymore. He said the person in trouble was supposed to tamp down the swelling with the floss and use the end of it to pull the ring down the finger and over the secured knuckle.

I was distraught while tugging, not caring that I was ripping at my skin as I did so. I could not bear the thought of losing the ring any more than I could bear the loss of my finger. And though it felt dramatic, standing in a stranger’s kitchen in my underwear and crying, finger haphazardly wrapped in someone’s forgotten dental floss, it felt somehow appropriate in that moment. I could not handle any kind of loss, no matter how small or necessary, and so I tugged at that ring on my finger until it ripped through the dental floss, and my skin, and the swollen crevices of my knuckle, finally sliding off. I had become covered in sweat in the process. I sat down on the kitchen floor and put my head in my hands.

I knew what I was avoiding at home. Our divorce papers. The official end of our marriage. Bobby had found the lawyer and made the appointment after I left him. When I asked when and where I needed to show up, he told me that all I had to do was send him half of the lawyer fee over Venmo. It cost less for us to get divorced than it had to get married. Bobby and I discussed it all over texts. Six months after filing, we would officially be divorced. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but this all seemed to be happening with little effort. I guess it was supposed to be a signal that we were allowed to move on. But I didn’t want to yet. I imagined an envelope of court documents sitting on my doorstep, thick and heavy with reams of paper explaining what it was we were supposed to do now.