To recap, in my last installment, I got myself a ring in Pittsburgh as a little treat. That’s not a euphemism. Those are simply the facts.
But once I possess it, like a demon in a body, I wanna wait for the right occasion to show it off.
(I got supernatural malevolence on the brain! Anyone else watching Evil, originally on CBS, now fully streaming on Paramount+, partially streaming on Netflix, and not at all streaming on Hulu Diamond Elite Junior?)
Not that I need some big party to go to, but one must find little ways to spice up the steady though subjectively paced march of time. One day it’s throwing za’atar into your instant mac & cheese, the next, it’s wearing a new ring.
(Have you all gone wild with za’atar like I have? SPRINKLE IT ON YOUR LAPTOP, I DARE YOU.)
It’s quite the to-do getting this ring home with me. En route to said destination, my first flight is delayed so the airline automatically rebooks me on a later connecting flight going to a DIFFERENT airport than the original one.
I didn’t even know this could happen. It’s like if the doctor’s office was like “Don’t worry, we rescheduled your appointment. Now it’s yesterday!” Excuse me, where am I? Goof Town, Population: Banana?
Sad to say my checked bag said “absolutely not”—as it stands, she refuses to travel with me—and gets on my original connecting flight (which I could have actually still made). And so, we both end up at different destinations. I give you all this sludgy exposition because ZE RING is in that rollaboard!
I make peace with never seeing my suitcase or the ring again. You see, I’ve had the travel powers-that-be lose one of my bags before.
I do still wonder what it’s up to every now and again. I hope that its zippers and locks have long ago sealed over and it’s now fully human and traveling the world. That or it’s at the bottom of the sea like the Titanic diamond necklace. Both equally romantic options!
![man beside body of water looking toward buildings man beside body of water looking toward buildings](https://images.unsplash.com/36/X7L5hgFXQZazzPaK3goC_14084990857_88cabf3b6d_o.jpg?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwyfHxwZW5zaXZlJTIwbG9va3xlbnwwfHx8fDE3MTk1MjU5MDB8MA&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&q=80&w=1080)
Lucky for me this time around, my bag is delivered to me early the next morning.
So, as a little yay-whee to get my day going, I slip on the new ring! It looks like a ring you could put a timeless curse on someone with. I love it.
I head to therapy ready to make some opal-driven breakthroughs. I am immediately transported and enchanted when I get there because my therapist’s office is extremely cozy chic. It looks like a little squirrel home in a hollowed out tree trunk, if that squirrel were also into breath work and using colorful rocks to represent different parts of your brain.
After my session, I just barely make it to a local coffee shop in time to evacuate my brain bladder’s epiphanies into a journal. Next, spiritually sated, but in need of human drudgery to fuel up for next week’s therapy, I consider obtaining groceries.
I’m getting ready to go when something catches my eye or rather doesn’t catch my eye. Alas and alack! My ring. It’s gone. My finger is one naked skin carrot.
I am stunned with disbelief. How is this possible? As I wrote earlier this year, I lost my keys on a walk and never found them. This feels like that all over again but with less security risks and more threats of me writing regrettable poetry.
What do I do? Retrace all my steps? Starting from when? Pittsburgh? How long has the blessed object been gone? Is there a hotline for this? I try to make a plan while simultaneously spiraling.
I check the immediate area first. For some reason, I feel self-conscious about looking like someone who’s looking for something so I very discreetly sneak glances around like I’m trying to meet up with another clumsy spy who also happens to be a ground-dwelling crawler.
Nothing. Of course I see nothing, YOU LOST IT, you fool!!!
I go all the way through the coffee shop, out to the street to my car and back. It’s nowhere. This isn’t RIGHT! I haven’t even worn it once! I’ve worn it a FRACTION OF ONCE. At least make it two dates, one of them a Michelin star dinner!!!
Did it never belong to me in the first place?! If someone else finds it, what are the chances they will try to locate the rightful owner? And if they do find me, will we, by law, have to get married with the ring officiating?
While narrating this mental podcast (AD-FREE!!!), I even do a cursory search through the coffee shop trash can in case the ring somehow found its way into my lunch refuse. The baristas look on, unfazed. “My ring!” I blubber, less manic pixie dream girl, more recently disgraced politician.
Was I playing with it too carelessly in therapy? Paradoxically twirling the silver circle around willy-nilly as I droned on about my anxious-avoidant attachment tendencies?
I go all the way back to the enchanted healing nook to look for the ring there.
By now, I’m on a bonafide quest. Let’s note as well for your imagination that I’m talking to myself like a slightly-better-dressed Gollum. Though you can have Andy Serkis play me, as I think his physicality would display more commitment.
(I actually just watched a YouTube video on how Andy Serkis auditioned for the part of Gollum. You wanna talk about process? ANDY SERKIS IS PROCESS.)
I decide to enlist technology to aid me in the least practical way possible: emotional support. I text a bunch of people asking if they’ve ever lost something before that they were wearing for the first time, praying nobody would say underwear or something where I would be expected to ask follow up. THIS IS MY JOURNEY—no time for your reveries!
Do you ever notice how depending on the problem you have, you kind of narrow down who in your social circles would be best to call upon? I have different friends I go to for different types of problems. I had a couple on deck for counsel for missing items, like saints. It doesn’t always make logical sense. Sometimes it’s just like, “Let’s see what Trina’s take is on this. It probably won’t be helpful, but it will be SINGULAR.” (Trina is not a pseudonym in case anybody is reading this and thinks they are Trina.)
I finally made my way home, at this point resigned to having lost my ring forever. I know material goods are simply that, but I tend to equate real meaning and emotion to objects very quickly, maybe because I can project anything I want onto them. I was at least medium-level bereft.
Then, as I was preparing to head out that night and primping in the bedroom mirror, I glanced off to the side and there it was staring me in the face. THE RING.
UM.
WHAT.
AS IN I NEVER LOST IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
This is like when at the end of the movie, it was all a dream or something. It’s a cop out! ACOAB.
I must have taken it off when I was preening that morning. Looking at it in its concreteness, this object I had assumed was never to be mine again, I didn’t quite know how to process.
It was a freaking deus ex machina that only a Trina could dream up!
(Damn, Trinas are really getting it in this post.)
I look at it and I think, NO. This is what happens to me with my spirals. I am frequently more invested in the reality of them than in actual reality. So much so that even when the meltdown proves unfounded, it’s irrelevant because my body has already done the full emotional Crossfit workout.
Weirdly, it felt as if this ring and I were pretty much strangers again. Exes reunited after too short a time. We didn’t know how to act.
I’ve been wearing it pretty much every day since as a reminder. Of what? I guess to try and accept what is rather than what might be or wasn’t or may have been.
And every time I see it there, its beady black eye staring back at me, I clutch my fist and shake it at the sky. Ya got me again, Trina!
THE WEAKEST LINK
I once got mistakenly looped in on a group text of sorority pledges with instructions on where to meet later that day for the initiation. Despite it being a wrong number, I immediately felt pressure to go.
I never did say anything, and I still wonder about whose number it was supposed to have been, and if she was unfairly judged as “clearly not Gamma Phi Delta material.”