Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 16: "Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet..."

I have been noticing lately that my engagement ring feels loose.  Not quite falling-off loose, but not as secure as I would like.  I've had it for over 3 months now, so I know it's just not that it's new and I'm hyper-conscious of it, and it's not run-of-the-mill paranoia about it falling off.  I've lost exactly 17 pounds between the day I first donned the ring to now (and was about 10 lbs heavier before that, back when he asked me oh so subtly for my "jewelry sizes").  So of those 27 pounds, if even a few ounces of those came from my fingers, then yeah, it makes sense that I would be a different ring size.  My high school ring (which I lost many years ago and still miss, because it was awesome) was a size 5½ I think, and that fit my right ring finger.  In college, a size 6 was correct.  At my biggest, 6½ was my ring size.  When Dan asked me my sizes, and I was about 10 lbs down from my biggest, I told him that 6 or 6½ was my ring size.  He went with 6½, which was correct at the time, so I can't fault him for it.  It fit fine when I got it, which is why I didn't take advantage of the jeweler's free re-size period of 60 days.

However, as I descend firmly into the 150s of weight, a territory unknown to me for at least the last decade, I find that I don't know what my ring size is.  And I certainly don't know what it will be when I lose another 10 or 15 or 20 pounds.  I don't even know what weight I'm shooting for, much less whether my sausage fingers will still be little sausages at such a weight.  But I do know that I keep my ring on its designated holder on the bathroom sink more and more often these days, so paranoid am I that I'm going to calorie deficit this ring right off my finger.  And an engagement ring that you can't wear is kind of lame.

So, knowing that a re-size was in the near future, I casually dropped this information into a conversation with Dan the other day.  Here is a reenactment:

Amber: I think I've finally lost enough weight that my ring is kind of loose.  I might have to get it sized down.

Dan: Oh, shit, really?  Ugh.

Amber: Yeah, well, that's what happens when you lose a bunch of weight.

Dan: Is it like, a little loose, or falling off?

Amber: Right now it's a little loose, but it's only going to get looser.  Do know how much it'll cost to get it re-sized?  I know the company you got it from had a free re-size period, but I know it's expired by now.  I figure it'll be more expensive because it's platinum, but it shouldn't be that bad.

Dan: I mean, I don't know the exact numbers, but it's going to be crazy expensive.  With it being platinum, it's going to cost a shitload of money.

Amber: Well, if it's more than three figures, then I'm not going to worry about it, that's too much.  I'll wear it on a different finger if I have to.

Dan: Oh, it's going to be at least three figures.  I'll be lucky if I get away with paying less than $500.

Knowing that Dan didn't know what the fuck he was talking about, but also knowing that I wasn't sure of the price hike for platinum, I went online and searched around.  Information was pretty all over the place, but every forum and website I saw suggested that it would either be under $100 or free, depending on the jeweler.  I went on the website of the company that made my ring and did their little customer service chat thing.  Cost of resizing this ring?  $50.

There are several things that really bother me about this whole thing, and it's certainly not about paying no goddamned fifty bucks to re-size a ring.  First, Dan's reaction was so overwhelmingly negative that I was pretty taken aback.  I did expect him to frown upon an additional cost associated with our engagement/impending marriage, but I didn't expect him to shit bricks.  And at least a brick or two did, indeed, get shat.  I know that he doesn't understand what I'm about to say, but...seriously, you're mad about something that is a result of me losing weight?  SERIOUSLY?

[Tangent: He certainly wasn't upset when I gave away trash bag after trash bag of clothes, totaling now three separate trips to Good Will.  Does he give a shit that I just lost probably $2000 worth of my accumulated wardrobe?  Nah, honey badger don't give a fuck.  When I express any disdain for having to get rid of so many clothes, some of which were not cheap, Dan is Captain Silver Lining, saying that it's for a good reason and now I won't have such a crowded closet, yadda yadda.  He's allllll about positivity then.  And I will tell you why.  Dan believes that the amount of stuff I own is significantly greater than the amount the I need and/or the amount that any person should own.  He owns like 5 pairs of pants, so therefore everyone should own 5 pairs of pants.  He has 25 t-shirts, so therefore everyone should have 25 t-shirts.  If I have 30 t-shirts (and I assure you, the number is far greater, even with the repeated wardrobe cullings), then that is too many, regardless of the sources of the shirts, my use or need of them, or my storage of them.  Moreover, it seems to irk him, slightly but constantly, that I have "too much stuff".  I will be the first to admit that I have lots of things.  I follow George Carlin's philosophy/critique of using a house to keep all your stuff while you're out getting more stuff.  My personal  policy is that as long as everyone can be "put away" whether it be a closet or a drawer or what have you, then you're fine.  If stuff is just out and that's where it lives (hoarders-style), then that's too much stuff.  Dan and I do not have the same benchmarks/standards for this, and while I don't really care if Dan is a bit spartan in his possessions, he certainly gives a shit when I'm sybaritic in mine. /Tangent]

So the fact that Dan was so up in arms about my ring getting to be too big for me bothered me.  I'm not saying he has to celebrate every inconvenience that comes with dropping 3 stone, but maybe don't treat my weight loss as a burden, you know?  He already laments how he doesn't get to order takeout as much anymore because I won't order with him (what, are his fingers/legs broken that he can't get his own dinner?), which he's not saying to make me feel bad but is just saying what's on his mind, but holy shit, Supportive Jones he is not.  Another, weight-unrelated issue I had with our conversation about ring resizing is that he assumed that the financial burden was his.  He never thought about the possibility of me paying for this process, despite the fact that I'm the one who took action that directly resulted in the ring no longer fitting.  Maybe he assumed responsibility because he bought me the ring, or maybe it was because I bothered to say something to him about it so he figured that meant I expected him to pay for it.  I don't know.  But dude, I got this.  All fifty dollars of it.

A few weeks ago, Dan and I were talking with some mutual friend of ours whom I can't presently recall, and that person mentioned my blog.  Dan regretfully said he still hadn't read it, which I find funny because I told him about it once five years ago and have nary mentioned it again.  He later asked me if he should be afraid to read it and if I spend the whole time bad-mouthing him, and we had a good chuckle over that.  I told him that I would never be offended if he didn't read it, but that he was welcome to do so.  As I look back at past entries, I find a surprising number of them either are directly inspired by conflict with Dan or at least offer passing critiques of him.  I guess it makes sense that the person I love, live with, and plan to marry would end up being a frequent subject in my blog, but it bothers me to look at my own entries and see this sea of negativity, much of it directed at him.  It certainly was never my intent with this blog (nor could it have been, since it's been around longer than he has), but it seems that it has become a slightly different animal over time.  Even as I go back and obsessively reread this very entry for typos and spelling errors (which still seem to sneak through no matter how much I proof it), I'm a little surprised at how angry I sound/am.

I think I use this blog primarily the way I would use a therapist.  And rereading this shit, I think I might have a need for a real one of those.  This blog does a great job at accepting me for who I am and not judging me for the numerous mistakes I've made, but it doesn't offer much in the way of probing questions and insightful advice.  Yesterday I spent a half an hour looking up information on Selective Eating Disorder (what they're now calling us grown-ass picky eaters), and found that there's an eating disorders specialist at Tufts Medical Center downtown who works with selective eaters.  Should I get a referral from my PCP and just go?  Am I ready to start treatment for a disorder?  It sounds so grave when I say it like that.  Would this specialist be able to then refer me to a boring ol' psychiatrist?  Do I really want to have two shrinks when before I had none?  Oye.  It's all getting very complicated.  When I wanted to lose weight but couldn't seem to do it, life seemed a lot simpler.  There was a single enemy, and it required a single battle plan.  The reasons for my life-long weight problems were legion; I had to wade through a lot just to even get started, and many of those causes persist today.  But it was still a single issue, about which I could safely become single-minded.  Now that I have the power to change my body, something I never thought I could really do, what else can I do?  And now that I have committed to my health, am I now inextricably bound to the responsibility of fixing everything about myself?  Where do I draw the line between self-improvement and hypercritical self-destruction?  Knowing that change requires destroying the old habits and traits, how much of myself should I attempt to replace with what I believe to be the upgraded version? 

This is all getting very deep and dramatic and serious.  But it's Thursday afternoon and I have tomorrow off and PAX East is this weekend and tomorrow I'ma do a final weigh-in at my gym for a weight loss contest that I'm probably going to win.  So a lot of good things are happening and I need to just be.  To facilitate being, here is a puppy: