Thawing Out a Dentist Smile (Speculations)

I'm currently drinking tea out of a straw because the right side of my mouth is too numb to retain any liquid. Needless to say, it's a useful method to reduce the amount of drooling.

I must say, technology really is going a long way (Not because of the straw!). Remember I said I had two cavities to get fixed last week? Well, today I got them fixed in under 30 minutes and I felt 5% pain max. It was much better than when I used to get my teeth fixed when I was younger (and I can't imagine how it must have been for my parents when they were kids... or for medieval folk... yikes).

It's what I wanted to talk about today though. Pain, anticipated pain, pain that heals and makes us stronger, and vain pain. I thought of a parallel between the unbearable anguish and internal conflict that life painfully drops on us regularly and the pain at the dentist (Well, the former pain). I also made a connection to sickness. Without being arrogant, I've seemed to have found a more positive way to undertake depression.

There are two pains I’ve identified today in the dentist’s chair. There is the pain you go through, by choice, to evolve and make things better and to keep going on without pain. I call this "The dentist". There is also the pain that was uncalled for, that simply attacks you, and that you must fight against (usually this brings more pain) to get better. I call this “The cancer”.

I'm confident fighting through a cancer is not vain. The attacker (the cancer) itself may be vain, but surely one who is affected by the disease and gets through it learns much about life. Learning is not vain. Surely they become an inspiration to others. Affecting others is not vain. It will not have been a vain battle whether the victim survives or not, so long as they fought their best battle.

So why should I feel that freeing oneself from depression is a vain goal? I've been attached to my own anxiety and dejection because I felt that if I fought against it like you would the flu or a cancer, and I got better, I will feel I had suffered so much for no reason since I would be well and unchanged. Cancer victims do come out of a vain sickness changed and why would I be afraid to let cancer vanish? The difference between depression and cancer is that cancer is physically provable; victims are not be alone. Melancholy is invisible. I would want to stay depressed so that I would never be cured and I could search indefinitely for a positive reason for my condition.

Well I realize now that fighting this feeling inside me, this obstacle, is not vain at all. I tell myself this all the time when I have the flu and I’m shivering and my muscles ache and it’s hard to ingest or digest, your throat is burning and you have cold sweats all over… I tell myself to fight the disease, not the pain, to simply endure the pain because once I am healed I will feel better and the memory of the hurt will merely make me stronger. Why should I keep this bit of knowledge from myself when I am down in the dumps?

That’s how my outlook is more positive now. I’m not sure whether depression is a “dentist” or a “cancer”; in my case it might have become a bit of both. Whatever it is, I have learnt so much about life because of this and though most people will not see me as a hero or an inspiration for surviving it, when others have to go to the dentist after me, if I have kids one day, I could share my tale. “Don’t worry. The dentist hurts for a little bit. You feel horrible and have a fever, trying to vomit for hours, but it’ll pass. Once you are better, whether everyone knows what’s happened to you, whether you’ve learnt anything from it, it doesn’t matter, you’re free now, go forward, you can share this with your kids later.”

Now I know why I should try to be happy. It’ll become easier and easier to quit this redundant habit of mine.

*Smiling mask by Kathleen Carr http://www.kathleentcarr.com/-/kathleentcarr/

I have Two Cavities to get Fixed on Monday

Yesterday I slept through my radio alarm and instead I woke up to the phone ringing. The call was to inform me that I was late for my Dentist’s appointment and that I would have to reschedule. I felt quite dreadful. I don’t know why this happens to me, but whatever I do, no matter how subtle or honest I am I always end up looking like I’m out of it, clumsy, and indolent. I am no slacker believe me. I am usually earlier than on time, but for some reason these mishaps curiously always happen at the worst times.

I usually have trouble telling others what I do with my days because to them reading and writing and all the small things I do to keep on learning is not anything that helps me forward, so I’ve got nothing to answer and I look so worthless. And I am trying to get a job even though it feels oh so awful, but really it only looks like I’m slacking, doing my best to avoid employment and continue to leech off of others. I absolutely despise leeching! I probably look like I’m justifying my sluggishness with pathetic excuses right now… Well this is complicated!

Needless to get into a spiral of justifying justifications, because, though I had missed my appointment, I ran to the dentist

anyways and was able to get an appointment one hour later. This took me up a spiral of relief actually. In the dentist’s chair my dentist kept asking me questions: Did you miss class to come here? Are you in college? Why aren’t you in college anymore? Do you work? It’s funny the way dentists ask you a bunch of questions even though you clearly can’t talk with their hands in your mouth. When I could slip a word in the conversation I did my best not to sound idle. I was honest with her, told her I was not sure what to do yet but that school was not the place for me. I told her I had no room to be creative in the literature program. I was amazed. Instead of judging me like I thought a dentist might she admitted to have been the queen of indecisiveness after high school. She had ambitions and she never followed through with them, yet there she was, quite a content dentist. She asked me, and not in a pejorative manner, “So your like an artist at heart?” It made me smile and attempt to nod as she flossed my teeth.

I found I could work around her questions, with genuine honesty, and manage to express myself and be understood. Although I was at the dentist’s, a place that is so esthetically far away from who I truly am, I felt like myself (I still don’t know what that is though), I felt comfortable.


(Pictures from Public Record Office Victoria and Ontario Archives)