When I was twenty-one, I had my wisdom teeth pulled. Ex and I had crappy dental insurance at the time, and it wouldn’t cover oral surgery. So, in a moment of what I now know to be total fucking stupidity, I decided to save $1000 by having a regular dentist remove four impacted teeth with nothing but Novocaine. I was thinking something like, “Novocaine is related to cocaine. Cocaine is a mighty powerful drug (or so I’ve heard from people who actually had the balls to try it in college). It’ll be fine.” What I didn’t know was that they are not really close relatives—Novocaine and Cocaine. They are more like fourth cousins.
Novocaine is not really adequate anesthesia to have impacted wisdom teeth removed from your skull. Or, at least, not in the hands of the dentist I went to. At some point, he gave up on getting me numb and decided he would just try to work faster. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a job to be hurried. Those damn teeth did not want to come out. He ended up cutting them into pieces and then removing the pieces. This took a while, because he had a hard time getting hold of the pieces. By the time we were done, we had worked out a system. He would try to get a hold of a piece, I would squeeze his arm when he had it, and then he would pull.
I still get nauseous thinking about it.
I didn’t cry, though. The whole two hours. Not a drop. Not until I saw Ex in the waiting room. Then, I broke down—huge tears, complete with snot. When he asked what was wrong, I sobbed, “It was the worst thing ever.” I wasn’t even in pain anymore. Well, I mean, my mouth hurt, but nothing like the last two hours. What I mean was, I wasn’t crying because I was in pain. I was crying because the whole thing had been so fucking bad.
Tonight I found myself thinking about that day, about the way I felt in that waiting room.
I have decided I am allergic to my bedroom, as I spend a good twenty minutes sneezing when I lie down each night. I think I may have actually sneezed myself to sleep twice last week. So, in an effort to reclaim my bedroom as a place where I can breath, I decided I would tear it apart to clean it—vacuum, dust, launder every cloth thing in hot water. When I moved the bed, I found a journal from the summer after I left Ex. I made the mistake of reading it. Sober.
It was filled with these little letters to God. These little “Uh, please help me with this and this and this today. And thanks for taking care of this and this and this yesterday.” And, as I read it, I remembered how I felt. I was so grateful to be alive every day, and so worried that at any moment Ex might come kill me. I was holding onto what I had to believe was this huge, powerful, scary God for dear life. Because, when I didn’t, I would literally curl up into a ball, and cry, and shake, and go a little crazy. Literally.
What struck me as I read it was how fucking cheerful I sounded in those little letters. I think that part of me was afraid to be anything but, afraid that God would think me an ingrate and actually let Ex catch me. Like, “Well, if she doesn’t appreciate my protection, why should I even bother.” And, like I said, I really was very grateful.
But now, when I think back on all of it—on the five years I was married to him, on the summer I spent running from him—I feel like I did in that dentist’s waiting room. I just want to cry. Not because I’m in pain. Because, it is nothing like the searing pain I was in when I was actually there. I want to cry because the whole thing was so fucking bad.
And sometimes, buying earrings, and eating M&M’s, and being the wittiest, most together med student in the whole fucking world doesn’t cut it. Sometimes, like tonight, I just break down.
