I Broke a Tooth: No, Not That One

My two front teeth are crowns, and these crowns are 11 years old. For many years after I first got them, I had nightmares about them falling off on a vacation or at work or while camping in the middle of nowhere, exposing my little ground down vampire teeth and the sensitive nerves just beneath their surface.

It has haunted me ever since, though this fear has dissipated year by year and been replaced with an emotion closest to grief, but not exactly.

I have always been a teeth grinder. I have TMJ and night guards and Advil in every purse and backpack I own. I used to clench my jaw so tightly that I needed to be prescribed muscle relaxers just to open my mouth wide enough for a mouth guard to be fitted.

Sure, braces and expanders wreaked havoc as they served their intended purpose to repair my ghastly overbite, but I ground (grounded? grinded?) my teeth primarily because I absorbed and toughened and broiled in response to an abusive parent.

A little over a year ago, I cracked a molar on the right side of my lower jaw. My dentist and I agreed to “watch it” at each appointment, in an aim to delay the eventual crown. In response, I have chewed all my food on the left side for the past year. It’s less sensitive and helps me feel like I’m doing something to help.

I’ve been worrying so intensely about the right-side molar cracking into bits in the middle of the night or during dinner with friends or as I eat and handful of chocolate chips in front of the TV, that it didn’t even cross my radar I may crack a tooth on the opposite side.

You know, the side that I’ve been wearing down exclusively for the past year.

But in the backseat of the truck on our way to a restaurant with my boyfriend’s parents, this is exactly what happened. I had passed out granola bars to everyone in the car because I always am packing, snacks that is. In a truly unfunny plot twist from the universe, I bit into an almond that was sprinkled into the fancy granola bars my boyfriend buys (that somehow also contain egg whites??), and my bottom left molar chipped off like a dramatic National Geographic video of a melting glacier, an entire triangular chunk sloughing off into the ocean.

I swallowed it, because I was in denial that the cracking noise wasn’t the almond itself and also because I couldn’t distinguish it from the almond until it stabbed me in the throat on the way down. Double fuck.

I licked the side of my tooth, realized what had happened, and immediately felt myself leaving my body. Zoning out, trying to deaden everything, trying desperately not to freak out in a car that I was not driving to an event that was supposed to be light hearted and dental disaster free.

When I felt myself dissociating, I reminded myself why I restarted therapy a few months back in the first place. I want to be present, whether the present sucks or not. So I take some deep breaths and look out the window, pretending to admire the landscape as I take inventory of the level of danger.

Am I in pain? I ask myself.

No.

Am I bleeding?

Also no.

Are more pieces loose?

Still no, thank the Lordt.

I decide that while this sucks, I am okay. It is Saturday which is pretty much the furthest day from Medical Care Monday, but if I chew my food on the right side, the not-yet-busted-but-also-not-great side, I can get through the weekend.

After I decide that I am not in major danger, I settle down. I sat in this okayish feeling for half a millisecond until shame whooshed to replace it like a tsunami that had been held back by toothpicks.

I am only 30, and am about to get my third fake tooth, which isn’t even the third fake tooth I was mentally PREPARED to get. Which means I will soon have FOUR fake teeth because the previously cracked molar isn’t going to last forever and I am obviously trash and lazy and neglectful and I am ruined because of a parent who was ruthlessly mean for 22 years. I will always be damaged and will continue to deteriorate no matter how much energy and effort I make in therapy and every day in between. I quit, I suck, nothing matters, I’m doomed before I start.

My outlook at this point is sunshine and unicorn farts as you can tell.

My boyfriend makes a pit stop on the way to the restaurant at the Vitamin Shoppe and I go in with him, pretending I need something even though I’ve never needed anything ever at the Vitamin Shoppe except a very sexy colon cleanser in college - big thank you to General Tsos cafeteria chicken and Natty Light and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I corner my boyfriend in the first aisle that finally has no looming customers and say, “I have bad news,” as if my broken tooth is bad news for both of us, which it is obviously not. “I broke a molar.”

He stares at me.

“Not that molar though,” I say to fill in the one second of pause during which I assumed he was assuming I broke the tooth that was already kind of broken. “I broke a molar and I need you to look at it so I know how much to freak out and what I can eat at the restaurant.”

He looks in my mouth and asks me to tilt my head but not like that and can I please turn toward the light even though people are definitely looking but I don’t blame them because I’m now almost crying as he tries to describe it to me, but quickly gives up because he remembers that he has the vocabulary of a walrus since his most fluent language is Math and he finally decides to take a picture of the situation with his iPhone shoved up to my face and thank goodness for that.

He turns the phone around so I can see the picture.

It’s exactly as bad as I thought. Busted, but manageable for two days and some careful pizza and definitely, definitely, beer.

We drive to the restaurant and I am mostly okay. I text my sister to request a pep talk because she knows my love language is words of affirmation and right now I am a whore for encouragement and she has the vocabulary of a wise garden fairy.

She texts me back, I breathe a little deeper.

We park the truck, I pretend not to sprint to the bar counter which results in a conspicuously spirited power walk, and order a nice blonde beer to drink in the sun and imagine I am the type of person who is totally okay to push through and laugh off an unexpected enamel elopement.

And because I pretend to be this person, I become her.

I am aware of my sad shard glacier molar and still manage to enjoy my food by discreetly mushing it around my mouth. I tell just enough silly irrelevant stories because of how totally carefree I am that my boyfriend thinks I am drunk off my ass.

Oh, how I wish.

I put a note in my calendar for 9am on Monday to call my dentist, as if I’d possibly forget, and I chew my food cautiously on the right side, wondering if by Monday I will have busted both back molars anyway and can get a BOGO deal on dental work.

I laugh to myself, thank myself, trust myself.

I do it because I pretend I can, and I can.

Yours,

Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia