My gums, the universe and everything

I grind my teeth. I ground them as a babe, slamming tiny china nubs against one another as they emerged from my gums. I ground them as a kid while we crossed country and my parents split up fractiously and violently, while living in an apartment infested with vermin, shopping with food stamps, wearing cast-off clothes and making grades while being bored, then sad, then lost at school. I ground them as my neck and shoulders solidified into a tight painful yoke. As the headaches came, unsoothed by aspirin, acetametaphin, or ibuprofen. I ground through college and teaching abroad, through jobs and two break-ups and Taekwondo training. Ten one day I as I shopped in a Safeway, pressed for time and tired from driving, I realized I was grinding in line, wide awake, in time to the piped-in music.

It’s called Bruxism, and it’s linked to a cute collection of associated issues and long-term effects. One effect is gum recession, whch led to Friday’s graft. My periodontist is excellent and has the qualities I love in a dentist: good with the novacaine and the understanding that I process it quickly, A no-bullshit demeanor, and steady, steady hands. He harvested about an inch of tissue from my palate and upholstered the exposed roots of two molars with it and stitched me up in an hour. The night before this happened, the basement flooded and snuffed both the furnace and the hot water heater. We have hot water now, but no heat. And while the graft has taken I have an infection somewhere in my mouth that oozes pus and reeks. I suspect the inside of my cheek has gotten lacerated from the stitches and depsite my vigilance in swishing and cleaning, crud happens around surgical sites when you can’t poke around and see things. Seamus will not let me kiss him, because I am a “stinkymouth”, and I now have a week’s course of amoxicillin.

My friends, I think I found my bottom.

Hi, I’m Sarah, and I am riddled with stress. I don’t know where it all came from, but I do know that I need to learn to get rid of it. I don’t want to pass this on to my child, nor do I want it to shorten my time with my family or lend itself to more insidious health issues. This must end with and within me. Because I suspect that so much of my life will, once I have let some/most/all of this go, become a fucking cakewalk. Not perfect but less fraught.