all i want for christmas is...

i have a cavity. at least one. maybe more. but one that i can definitely see...one that i just spent way too long looking at in horror. i can feel it. the feeling was what sent me to the bathroom mirror, where the light is harsh and honest, where i could lean way close to the glass, my mouth open as wide as possible, head held at an angle that would permit me to see the reflection of my back teeth, that one last molar on the left side bottom, where there's a little black hole.

i. am. completely. grossed. out.

not infrequently i have dreams that my teeth fall out. they get loose, drop out one by one, leave me looking snaggled and repulsive. awful awful awful! these are horrible horrible tricks my mind plays on me while i'm trying to sleep. i've lost all of my teeth so many times that it's a wonder my dreaming brain hasn't completely gotten bored with the storyline. vivid, ugly, gruesome, teeth falling out. they, along with drawbridges and tornados, make up my top three most recurring dream images.

if you really wanted to waste your time, you could go find an online dream dictionary to try and decode what my unconscious is saying. apparently i have issues with loss and am afraid of deceit and a bunch of blahblahblah. i don't really buy it. i never really buy those things. but i still read them. because someday maybe they'll tell me what i want to hear...

never let it be said that i have yet learned to make peace with my anxieties...

and want to know what one of my most profound fears is? i'm damn near mortified of losing my teeth. how predictable.

today. it's wintertime. the sidewalks get icy. if i lose my footing, and my brain jerks into panic mode, my first thought more often than not is an image of me falling and knocking my teeth out. i see myself the way i look in my dreams, teeth all over the place, clicking on the ground like little pieces of glass; my face pale and dumbstruck, not a goddamn thing i can do to stop it.

and now for the really stupid part: i haven't been to a dentist since my early days in philly. that was years ago. YEARS! i haven't been to a dentist in years, says the girl with the fear of losing her teeth. years. what am i doing? why is it that i'll bend over backwards to go to a neurologist or to keep my annual appointments with my gynecologist, but i've gotten really damn good at pretending that if i don't go to a dentist, that means that my teeth are all a-okay?

oh, let the psychoanalysis begin... i'm going back to cleaning my apartment.