Crumbly Teeth
Hey hey hey! It’s been a hectic few months but I am back and it feels really good to be sharing with you again. As a reminder; I am a writer, mental health advocate, educator, mother, and aspiring good person. I am not a professional anything and I don’t claim to have the answers. I am simply sharing my journey and some lessons I’ve learned along the way because I find writing cathartic and hopefully someone out there can learn from or at the very least be entertained by my stories. This has been a hell of a year and I am so grateful for your continued support!
I walk around all big smiles and nonchalance but you should know that I planned my end of life celebration three times last week! Somehow, on three separate occasions, my brain convinced me to hyperfocus on figuring out what would happen to my children when I die because apparently my time’s up; and you wouldn’t believe what jump started this foolishness…
I don’t even know how to dress it up or rationalize it to make it sound the least bit logical, so I’ll just get right to it. I was driving home from work one day and thought I had a popcorn kernel stuck between my teeth. I proceed to pick it out only to realize I’d just pulled out a chunk of my tooth. I panicked. No. I really panicked, I went from zero to five thousand instantaneously. And it kept creeping up on me throughout the coming week.
When I first spit out that itty bitty, tiny piece of tooth, my brain immediately told me that the ONLY possible explanation for my tooth to chip is because I must have a severe Vitamin D deficiency which obviously means I have stage four cancer metastasized to all of my organs. There was no hesitation, I didn’t have to process it. As soon as I realized my tooth was broken, my brain knew instantly that I was a goner. The cancer recurrence anxiety is off the charts as of late and I can’t shake it. Instead of doing something conducive to my mental well being, like making a dental appointment or even making an oncology appointment, I decided to internally make peace with the fact that I was dying and stress about what was about to happen to my children.
Listen to me. I imagined who would have to tell them, who would pack up my condo, full on custody battles, and where my kids would have to go to school. I even cried because I didn’t know if I’d be able to haunt people for not following my last wishes. I was a big ol’ nasty mess! I would be fine, walking through Hobby Lobby, then BAM! I’m crying because I’m dead, my kids aren’t spending enough time together, and nobody’s wearing The Great family t-shirts on Thanksgiving. And remember, all of this started and lasted a whole week BECAUSE MY TOOTH CHIPPED. I do take pride in my teeth so it was more than a little upsetting, but after a week of sporadic meltdowns, I finally decided to sit down and write it out. I journaled for about an hour with the prompt “Crumbly Teeth” (I’m not dramatic or anything) and this is what I learned:
I thought I had my anxiety under control but there’s a chance it’s still controlling me.
For someone so often convinced they’re dying, I’m actually ill prepared for death.
I need more therapy.
There is a chance that one day I may have cancer again so I’m sure some anxiety is expected. However, it’s probably not okay that every time any part of my body changes or hurts I’m thrown into a downward spiral that significantly interferes with my day to day life. I should be able to make a dentist appointment without filling out a Power of Attorney and Googling the price of urns.
In completely unrelated news, I’ve decided I’d like for this site to be a little more positive! I think I’ve been avoiding spending time updating it because I tend to get on here and write about these super heavy things, and truly that’s not a fair representation of my life. So, going forward, I am going to put forth the effort to share more positive updates too! In the spirit of positivity, you should know I have a part time job that I absolutely LOOOOOVE, I joined a creative women’s group that has honestly become my favorite part of the week, and I’ve been spending some time with an old friend, Red!! Do you remember me telling you about her? No? Go read Seeing Red!
Creatively yours,
Bee Reflective, Positive, Logical (with a little bit of neurosis)
