My dentist asks: Are you brushing twice a day?
I wonder why I’m able to drive 47 minutes out of my way for a boy who doesn’t care about my flickering engine light, the fact that my car is terrible on gas, or that the prices at the station just seem to keep rising. I wonder why I’m able to do that, but my daily routines seem so insurmountable. It takes two hours of a pep talk to turn the shower on, debating on washing my hair while the water starts to run cold, question whether the prickles on my shins and calves are noticeable from a distance as the grip of the razor leaves indents on my palms.
It's always 3:30 in the morning when I realize the time. I’ve been up, wishing that there were more hours in my days, putting off the final curtain call before bed. I sink into the armchair, the anticipation of the nightly oral care routine egging me on from the other side of the wall that meets my bathroom.
I hate myself for caring so much. I brush my teeth. I already forget about it by the time my head hits my pillow. I hate myself for worrying in the first place. I’d do anything to avoid it, I’d drive 47 minutes out of my way for a boy who doesn’t care about me at all.
My dentist asks: How hard are you brushing? Do you floss? Is there blood when you spit?
Two minutes is all it takes for my thoughts to off-road, the route attempts to recalculate but it’s too far gone. Two minutes with the toothbrush too hard on my top teeth, my hand steady, my head somewhere else, lost with no way back to the main road.
Now I’m in my parked car at the grocery store down the street from the boy’s house. He doesn’t care about the serious conversation we need to have. He tells me to wait there, but there aren’t many more songs on this playlist, and my nerves keep trying to jump from the open window. I grip the steering wheel, knuckles whiter than my teeth, which are clenched harder than my clasp.
Every time I brush my mouth throbs under my heavy hand. I drop the brush in the cup to the left of the faucet. I watch the combination of toothpaste-spit foam out from behind my bottom lip. In the sink it’s streaked with cherry-red, blotted with my blood. I start to only buy “Soft” toothbrushes; I never knew there was a difference. I’m too hardhanded, I’m too hard on myself, I’m too hard on the boy I need to have a serious conversation with. My teeth bite the side of my cheek and there’s blood in my mouth, but I don’t think that’s what the dentist cares most about.
My dentist asks: Does it hurt when I press on it? We might need to pull it if it’s cracked to the root.
There’s a term for grinding your teeth, it’s called bruxism, but my therapist just tells me to be more mindful of my mouth. She says it can be involuntary, stress-related, psychological, even genetic, but that I can work to combat the urge that my brain gives my jaw.
My mom had to get veneers when I was a kid. Her teeth have always been a standout feature to her face, not in a bad way, just in a way that draws a wandering eye immediately to her mouth. When my dad got on my case about scheduling a cleaning, he let a small slip of post-divorce pettiness escape from between his lips, I’m not going to pay for you to get new teeth like I had to do for your mother.
I’ve been clenching my jaw every time I see this boy’s name light up on my phone, but I’ve also been clenching in all the minutes, hours, and days when it doesn’t. I clench, open the text, two-word replies, I grind. I clench, respond immediately, hear nothing in return, I grind.
I clench, I grind.
The dentist confirms that the fracture goes to the root. She warns me against worn enamel, sensitivity, lockjaw, earaches. She recommends a nightguard, convinces me it’s painless. She tells me I won’t even know it’s there. She settles on removing the cracked tooth, it can’t be saved, it’s not in my smile, nobody will notice.
You wouldn’t know that my mom has veneers, they look just like normal teeth. I asked her about the genetics of bruxism and she tells me she stopped grinding in her sleep after she married my stepfather.
Stress related, psychological. I wait for the boy’s name to light up on my phone, I try to tell my brain to stop sending the signals to my jaw. I clench, I grind. The dentist prepares for the extraction, another piece of me ripped out before it’s ready.
My dentist asks: Are you brushing your tongue? It’s important for your overall health.
I tear open the Amazon packaging to find a smaller cellophaned package with three silver tools inside. The three-piece stainless-steel tongue scraper kit was cheaper than the one-piece scraper for sale at CVS, which probably had something to do with the “100% BPA Free” sticker on the packaging. Everyone’s so concerned with what they put in their body, until they’re not. The tools are cold when they make contact with my palm, they’re light metal, easily travelable, but they remind me of the tools on the powder-blue disposable sterilization paper in my gynecologist’s office. The shine that came off of them, against the matte coloring of the paper, of my palm, as I sat in the examination room, alone, because the boy forgot to put the date in his calendar, even though he promised to not make me do it by myself.
Your tongue is covered in bacteria. It nestles between the taste buds; finds a home in crevices you don’t even know exist. It’ll fester and grow and become a problem you can’t ignore, unless it’s removed. You can’t wish it away, or rinse it out, because the biofilm of germs seeps beneath the tongue’s surface. At first, you might not notice much, maybe even just a bad taste in your mouth. Other people won’t notice either, unless they stand close enough for long enough. But eventually, you show. The bacteria grows and multiples and feeds off of you, leading to tooth damage, decay, and possible extraction.
What you have to do, then, is brush it: back and forth, side to side, rinse, repeat. When you’re done with that you take the silver tools and you scrape and claw and scratch until there’s nothing left. Just the healthy pink tissue you started with.
Bacteria can only grow if you give it a host. Cut off its supply and there’s nothing left for it to feed on. But once it’s gone you can’t get it back until it grows again on its own, so make sure you keep the good bacteria safe and healthy.
It’s good for your overall health.
Mak Ozycz is a writer living in Connecticut. She earned her MFA from Western Connecticut State University. She has published creative nonfiction essays in various publications, including The Connecticut Literary Anthology, Five Minute Lit, Tones of Citrus, and more.
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