this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on August 28, 2001.
I would like to think that it was not a coincidence at all.
The other day I learned that my first boyfriend had gotten married. Why no one among my so-called friends bothered to tell me does not surprise me at all. Maybe they were afraid that I would sink (again) into a sea of depression or go on self-imposed exile. The problem is, I learned about it from the person himself, during a chance meeting. The saying that “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” apparently no longer rings true in today’s information age. Totally unprepared for the surprise announcement, I managed to flash a fake smile and extend a cheery “Congratulations!” But I never felt so insincere and artificial in my entire life. After our conversation, I suffered from a head-splitting toothache, and I didn’t know which was worse.
The next day I went to the dentist for an emergency treatment, clutching half of my head, which I wanted to bang against the wall. I was prepared to scream at anyone standing between the dental office and me.
The dentist told me that tooth No. 29 was decayed-infected after years of neglect. I was asked to choose between an extraction and a root canal.
I wanted to scream, “I don’t care, just give me the damn painkillers!” But since the other half of my brain was still working, I calmly opted for the extraction, which was cheaper and would take a shorter time to do. Who would want to prolong the pain anyway? Why should I force the tooth to stay in my gums when it clearly wanted to get out? I was a very liberal person, and I was not going to force anyone or anything to be in my life if he, she or it didn’t want to be there in the first place.
I cried a bit when I saw the size of the needle for the anesthesia. (Who wouldn’t?) But after a while, I was in euphoria, the pain gone.
Then I remembered the other source of my pain as the dentist started inserting what to me looked like instruments of torture inside my mouth. I thought I had gotten over the person and the relationship since it happened a long time ago, when the exchange rate was still P28 to a dollar.
Blinded by the lights above the patient’s chair, I started to see flashbacks of the good times and bad times we had, and tears started welling up in my eyes. The dentist, ever concerned, asked if I was in pain and wanted another shot of anesthesia. “Only if you stick it inside my heart,” I wanted to tell her as I shook my head.
When she started drilling tooth No. 29, the vibrations caused my tears to fall down my face. I could not stop it, and I was so embarrassed since I had been injected with so much anesthesia that I would not have felt anything even if Mike Tyson gave me his best upper cut.
A similar thought must have gone through the head of the dentist, but she chose to attribute my tears to the impending loss of my tooth. “I know that you are going to lose a tooth but it is better this way in the long run,” she assured me soothingly. “Once the gums are healed, you have the option of having a removable partial or implanted dentures.”
“No, I am not crying over the tooth. You see, I am mourning the loss of my first love and the loss of my childhood innocence and the belief that life is perfect and love is forever. Whereas before, I consoled myself with the possibility of a reconciliation, his marriage has closed this possibility. Although I wish him all the happiness, I am crying for all the ‘ifs’ and ‘what-could-have-beens’ in our relationship, for what was not said and can no longer be said, and for the resolution I seek of the question of why it had to end in the first place. I am crying for the lessons learned: that love freely given can be taken away by the giver and that love cannot and should not be forced.”
No, I did not say these things to my dentist since my mouth was wide open but I could not speak. Instead, I just nodded my head and opened my mouth wider. Besides, I had doubts that the fee covered psychiatric counseling as well.
The procedure took a while to finish. The tooth was already brittle and kept on breaking. She also had to stop every once in a while to wipe away my tears and the blood from my gums. When the last piece of the tooth was finally extracted, she showed it to me and pointed out the areas that were infected. Although the tooth looked perfect outside, it had cavities inside. She warned me that there would be pain as the anesthesia wore off, but the pain would subside as the wound healed.
As I looked at the tooth, I felt a tinge of regret that it was permanently gone. Even though I was glad that the pain was no longer there, that tooth had served me well up to that point of my life.
I thanked my dentist and promised her that I would brush my teeth every day. Who knows, even after all the pain, I may decide to have one of those dentures in the future.
