Bitter
I have been to the dentist thrice in the last 3 weeks, once for a cleaning; once to fill a cavity in a tooth that already had a filling in it and to get molds of my teeth taken; and then again this past Thursday to get the guard that was made using those molds. My dentist has been after me for at least a year and a half to get the guard, because apparently I am grinding my teeth in my sleep, unbeknownst to me, and if I’d like to have my own teeth functional as long as possible, I need to stop grinding them down and take care of my jaw, lest I spend my twilight years in (more) constant pain and subsisting on a diet of Ensure. It’s $575 out of my own pocket, because of course Delta Dental would rather pay for my dentures than help me keep my teeth. So I decided to go ahead and do it.
But I have to admit there’s a part of me that wonders if it’s a sucker’s bet. I’m trying to save my teeth for when I’m old, but there’s no guarantee I will be old. I may have blown 6 Bens for nothing if I don’t make it to 80.
This is the kind of shit I think lately. Nothing is certain. Nothing. Just getting up each morning is a gamble—you don’t know what the day will bring. Hell, you don’t even know if you’ll get up in the morning.
Friday night I went looking for a card in my card drawer to send to my friend, and found a bunch of cards I’d bought to send A over time. I sent a “smell-good” card spritzed with my perfume in every package, and I always kept an eye out for good ones. They will stay in the drawer, yet another painful reminder of what will not be, when I certainly do not lack for reminders. They’re everywhere and constant.
I have 4 brand-new toothbrushes in the bathroom drawer. I wear them out about every 3 months. Have I overbought? Will I get to use them all and buy more?
I have a gig scheduled for September 16th. Will I be here to play it? Will the person I’m opening for?
I’m supposed to get on a plane next Friday and wing northward next week for the wedding, in the wake of a mostly-foiled terrorist plot involving airplanes, and be comforted that I will be safe from calamity because people are being divested of their Diet Coke and toothpaste before being allowed on the plane. I will confess, I’m not really very excited about getting on a plane right now. There were already a few reasons why I no longer wanted to go to this wedding; I didn’t really need this on top of it. Will some confused terrorist accidentally get on a plane to D? I talked to my friend at dinner Friday night, telling her that I felt the need to give someone, maybe her, contact information for other friends, family, and work, in case we went missing. Who would go look for us? Who will feed our dogs? Who will contact our families? Who would call the police to do a welfare check on us? Heaven help them if that is ever their task. But we have no family in town, and so we need a back-up plan. Or I need a back-up plan. Whatever.
My parents told me Saturday that they spent the day planting 15 trees at their house, and I said “Cool,” but inside I thought, “Will you even see them mature?” I know we’re supposed to live in the moment, and build for tomorrow, and that’s what they’re doing, but all I could think was “What’s the point? Of doing anything?” I think that a lot lately. In yesterday’s mail I got a flyer from Macy’s: “Come to Clinique’s Colour Cravings event and get two free gifts!” This is an “event”? Are you fucking kidding me with this? My list of what is important, what qualifies as an event, has narrowed considerably in the last 4 weeks. New make-up never qualified, honestly, but now it just seems absurd to the point of speechlessness and offense.
I have real things to worry about. It turns out that E is going to have to have laparoscopic surgery at the end of the month, a gall bladder removal and a hernia repair. It is, we are given to understand, a routine procedure, happens every day, low incidence of complications—easy. And we both try to pretend we’re not worried about it, but I think neither of us has much faith in routine of late. It’s failed us, and me especially, rather spectacularly recently. We’re nervous, and will be happy when it’s behind us. But they make you sign those forms for a reason; the only things you get guarantees on in this life are the things that don’t really matter. I have a guarantee on the paint job on my car, and an extended warranty on my guitar. Whom do I see about getting a guarantee on simply continuing to live? I’ll buy one for everyone I care about. Everyone but the ones it’s too late for. And yeah, I want to lodge a formal complaint about that.
All around me is nothing but worry and darkness and the unknown. I tread water out of instinct and wish myself backwards in time. It’s been a worse few days in a horrendous four weeks. I really don’t know what I’m doing. I feel fear, sorrow, depression, cynical apathy, and I think “That’s not me. That’s not who I am.” But it is. It is right now.