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Dental Chair Revelation
An appointment with a dental hygienist brings dissolution, relief, and discovery
There is music in your ears, but the sound of the cleaning is louder than the music. Over the jangling chords of a country-blues playlist, the wet noise of the sucking hose becomes raucous and emphatic, running full-blast as the cleaning moves from the front of your mouth to the back.
You feel your jaw twitch with tenderness as the hygienist cleans near the root of a molar, each scrape and probe hits like a well-aimed slice through deep nerves in the softest of tissues. But only minutes later the pain becomes a welcome distraction from something far more distressing and far less tangible. As the cleaning moves deeper into the roots and the strumming and sucking sounds fill your ears, there is a feeling that begins with a simple thought and grows from there into something intolerable.
You are alone in this world. And the thought that you are alone stops all other thoughts in your head. It is not a new thought, but at this moment the feeling that follows is unlike any feeling you have experienced before. It is a feeling of absence and estrangement from your own body. It is a feeling of dissociation as if time has stopped and the dental hygienist is locked in place in front of you, a gloved hand hanging on the edge of your…
