The Dentist

The dentist refers to a therapist and the dental health refers to mental health. 'He' is an old ex who pretended to have a mental illness I actually have.

I inhale the smell of the cold, sterile dentists office. I click my phone on and off, hoping for a text from somebody, anybody who can get me out of this hell. The dentist walks in, and makes a small jumping motion, falling into his chair and rolling beside mine. He pulls up his mask, scratching my teeth with a double sided needle tool.

Tears sting in the edges of my eyes, the sounds of scraping remind me of nails on a chalkboard. The occasional scraping of my gums with the sharp tool being used to clean all the excess dirt off of my teeth. There is no way out of this terrifying situation.

Suddenly, I hear a snicker from the other side of the small room. Away from the tray of needles and sharp tools used for who knows what. He is not scared, because he is not in the same chair I am. Instead, he is sitting there trying not to laugh at the fact that I sitting here, trying not to cry.

It would be a different story, however if he was sitting in this damn chair. He would he struggling and screaming, flailing his arms and trying to escape the grasp of the neverending pain on the tip of my tongue, trying to call out for help. Instead, I am here sitting perfectly still, with barely any sight of my struggle other than the water in my eyes, blurring out my vision.

He says he is doing his time. That he too, has visited the dentist and had his mouth scratched and ‘fixed’ by him. He claims I need to start flossing, then I would no longer have to be here. But he himself does not floss. He tells the dentist he flosses every night so he doesn’t have to go through this process of scraping.

If it was my way, he would be sitting in the chair I am and I would be sitting on the other side of the world, hysterical.