Photo by Enis Yavuz on Unsplash

How teeth affect our lives.

Part 1 — How I started losing mine at eighteen.

My teeth and I haven’t always been on good terms. They didn’t start out good, and I made years of poor choices. It took me a long time to make up for the time I lost to those decisions. I am one of the lucky ones that was able to climb out of a cycle of poverty, addiction and mental illness to do so, but I know that not everyone has the privilege.

This is a story about teeth. My story. A lot rests on them, from the way people see and evaluate us, to the way we see ourselves. The condition of our teeth has a lot to do with how and what we eat, what type of emotions we display to and with others. Our digestive health has a lot to do with how we chew. Dental pain can be worse than unmedicated childbirth (ask me how I know), and in my family, teeth are our symbol of generational trauma. So, it’s unsurprising, really, that I find myself here.

Here’s my story:

I was fourteen months old in 1974 when doctors threatened to cut my gums open. I still hadn’t sprung a tooth. The next day, there it was, my first one. Apparently I already had dental anxiety and was willing to do whatever it took to avoid the chair.

(The truth, also, was that malnourishment likely had something to do with the delay.)