Wednesday, March 28th, 9:20pm, 2018, Somewhere in the West of Ireland.
Dear Reader,
If I were typecast in a
play or movie, I would always be the nerdy girl in the ‘coming of age’ genre
because I seem to have an obsession with writing about growing up.
Sometimes I follow
these instincts. Sometimes I shut them up inside, because I don’t want to be
the writer who is always repeating herself. Sometimes it’s hard to remember
that growing up can be different from every angle and as time goes on there is
always something new to write on the subject.
Growing up came into
play for me on the eve of my 23rd birthday. Strange things can
happen when you turn 23. 23 means hangovers are unpredictable. They tend to
crop up in the middle of the day long after your pints of water and sips of
coffee. 23 makes you realise that drinking with friends is more fun, the less
often you do it. 23 lets you embrace the kindle; realising that eating while
reading hands free is a gift. 23 means you can reread a book and hate it
despite loving it the first time. 23 means still finding yourself enchanted by
rereading a book you now dislike. It can allow you to relive a snippet of the
time when you first read it because the pages of your dog-eared story use an
old receipt as a bookmark. – ‘pyjamas and a tooth brush for €20’. It must have
been one of those ‘treat yourself’ days. 23 means you curse more and care less.
It feels great to care less about looking perfect or shaving your legs. It
feels great, until you go too far, and sometimes you don’t care about art or
writing as much as you used to.
You’re growing up. Have
your sprinkles of imagination and creativity blown away? I hope to prove that
this isn’t the case. I often contradict myself, because while I always convince
myself that this is the case, I really don’t believe that it can be true.
Moving on, 23 means
that that little tooth in the back of your mouth that was niggling against the
other teeth has to go.
Was that the source of my ‘caring powers’?
Was that the source of my ‘caring powers’?
That may sound like a
metaphor but I am in fact talking about a wisdom tooth that coincidentally
became very painful on my 23rd birthday this year. Smiling through cake and cocktails, I danced the night away and had a great time, but the
following morning beamed with an aching hangover in my tooth. After several
appointments, I made sure to have the tooth removed because when you’re soon to
be moving to another country, wisdom tooth removal, if necessary, becomes a
priority.
The procedure consisted
of a 2 hour car journey to a hospital in Roscommon, no food or water beforehand,
and a less than fashionable hospital gown. It doesn’t sound ideal, but I was
very well taken care of and happy to be there. The operation was surprising. In
my head, the procedure seemed like a small ordeal, not worthy of the six, maybe
seven people milling around me as I lay in the hospital bed; machinery beeping,
and voices talking over each other; some nurses asking if I knew why I was
there. All I could think was, what was so important about getting this
tooth out? Was it not just a tooth?
What
if I don’t fall asleep and I feel everything?
I expected someone to
ask me to count down from ten like they do in movies, but maybe part of wisdom
tooth removal is realising that that’s not always the case. If wisdom tooth
removal equates to growing up, then not everything is like the movies. All I
remember is a nice nurse holding my left hand and smiling down at me, and
another nurse, pinching a vein in my right hand.
Then, my eyes flittered and I was gone.
I wasn’t entirely gone,
because my body was still in that bed, but my mind was frozen, as if I’d dipped
my toes in foreign waters and drank spirits with nameless ingredients.
A tickle of my black-out
peeled away when I was suddenly awake in a different room. I tried to speak,
but a wad of cotton wool blocked the thoughts on my tongue. Cool air rushed
down my throat and into my nostrils. There were 2, maybe 3 nurses in the room
paying no heed to me. I wondered if I might be invisible, or just really good
at keeping still and silent?
Looking around beneath
drooping eyelids, I spotted some black rectangular boxes piled on a cupboard in
the corner. Medicine boxes?
My eyes widened as my
mind came to the only possible conclusion regarding these boxes. Obviously my
boyfriend had crept into the room while I was sleeping, and replaced all of the
medicine from the boxes with cards from the card game Cards against Humanity. I
instantly felt betrayed because I couldn’t imagine somebody so thoughtful becoming
so thoughtless, and despite momentarily having no peripheral vision, I could
have sworn that I could see him in my peripheral vision. I tried to turn
towards him but a nurse heard me tutting. She approached me; adjusting the cold
air that ran through me, just an inch in front of my face.
Oh
right, it was an oxygen mask.
I mumbled some more as
the nurse took my temperature, though I didn’t notice my temperature being
taken.
‘36.5
degrees Celsius’ she announced. I murmured further, and she moved the mask from
my face to hear what I had to say. I awed and spluttered over my temperature,
because it felt like I was behaving like a summer’s day in Spain and I deemed
myself so special and privileged to make that comparison for that brief time! I
tried to laugh, drool spitting from my mouth. I didn’t know if my laugh made
any sound because the left side of my face felt too numb to create laughter.
Minutes later I complained about the pain and they treated me with pain relief.
My entire body tensed
up, one piece at a time; starting from my toes and escaping through my head. I
was a cat, stretching in the morning with dawn tingling on my skin.
But it wasn’t morning.
The nurses told me it was 4:30 in the evening, which confused me greatly
because I’d been in the hospital for 10 that morning. It had started with a lot
of waiting around, and then I was knocked out for 2 hours, though it should
have taken just one hour. The oral surgeon said that my tooth was a tricky case.
It didn’t feel so tricky then, but days later, it would become trickier.
Once my
face lost its numbness, I faced a paradox of motions. Growing up meant losing
my wisdom tooth which meant acting like a baby. I shoved puréed food in the
direction of my lips, hoping it would land in my mouth. Sometimes I missed,
because my mouth would barely open. Soon my left cheek grew in size and yellow
bruising, and like a baby, I cried and cried and cried. Thankfully, my
thoughtful boyfriend turned out to be just that. For days he fed me ice-cream
and tea, having not replaced valuable medicines with Cards against Humanity or
anything of the sort, like I had thought while in my questionable state of
mind.
23
means my tooth is gone now, and at 2 weeks after it was removed, I’m starting to
feel almost
better.
Almost whole. Almost
grown up. Almost me again, because wisdom tooth removal has lead me to deal with
growing up, through the things I care so much about: art, writing, family,
friends. Pain and free time allow me to write and when I do this, I wonder why
I ever stopped writing in the first place.
What next?
Well, when growing up, it is advised to watch old
episodes of Goosebumps on Netflix, laughing at what you once found scary.
Embrace growing up.
Laugh with your friends over times you’ve been
spooked by moths and spiders.
Laugh at your two left feet. Smile at the tiny
skipping rope that trips them, during skipping games with your niece.
Giggle over how slow you go on a kid’s scooter or
how tangled your body gets when climbing a tree.
Know that at 23, you care
less about looking perfect or shaving your legs, and this suits you. Know that
at 23, you curse more and care less (but only when you’re literally being
tickled). Know that the friends or loved ones whose tickles you
tolerate will grow up with you. They have seen you at your best (laughing and
smiling) and at your worst (cursing and blinding).
Now I
ask myself: Does the removal of a wisdom tooth make me less wise?
Not at all.
I think the removal of a wisdom tooth has given me
the wisdom I needed to grow up. At 23, I am blessed to know that I can reread a
book and love it, even though I hated it the first time around.
( Perks of growing up
these days I suppose ;-) )
Ciao 4 now,
Madame Mayreed. X
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