Well here's your problem!

My parents paid a lot for this smile.  I sucked my thumb obsessively as a child and my parents opted to get me some major orthodontic care.  Starting in second grade, I had a head gear and braces.  This went on through middle school, I believe.  With such an investment, you can be sure I learned to take very good care of my teeth.  I brush them obsessively - minimum twice a day.  I floss most days.  I go to the dentist.  I rarely drink pop.  This has resulted in no cavities and only preventative fillings and sealings.

So imagine my confusion while on my recent break, I experienced 24 hours of a toothache.  My gums swelled and my head throbbed.  It was never so bad that I even took ibuprofen, but it did worry me.  I don't get toothaches.  I probably would have just toughed it out, but my husband got me an appointment at his dentist.  I went in thinking worst case scenario would be a root canal.  And even that seemed far fetched to me.  But the hygienist took a couple of X rays and the dentist came in.  "Well here's your problem," he declared, his voice echoing off of the too high ceilings.  "And the prognosis is bad.  We're going to have to pull it."

You know that thing on movies where a record screeches to a halt and everything stands still?  That's what my brain did.  It got stuck on that sentence.  Within a minute, I was crying.  While he ignored his blubbering patient, droned on about implants, and showed me pictures of screws in people's gums; I was baffled not only by the fact that my tooth had to be pulled, but that I was crying.  I mean, it's not like he'd told me I had cancer.  I clearly knew in that moment that I was crying over a first world problem.  Losing teeth is relatively common. Even Anne Hathaway went through it.  Sorta.  Still, I cried.  Drove home.  And sobbed some more.

I have since talked to an oral surgeon and gotten a second opinion.  It's official.  The tooth really does have to come out. There are options about how I can go about that.   It's not a cavity.  At some point the tooth has been traumatized (possibly from my early, aggressive orthodontic work) and it looks moth eaten.  I have an appointment with an oral surgeon for the extraction, but I'm still making final decisions about what exactly I'm going to do.  I will deal with it, and I'm sure everything will be fine.

But I've been asking myself why I reacted so strongly.  Why all the crying?  My conclusion is that it makes me really angry when I work to prevent something, and it doesn't matter.  It makes me feel powerless.  This is the lesson my Father is intent on teaching me right now.  I can try to prevent getting teeth pulled, or losing my job, or my car breaking down, or (God forbid) my husband dying.  But really, it doesn't matter.  I can control nothing and no one but me.  When I was single, I built myself a little fortress where very little was out of my control.  And now that I've opened myself up to more unpredictability,  this is the major lesson coming forward right now.  I have a lot of fears that I try to keep from coming to fruition.  I am discovering that even my best attempts at prevention don't guarantee a damn thing.

I've watched lots of movies with this theme.  Learn to really live.  Learn to let go.  Don't miss your joy because you're so afraid of bad things that might happen.  But even now when I think of working toward that, my body tenses bracing for the next worst case scenario I didn't see coming.  And frankly, I think that uncomfortable place might just be where I have to exist for awhile until my answers come forward.