Yesterday, I finally had my long-suffering, cracked tooth extracted. It had been all panic leading up to the extraction: I feared the pain, I feared infection, I feared catching covid all masks-off-vulnerable in the dentist’s chair. But the tooth had reached the end of its life, and an infection of a top molar could endanger mine, so it was, at long last, so long tooth.

After she had pulled it out, the dentist asked if I wanted to see the tooth, and I reached-out my hand to take it from her. After so much worry, the extraction had been painless, anticlimactic. That tooth so unassuming to look at now, was the cause of so much suffering. Or was it? As I considered the tooth more closely it dawned on me that the tooth was the cause of my pain for sure, but I was the cause of my suffering…

So let’s back up a second here for some context.

The tooth had hurt me for years, anytime I chewed on the right side of my mouth, it sent an electric shock of searing pain straight through my jaw.  Just before Covid struck I had a root canal, it seemed clear to me straight away that it didn’t work –I still had pain –but my dentist encouraged me to give it a few months to ‘settle’ before I decided to pull the tooth.

And then, there was Covid.

Long after the dentist opened, long after the whole world opened, I was still locked down in fear of Covid. Nearly 18 months with no one but Eric, avoiding even medical care to protect myself, my body. The whole time, the tooth didn’t just physically hurt, it threatened. I spent every day awaiting, dreading, the moment of imminent tooth failure. And now that failure had come, exposed me to pain, exposed me to risk, all I felt was relief that this tooth I had clung to, obsessively worried about for so long, was finally gone.

The thing is, its not just my tooth, its my whole body that I slave over, stress over, obsess over, all as I wait for its imminent failure. That was the reason for the whole 18-month Covid lockdown. This is my life. Will I feel similarly relieved at its end? And if so, why do I do this to myself, why cling so tightly to this body, when like clinging to the tooth, it causes me suffering and stress?

I suppose, much like with the tooth, I cling because of what I imagine the future will be. For the tooth I clung to avoid a nightmarish future of painful extractions and Covid catching. A future that never did come to pass.

I think without this body, I will never get all the futures I fantasize about –no post covid celebrations, no travel, no family reunions, no long life with Eric, no happy retirement. Of course, even with this body, those may never come to pass.

I cling to this body because I think I need it to become, to actualize what I imagine, to satisfy my desire, to satisfy me… but then why hasn’t it worked yet? If this body really could be satisfying, could make me self-actualized, could definitively confirmed and affirm me, why hasn’t it stepped up in the last 40ish years?

I cling because I think I need my body for the thing that happens next. But can I really need something, once I lose it, for what is next? What is next happens without it.

For all of my imaginations about this body, about all the future adventures we will have together, the only experiences that I can guarantee are ones I don’t want — sickness, pain, death. All I do is cling to the uncertainties between these definites — illness, aging and death — and with that clinging I create suffering far greater than the constant pulsing pain of a cracked tooth.