I think something might be rotting in my head.
I don’t mean this in a figurative sense—I can feel my upper-right wisdom tooth digging into my lower jaw, with no space to sit at the angle it’s growing in, and my cheek is sore, and sometimes food gets stuck there, and I have to painstakingly dig it out so it doesn’t make an infection. The poor little thing can’t find a place, feels extra, can’t sit comfortably without its edges bumping up against things that already occupy the space, has committed no sin aside from growing in—and I haven’t yet found the time or the funds to get it yanked.
I turn 26 in November. The Americans reading this probably know where this is going. I’ll be kicked off my parents’ health insurance. I haven’t worked at my current job long enough to accrue PTO, so every time I take a day off I miss out on a day’s pay. I have a chronic condition or two and my lifestyle leaves a bit to be desired, so it wouldn’t be the worst thing for me to bring myself in for a peek under the hood at a specialist or two, but as you can see, I’m in a bit of a bind. There’s low pay, copays, and missed pay involved—and how much is health really worth anyway?
You can’t put a price on it, so I don’t know if I can afford it. Typical.
Back to my (potentially) rotting friend. Every time I eat, especially things like oatmeal, or blueberries, or wheat bread—anything small and binding—little bites get lodged behind my crooked wisdom tooth (which I’m really starting to think isn’t that wise to begin with, which means “wisdom tooth” is a hell of a misnomer) and I end up tonguing the roof of my mouth and the tooth until my tongue aches, and I look like a mad man contorting his face like the guy in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” And sometimes I’m even grabbing my cheeks in pain, too.
I’m exaggerating, but there’s life, and there’s art. This is performative journaling, after all.
Anyway, I’m sure none of this is earth shattering to anyone else in their twenties who lives here. Out sick? Doctor’s note. Funeral? Let’s see a picture of the casket. You were in a car accident? Well, you could uber to your shift. Thinking about jumping out your office window to see if you’ll die? As long as you don’t do it on company time, go right on ahead. Try not to land on a company car. Better yet, save recreation like that for the weekend.
Oh, and none of the places you need to go to administer an adult life are open on the weekend. When do doctors go to the doctor?
“they buy your labor, try to steal your soul. bite the bullet, hold your tongue, and play the happy prole. you need the money, so you’ve got to play it dumb. but if you play it long enough, it’s just what you become” – Quasi, “The Happy Prole,” 1999.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Quasi recently. And by recently, I mean today. It’s a rainy one, and something about Sam Coomes’ tight phrasing, balance of irony and sentiment, and incision is perfect for a low-visibility drive to work. Plus, they are the rare species of rock band that operates mostly as a two-piece, with Sam rotating between keys and guitar, and Janet Weiss bashing drums. There’s great harmonies, long held out notes (seriously, Sam’s cardio must be nuts), ingenious chord progressions, and exactly the kind of bitter lyricism I’ve come to love in my weary years (I’m still young, but the hangovers last longer and longer these days).
“Paranoid and tired—quit before you’re fired” – Quasi, yadda yadda yadda
I would Sam, I really would, but I can’t live another summer waking up at 10:30, stumbling out of bed, putting on a robe, drinking shitty Keurig coffee, looking at Indeed™ as long as I can stand it, and then haphazardly working on music while my bank account drains and my credit card debt swells. So, I’m going to ride this one out awhile.
I’m finding that doing this is revealing to me how inherently negative a lot of my thoughts can be. I think back in psych undergrad they called this negative filtering, or something—a behavioral tendency indicative of and/or contributing to depression. The idea is that a person inclined to depression will be more likely to see negative things at the expense of seeing the positive, thereby increasing their depression, therefore strengthening their negative filter, and around and around the carousel we go until you’re learning to take Gilettes apart in your childhood bedroom.
But I see cool shit too—there was a grackle in the grass at Maddy’s place this morning. A maple tree is blooming very emphatically outside my window at work. I just managed to get a piece of oatmeal dislodged from my nagging wisdom tooth. It’s really not all bad. Unsurprisingly, the positive things I see typically have a naturalistic bent, because the synthetic things in life (the political, the social, even the artistic most of the time) tend to be a fucking downer.
I’m not sure what I’m saying. I guess I’m just offering that caveat for anyone reading this who knew me when I was younger but hasn’t talked to me in awhile. The wiry guy who wandered halls with downcast eyes and said mostly dark shit in monotone is still in there, but he’s definitely not holding the reins these days. I laugh, I play music, I’m not a bad hang (at least, the fact that my friends still regularly see me is evidence of that). I guess that’s what they mean when they say “well-adjusted.”
Now if I could only adjust this damn tooth out of my head.
matt nilsen 