I breathe in deeply and hold, letting the tendrils of tingly sensations unfurl from my lungs into my limbs and settle deep into my brain. Snuggled into myself, I know I am home.
I
want to live in this place, this shadow of full life, this feelinged crevice of
distant limbs
and
slowed
down
time.
I exhale through my nose (as I was told to do even if the
instructions seem so far away now).
There are deep vibrations of sound ricocheting under my skin, teeth shaking with pitch and presence.
There is a
bright white circle of light overhead and I close my eyes and dive deep into a
space of floating stars and thin tapping thoughts.
There is a pull of silent
words from inflated lips and they are swallowed inward settling in the back of
my throat.
I breathe in and hold because I don’t want this to end.
Love. I feel love so strong and bold and naked. I think of
my sweetheart, my sweet loving beautiful boyfriend and suddenly I am overcome with a
broken (open) heart with the realization that one day he will die and that is
the reason that I am so scared to love him fully and this is the reason that I
hold back, with him and before and I am determined to crack my heart open even
more, to allow it to shatter in order to feel this love, this love that I am
feeling right now in this chair as he works in the garden, him there me here, I am going to share
this love unconditionally for the rest of my life and now that I know this I am
free to do so! Full of love. This is how it will be from now on. With everyone. Every single blessed person in my life. Forever.
Love. Expansiveness. I am there. I am
floating in it. I am swimming and yet I am still.
This is fucking amazing!
My feet twitch and I breathe in deeply in case they notice
and cut me off.
They don’t.
I breathe in deeply again.
There is a tear rolling down my cheek but no one can see it.
My eyes are hidden behind dark glasses; are they open or closed? Because now I’m not
sure. Thoughts are coming in and out of focus. Kind of like their faces. I am hoping if I stay quiet and don’t raise my hand like they
told me to in case of distress, that they will increase the dose and I will
sink even further into this vinyl chair surrounded by drills and suction and
women in face masks prodding at my oh so very numb mouth. If I can just stay
quiet about the fact that I am fucking high as a kite in their dental chair,
maybe they won't make me go home. Maybe this will become my new reality like the
Matrix and I can just ponder life from inside. The oral hygienists will buzz
around the new fixture that is the Contemplative Wise One, that is me. They will set up an IV and I won't need to eat with this mouth that is now perfectly white and cavity free. I will just sit and think of wise things and if I can actually feel my fingers I will write them down to share. Because
in this glorious glorious state my mind is spinning with gems of wisdom and I am invoking memory tools (first finger is love, second finger is death) so that if they bring me back, I will remember the revelations.
This shit
is important work, that is clear.
Another deep breath in. I need every molecule of nitrous I can manage to absorb in order
to figure this out. This life thing. I wonder if my dad huffed in between patients in his oral surgery office to find the answers. I wonder if this is the
place he was looking for when he drank to unconsciousness. I wonder if this is
the place I have been looking for when I’ve drank to unconsciousness. I understand him in a way I never have. That makes me tear up again, this understanding, this release of grief.
I am
here and I don’t want it to end.
Then it does. And doesn’t.
“How are you feeling?”
I watch her form the words with her lips, hear the sound
tumbling from above and landing on my paper bib covered with saliva and metal shavings, but I am not sure how to answer. And so I don’t. I sit
still and am peaceful. That's not true. I am pretty annoyed that my cavities are filled and I have to go
home. My face is numb and my mind is blank and so I sit. And I sit. Even in
my liminal state of cognition I feel the doctor is concerned. She tells me to sit until my
head is clear. Take my time. Fifteen minutes (?) later I move to the waiting room to scribble
the revelations (Moses!) and hope that I will be able to drive home soon
because suddenly I need to be outside and not trapped in the magazine-stagnated holding
pen if they’re not going to give me more or clear me up. I hear a patient in
the next room refusing Nitrous. Fool! And yet I wonder for a moment if she
knows something I do not about brain function and cell asphyxiation and IQ.
But I am still full of love and wisdom and calm and so I chuckle at her loss.
Until I do not.
I am at home under the quilts, curtains drawn, jaw a wad of play-doh.
I feel like what’s her name in that one
movie where she gets an ice pick shoved up into her brain and jostled around
until she cannot find any sense of herself, good or bad. And I wonder if in
between fillings and lovely thoughts my brain cells were sucked out with the
saliva I somehow had no capacity to swallow, a pool in the back of my throat,
the uvula a tiny shark of me drowned in the waves.
I shouldn’t have driven and
I shouldn’t have said yes to drugs and now all I can do is lay in bed and read about
orcas. Sharp teeth and echolocation. Sensations and a vision we can only dream
about. And I do. I wonder if I will be able to talk again. Maybe I too will form pictures with sound. And I wonder if I have lost my mind along with my mercury
infused fillings.
And I kind of like the feeling. OK, love it. Like really. A lot.
And really don’t.
This lack of control, this abrupt dislocation of identity and time and space. This is how it was there and how it is in this place and I am between
worlds even when I am now breathing the proper mix of gases and I wonder what
is real.
Limbs still twitching and the sun bright above, I work outside to
clear my head. Clear view of chickens and tall trees. Muddled view of distant mountains and the scant smell of the sea. The thoughts pile up and I am unable to process them all and
I know I am changed. No different from any other day just that much more
sensational and loving and bright and frightening.
And loving. Did I say that?
My head might not be clear but my heart is. And that is overwhelming and staggeringly beautiful.
I am back, I have gone nowhere, I am
changed.
All because of sweetness and rot, altered molecules inside, this dream of life.
Just like every single breath of every single day.
Even in plain old normal air.
