-1 Wisdom

...I think I survived.

I had to visit the dentist to get one of my wisdom teeth pulled out. I have all four of the fuckers, but at least the other three seem healthy enough to stay there without problems. This one instead it's about three years that loses pieces even if it never gave me pain. So it was about time that I had to take the decision to have it out before it decided to go bitchy.

Problem is that I have some problems with anxiety in general and things like this one can easily put a bad strain on me. I lived the last weeks in apprehension, with many worries, in particular after the nightmare stories from Lum and Dundee about a year ago :) On the other side I'm a rather rational guy, so I usually try to fight the anxiety that way, and it really doesn't work. I mean, *rationally* I'm okay. I'm not scared or anything. Sometimes I feel like there's someone else in me that I cannot understand and who does *everything possible* to give me more troubles. While rationally I may be able to control my silly worries, the "emotional side" gives me all sort of knee jerk reactions. It's so damn awful because it's an irrational way my body reacts and I cannot do anything about it. Like sudden, very bad sensations, totally unexcused. I cannot control these and even if I'm "rationally" relaxed and determined to not give my anxiety too much importance, the body still decides to react his own way, and I can just stare like if I'm watching someone else. Leaving me the desire to punch this other guy right in the face, and start giving orders, "This body isn't big enough for both."

It's so fucking irritarting, even more because it makes no sense. I really HATE the way my body gives me all sort of problems ADDED on top of something I need to do and that I'm worried about. For someone rational like I am this is totally unacceptable. I would need my body to follow *exactly* my orders so that everything can go in the best way possible. "Rise the left hand" and I rise the left hand, "don't panic" and I don't panic. Instead it's exactly the opposite and the actual problem that I have to face becomes a much smaller issue that those problems rising from anxiety itself. It's a goodamn, totally irrational and unexcused vicious circle that irritates me to no end. Why the fuck my body needs to be my biggest threat? And how's this tolerable?

As I said I know no ways to fight all that effectively, so I just wait. I learnt to understand and expect these sort of rections so I know what is going to happen and if I don't feel well I can just wait the situation to pass. I can just try to ignore all that, even if it's not really possible. It's an added burden that I could totally do without, but my body has another opinion and I still haven't found a way to part ways, heh. So even this time I knew that despite the tension and the worries I just had to go through it and suffer it. And trying to control my thoughts rationally to ignore as much as possible the way I feel.

The whole thing about the tooth went smooth. Much better than I expected. I felt no pain at all and after the first moments I was also quite relaxed (at least as much relaxed as I could hope to be). I kept my eyes shut and my mouth open the whole time and I didn't even notice when my tooth came out. I was worried that it could shatter since it was already crumbling on its own, instead it came out all at once and rather easily. I was expecting much more violence. I was somewhat relieved and glad to not have to suffer complications and such (if you are anxious you are overly worried about things going wrong, you know). So at the end all the worries were again unjustified and what I did felt really like a minor thing to not even consider. The dentist (a she) told me to lay down still for a minute and then go sit in the other room. I was feeling good enough, I thought it was everything okay. Relieved.

So I go sit in the other room but one minute later I'm on the doorway again, "Uhm... I'm not feeling good." All at the sudden another knee jerk reaction, something I never felt before. I was sitting, glad that I went through the whole thing the best I could hope. I wasn't expecting anything else. Instead all at the sudden I felt a very bad sensation in my stomach and then spreading to the chest and rising to the head. And I could only go, "What the hell. What the fuck is happening to me *now*?" See, this is the kind of total separation between the rational side and the emotinal side. I was feeling okay, relaxed finally. And then all at the sudden that very bad physical sensation, totally unjustified and that I just didn't have an idea from where it came from and why. The dentist told me then to lay down again and stay there some more. She explained me that it's the sensation you have when you are going to "faint" and she told me it's not so rare. It happens when you go through something you feel emotionally troublesome and intense, no matter how you are convinced of the contrary or try to minimize (as I was trying to do) and then you relax all at once. Sugar in the blood goes down and the system reacts with a "shutdown".

I finished to be much more scared about what happened to me afterwards than the extraction of the tooth. Since I'm an anxious type I knew what to expect and the way I feel "bad". I don't think this trip to the dentist was more troublesome than other episodes but I've never been on the point to "faint" before. It was something new, that I wasn't expecting and pushing further that limit and lack of control over my body. I didn't like this at all.

So next time I have to go to the dentist I will be as scared as I was today. With the difference that I will be scared *of myself* and my irrational reactions, instead of the dentist. I cannot trust me in any way. Now explain me how the hell this can make sense and how I can tolerate it.

God sucks as a designer. He really does suck.