“Honey, do you want a Valium?”
The generous offer heightens my pre-surgery anxiety and embarrasses me.
The dentist office now knows about my nervousness.
The thoughtful gesture of drugging me shows that my crafted calm and comedic exterior has cracked.
My nervousness must have wiggled out and escaped into a too cheery text inquiring if I could have coffee before the tooth pulling.
The answer, thank the universe, nods a clear YES.
As I sip my coveted cold brew I muse on accepting the invitation to pop a valium or continue with my original plan to breathe through the procedure, a tooth extraction that the dental community reassures me is a benign and commonplace surgery.
All these reassurances fade and blur into the cold, watery fear that halts my clear thinking and freezes my embodiment whenever I am presented with a physical issue, with a dental or medical visit. I check out. My soul lifts and leaves my body. My voice rises a few pitches. I orbit around the experience, afraid of the touch-down, scared of existing in my body, frightened of being an earthly being.
Like a phantom, I revisit an early childhood doctor’s visit, one that surfaces from the oceanic depth of memory. My mother is asked to leave the room while a nurse repeatedly pricks my fingers for blood. Blood sprays. I scream and sob, and my mother is blocked from reentering the room as I dissolve into frantic cries. I’m two-years old, maybe even younger, and feel an overpowering helplessness that I witness replaying now within my remembering body.
The charged emotion carries a firmly believed narrative, too. That I am not safe. I am not safe here. I am not safe in my body. I am not safe to be sensitive, and I am not safe to show my emotions, because in that little one’s case, my mother was pushed out of the door because of my crying.
Now, as a thirty-year-old, I tenderly receive that memory. I cradle my toddler self. I validate her feelings and also affirm that I am safe. And that I am safe to be me.
This is the work of an autumn and early winter devoted to deep introspection, an excavation to examine corrosive misbeliefs and disengage, disidentify from their persuasive patterning. And in the clearing consciously choosing what I do want to think, what I do want to believe, and how I can champion myself forward by mastering and maintaining my own energy frequency.
So whatever occurs, I stay embodied and energized in presence. I choose to remain close to myself.
I am safe to be here. I am safe in my body. I am safe in my sensitivity and when honored, my sensitivity emboldens me to shine in health, authenticity, energy, and effervescent wellbeing.
Instead of the Valium, I slip a black crystal into my coat pocket and loudly announce and proudly showoff my tourmaline talisman to the dentists. I snuggle it into my palm during the procedure, and I breathe. I stay with the tidal flow of the breath weaving in and around the sensations. The pain, the numbness, the swelling all ebb and go. I remain.
There may be dental procedures when the Valium is the aligned choice; today, I need to be a bit more present to myself, for myself. In presence, I cultivate a trust in my ability to be with it all – from the conversation about the Romanovs with the dentist assistant to the hot rush of blood from the wound, to be in my surroundings without being overwhelmed by them, to experience discomfort without relapsing into the helpless narrative around the feeling.
I learn to not fear living within my body, but to exercise an active acceptance as I befriend my body. And I even wish to see my pulled tooth, but my mouth has been pillowed with gauze so all I can do is send a silent and sincere thank you to the departing molar. And I also breathe a heartbeat of gratitude to the higher human part of myself who stayed and whispered: “Honey, you got this, and let’s go get a coffee milkshake.”