Before I traumatically sprayed blood all over my oral surgeon and his office after an artery burst during my wisdom tooth surgery in January, I thought I would never see him again. At 28, I was geriatric (his words, definitely not mine) for the surgery, but even so, we both expected it to go well enough that I would be in and out of his office in hours.
That is not what happened.
Initially, the procedure went fine. After surgery, I wasn’t in any pain — I was high enough that I mumbled incessantly to my mother about the parallels between my teeth being removed to my dog’s neutering appointment a week later for the entire ride home, but not high enough to send a photo of myself with swollen cheeks to every person in my contacts list, a thing my best friend did in high school that secondhand embarrassed me so much that I truly believe it contributed to the lateness of me getting mine removed.
It wasn’t until I had gotten home, curled up on the couch with the pup and a blanket, fully ready to embrace a day of watching Netflix, when I heard a pop come from the left side of my head and, immediately, blood started pouring out of my mouth. The surgeon had told me to expect some blood, but when I went to the bathroom to see what had happened and, in the mirror, it looked like I was an extra in a horror film, vomiting red, I was prettttttty sure this was Too Much Blood.
Choking on blood clots, I called my parents in to confirm that it was Too Much Blood (it was) and the three of us piled back in the car to the surgeon, me with a towel pressed against my face in the backseat of their BMW like an MMA fighter. When we got to the office, I requested to go through the back door as to not scare other patients, then sat in the surgeon’s chair while he fixed my mouth and I coated the entire room with my spurting blood.
After he cauterized the artery that had been previously held in by my wisdom tooth, but had opened up during the removal, I thanked him profusely with a mouth full of gauze and promised not to bleed on him as much should I ever see him again. I assumed, leaving his office for the second time that day, that the most traumatic parts of the experience were over.
Then, I went home, immediately got a dry socket, and lost all will to live.
For three days, I did not move from the couch, moaning in agony, begging my parents to give me more drugs and, for reasons unclear to me now, but seemed solid at the time, refusing to watch anything other than “Inception” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” My mom, eventually unable to listen to me cry for more painkillers or watch Reese Witherspoon again, brought me back to the oral surgeon, who became my best friend in seconds after putting a little salve in the dry socket that lifted the pain away immediately. After that, I saw him every day, sometimes twice a day, for over a week, which is more than I have seen any of my friends in over a year.
This month, I was back in his office because, of course, there were more complications with what I have affectionately, now that I am no longer in dire pain, started calling my lil-artery-tooth-hole. When he walked into the room, the same room I had previously sprayed with blood, to see me, our conversation was easy and light in the comfortable, casual way that it’s become after the incident. At the end of the visit, thinking that it could be the last time we saw each other, I told him he is my only and best pandemic friend and he offered me a job because I come to see him so often.
I wasn’t supposed to be able to make that appointment this month because I was planning to go back to NYC in early March. In reality, I have been planning to go back in the abstract every month since September, but this was the first real, concrete date that I pushed back. Among other things, a small part of me delaying my return is because I wasn’t sure I was ready for the normal life that seems so much closer in our future than I could have imagined. The realization that my oral surgeon is not only my only friend, but also the only person I have hugged who is not related to me in over a year made me feel wildly unprepared to go back to the active social life I had last March.
I am coming back to the city next week (really, seriously, I promise) and I spent this month trying to get ready for my return. Instead of picking quotes for this project that related to my current life — a life I very much love, but does consist of me wearing athleisure 100% of the time and having all day conversations with a puppy who does not respect me — I chose ones that reminded me of what I’ve missed about my old life, a life that I am excited to get back to.
March 2021 Reads
“They were ideas, and ideas were more romantic than people.”
While my oral surgeon was certainly the person I have covered in the most blood streaming from my face, he was not the first. Back when I still lived in what could accurately be described as the shittiest apartment in all of Manhattan, I got a pretty severe bloody nose on a guy I was newly dating in the middle of us participating in adult activities.
At the time of the bloody nose incident, we’d been seeing each other for a couple of weeks. We’d met at my co-worker’s birthday party in Bushwick, where neither of us knew anyone else in attendance, and had sparked that initial bonding into multiple dates. We were having fun, but that’s all it was: fun. Neither of us were looking for anything serious — he had just gotten out of a very long-term relationship and I wasn’t interested in pursuing any one single person, so I was not surprised or disappointed when our dates trailed off shortly after I dripped a large quantity of blood from my nose to his face. The incident quickly became an anecdote in my repertoire of embarrassing sex stories and, for years, I did not see him again.
One of my worst habits is that I tend to overly romanticize people and experiences — I love creating beginnings from endings and finding meaning in coincidences, two qualities that I believe come from me being a Pisces whose favorite book is “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” The logical side of me has tried to talk my dumb, little brain out of creating significance in scenarios that don’t relate, but I’ve found myself in them so often since I moved to New York (see: here, here and here), that I just can’t stop.
And, so, last March, when I was not totally enjoying myself on what I did not realize would be my last first date for over a year and, in the middle of it, ran right into The Man Whose Face I Covered in Nose Blood for the first time since we’d stopped talking, it felt like a sign.
What kind of sign, I was not exactly sure of at the time and, when the entire world shut down a few weeks later, I no longer had the opportunity to explore what it meant. Now, looking back, I know it wasn’t anything meant to be felt on an individualistic level (except for maybe that me being more excited to see someone I had a very embarrassing moment with over the person I was actually going out with meant I should probably have refrained from a second date), but I do like to think it was the universe giving me a gift of meaningless coincidences for me to bloom with romanticized meaning one last time.
“After all, isn’t that the Gatsby glory of the New York dream: telling the grandest story about yourself that you could hope to have others believe in the distant hope that you’ll believe it yourself?”
If you have been on a video call with me in the last year, you will know I rotate between exactly four outfits: my green Outdoor Voices sweatsuit, my blue Outdoor Voices sweatsuit, a hastily cropped Washington State hoodie that shows my nipples because I cut it too short in a failed attempt to be cool like the Tik Tok teens and a hand-knit sweater that says “Sex House,” objectively the funniest and least accurate article of clothing I own because, again, I have been living with my parents since last summer.
This is not how I used to be.
I don’t think I would say that I used to dress fancy for work (my green XL fleece purchased from the juniors section of Walmart for $10 made its frequent office appearance), but I did always make an effort to look nice. I usually wore make-up and I sometimes curled my hair and I wore heels almost every single day. There was something I used to love so much about fully getting ready to present myself to the outside world — my favorite part of my morning routine was finalizing an outfit, grabbing a coffee from the cafe below my apartment and strolling the 30-ish blocks to my office, allowing myself to take the time to blend in with the aesthetic of the city and hoping I was making an impression along the way.
This month I, despite having an entire closet in New York full of clothing that I haven’t seen since last summer, have begun to start purchasing clothes that don’t entirely revolve around elasticity again. To be even more specific, I’ve found myself buying impractical statement pieces, pieces I love immediately because of their absurdity: a green and lavender checkered suit set with embroidered breasts on the butt; a velvet, neon AND paisley romper completed by its frilly, belted waist; a mask made almost entirely of black staples; a sweater covered with knitted flowers the size of my fist. I am thisclose to returning to the city with my prom dress, a short, beaded, bright, bright orange outfit filled with tulle that I once again fit into after not drinking for five full months, just to have at my disposal in case I should ever need it.
And, will I need it? I don’t know! Probably not. But, maybe! When I think about what I really miss about dressing up for my old life, it’s the reassurance that I could leave my apartment wearing any of those items and still blend in with the outside streets of New York because I knew I was capable of projecting the confidence needed to carry any outfit that unique. In the past year, I don’t feel like I’ve lost that confidence — it’s still there, a muscle unused — but I am excited to be able to start flexing it again, to walk through my city dressed dauntlessly, dressed like myself.
“Things were so often exactly what they seemed to be.”
I didn’t often cry on the subway, but I liked knowing that I could.
Six years ago, when I first moved to the city, I was doing hot yoga a lot. Until I simultaneously stopped getting a period and started getting excruciating muscle spasms, leading a doctor to tell me it was no longer medically sound for me to spend almost four hours a day exercising in an 105 degree room, I spent the first months of my New York residence doing doubles in the hot, sweaty and — inexplicably, disgustingly — carpeted room. I liked all of my instructors (I even went out with one), but I loved my Monday evening teacher: he was kind with funny dialogue and gave me corrections that allowed me to put my body into contortions I never would have dreamed I was capable of. Taking his classes made me a stronger, more mindful practitioner as well as a calmer, more confident person, and because of that, I held on to every word of the humorous lessons he’d pepper throughout his class, yoga or otherwise.
“Always remember,” he told us once, mid-pep talk that touched on being true to ourselves and, also, our ability to hold Triangle Pose for an entire minute, “No matter what you do, no matter how you act…you will never be the weirdest person on the L train.”
I do believe his goal with that statement was to get us to shed society’s expectations of ourselves and fully embrace who we are meant to be (and to not fall out of Triangle Pose, a thing I did often), but I leaned into this lesson maybe a little too hard in a different direction — after realizing it was impossibly accurate, I started treating the subway as less of a transportation device and more as a way to clear my head when I needed some time to myself. I liked the ritual of being able to consider my thoughts in the comfort of anonymity: I’d be surrounded by hundreds of strangers, sure, but if I needed to work through some things, the subway is where I’d go to be alone. Again, it wouldn’t happen often, but the handful of times when I was overcome enough to actually cry in public, I wouldn’t stop myself, the careful reminder that me silently shedding a few tears was not going to be the oddest thing these subway strangers would see that day stuck firmly at the forefront of my thoughts.
The last time I distinctly remember crying on the subway was unexpected. I was not planning to cry — I had gotten on the train right after ending a relationship that was just beginning and, while I knew it was something I had to do, I was surprised at how emotional the conversation had made me. I was able to take that time on the train to work through my confused feelings (I was mad at myself for not letting the relationship work; I was proud of myself for not getting further entangled with something I wasn’t ready for) and, after careful consideration and a few quiet tears, I emerged from the subway that night feeling confident and clear-headed with my decision, knowing I had made the correct choice, knowing things were exactly what they had seemed to be.
Books I’ve Read Since January 2020
