For the past three days, I’ve been in constant agony: a toothache that borders on madness.
No painkiller helps, no antibiotics, no anti-inflammatories in the world.
I can’t sleep, I can’t do even the simplest things.
(Still, I found a way to “write”, dictating into my phone, because I find it fascinating what a toothache has stirred in me.)
After struggling alone for a day and a night, I went to the dentist.
“You’ve got a slightly demineralized tooth,” she said, “but nothing seems wrong on the surface. Everything looks fine. It must be something deeper.”
Of course it is! With me, it’s always something deeper.
The only solution she offered to end the pain was extraction: pulling out the sensitive tooth that had caused trouble before.
Back then, they’d also suggested extraction, but I decided to give it another chance.
So this is its second offense.
When it comes to choices like this, I apply the same principles as in life, with people.
As long as this tooth still has a chance, I won’t give up on it, even if I have to go through hell for a while.
I don’t give up on what hurts me.
I “hold on” with all my teeth, even to what should’ve been pulled long ago.
I tell myself it will pass. I hope it will heal, that it’s just a phase.
But it never really passes. It only digs deeper.
On a somatic level, tooth pain is a pain of roots, of stability, grounding, support.
It doesn’t come from the present but from everything I’ve once bitten too hard, promises, silences, people, decisions, everything I couldn’t fully “chew.”
It’s my body’s way of saying I’ve been clenching my jaw too long.
That I’ve swallowed words that should’ve been spoken.
That I’ve held on to what was broken, hoping it would heal through willpower and my resistance to let go.
Beneath every tooth lies an unfinished story.
When it hurts, it’s not just the nerve or the root that aches — it’s my whole history of not letting go: of toxic people, of illusions.
The toothache is my body’s way of asking me, finally, to release what doesn’t serve me.
To let it out.
To stop chewing what was never meant to be swallowed.
They say it about toxic people too: “Remove them from your life like a bad tooth.”
But how can I, when everything that hurts in me is also alive?
How can I throw away a part of myself just because it hurts?
I already have one missing tooth, an absence I fought for, cried for, suffered for.
Pain. Trauma. Hospitals. Emergency surgeries.
Back then too, I hoped I’d be free.
But I never really am.
The gap, the shame, now sits there between my teeth, a reminder that I had to lose something of myself to move forward.
This toothache is more than physical.
It’s the desire to fix, to hold on, to love until exhaustion, until I’m certain there’s not even the smallest chance of salvation left.
The rotten tooth stands for that relationship, that friendship, that job, all the things I cling to, even when they hurt me.
And it hurts. And I cry. And I lose sleep.
And still, I can’t let them go.
It symbolizes all the things, in me and in my life, that I can’t release, even when they eat away at me from the inside.
I know that one day, I’ll grit my teeth, close my eyes, and say:
“Enough. Pull it out.”
But not today.
Today, I still tell myself a beautiful lie:
that maybe it will pass,
maybe it will heal,
maybe this pain is just another form of love,
and everything will be fine.