When I went to the dentist’s they told me I had to get injected with some anesthetics. And I’m no professional so I asked them what that meant, how long I’d be under, how foggy I’d be when I got up, but no, they said, I’d be awake the whole time. And now I was feeling nervous because the thought of some stranger putting a drill into my mouth while I was conscious made me want to pee a little. The nurse reassured me and told me that I’d be totally numb. I told her that I’m already depressed, so telling me that I’m going to feel numb was not exactly a great sell.

Three hours later I’m on my way home and I’m absolutely starving. All I can do is dream about my kitchen, I barely hear my dentist warn me about the dangers of eating while numb. Whatever. Like I’m stupid enough to misalign my mouth and injure myself.

Turns out, I was exactly stupid enough.

So I’m eating and I bite down and I feel this crunch. I hear it reverberate throughout my mouth and all of a sudden I feel as if something is horribly, horribly wrong. So I hobble over to a mirror and I stick out my tongue, just to take a look. It takes me a while to notice anything though, because all I can see is red. So much f***ing red. And I’m confused out of my mind until I realize that the red is probably my blood.

I end up wiping out the blood to take a look at the damage and I’m not quite sure what I’m seeing. I’d bitten my tongue; that much was obvious. There was a big purple swelling off the right side with some clear indentations. Now, at this point there’s still a lot of blood coming out. I feel like I’m swaying, like I’m bobbing up and down like I don’t know which way is up and which way is down, all because I’ve lost so much blood. But, as far as I can tell, I’m a capable adult. I look down and all the blood drips onto the floor, like some kind of sick massacre, and before I know it my feet are stuck to the ground and I’m wading through partially congealed parts of myself. My lips are sticking together but there’s still stuff coming out, looking in the mirror I swear it looks like my mouth is pulling apart by itself. Kind of surreal. I don’t hate the image, I don’t feel sick. But I do feel hungry.

At this point I feel like there’s not much else I can do. I stand like a paralyzed American Gothic with liters and liters of my life dripping away, until I finally feel the stream lessen. God bless the anesthetics, because I still don’t feel a thing. I drag my feet up and I make my way back to the kitchen. I wipe my arms on some napkins with no real hope for cleaning them off. And then I keep eating.