Paranoia: Extreme, irrational distrust of others.
I go to the dentist yesterday for the first time here in Vacation City. Finding a new dentist is right up there with suffering a sucking chest wound in things I'd like to have happen to me. I have been blessed with extraordinarily good health and this trend is likely to consider if the lack of disease drama in my forebears is any indicator - no cancers, heart or cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or any of the other maladies that strike down so many Americans. Frankly, my biggest worry is that KK may blow me away one day and bury me in a shallow grave in the backyard. I've found a doctor, an optometrist, a car mechanic - in my opinion the most important of the big four - but have been hanging on to my old dentist in The Old City up to now. With mom and dad gone my trips home are going to be too sporadic to maintain this relationship.
The new dentist looked in my mouth and found several hundred thousand dollars worth of work that needed to be done and by "work" I mean "digging, grinding, stabbing, and extracting living tissue from the soft and sensitive mucous membranes on the inside of my mouth." I'm sure the guy is honest - I'm guessing most 60 year old men have some wreckage in their mouths. And I've been cursed with teeth problems, despite my meticulous work in trying to keep them healthy - prone to cavities, a bunch of crowns and one root canal, a mouth guard required to try to protect the remaining stuff from the tremendous, grinding forces that I apparently use on my teeth. My mouth guard looks as if a large man spent some time adjusting it with a hammer.
Being . . . ahem . . . of a paranoid nature I immediately mistrust anyone passing along information that I don't want to hear. Especially when I have no frame of reference. What am I going to say: "I disagree with you on the assessment of my left lateral bicuspid?" All I can do is decline to have the work done. That's my option, and it's a scary one when you're dealing with your own personal health. Same thing with a car - the mechanic could say: "Seaweed, your Johnson Rod is shot." He could make a word up and tell me it's shot. Car people always want to show me what the problem is - they take me out to the car and open up the compartment that holds the engine or put the car up on a hydraulic life so I can peer into the greasy machinery that lurks there. Why would I want to look at the mechanics of an automobile? The best thing that could happen to me if I got too close to car machinery would be a traumatic finger amputation.
One of the advantages of my recovery is that I process through my defects much more quickly. I believe I still have all of the same defects that were present when I walked into The Rooms. The difference is that I have some practice in Defect Mitigation. The defect springs into action and I have a time-tested method of moving from raw paranoia to normal paranoia. It's almost muscle memory at this point. I feel better about everything this morning. I'm not mad at the dentist which would be akin to burning one's hand on a hot stove and raging at the cook who told me to keep my hand away from the flame. I see the wisdom at doing some of the work and have gratitude that I can afford it. I know the next appointment is a week away which will give me time to continue to let everything settle and organize in my mind.
Sharp, stainless steel instruments being stuck in my sensitive mucous membranes. Ah, isn't sobriety great?
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