I use this medium to share my experiences and this post of mine is also about one of my experiences, however, a “not-so-pleasant” one. I think the title itself says so, isn’t it? I think when things are not going our way, we need to take some hard calls. I am sorry that I am sharing a break-up experience during the Valentine’s week, when the world is falling in love. But few things happen when they have to, you have very little or no control over their timing. 

I don’t know, when this did start, however, I could feel that things were not normal. I was not getting the right vibes.  I initially took it lightly and saw it as a rough-patch that usually comes in all the relationships. I assumed, it will go away on its own, however, as they say “if ignored small things can multiply and grow into a bigger problem” and I think that’s precisely what happened. When it continued to bother my day-to-day life, I knew it was the time. Wherever I’d go, I would carry the pain, whether I was travelling, working, eating, or sleeping. I must say, that I don’t belong to the community of “over-thinkers”, but I won’t shy away from admitting that I was losing my sleep over it. It’s not that I didn’t attempt to resolve it, in fact, I shared my concern with people around me, and out of concern and their own experience, each one of them suggested some solution to my problem. If not all, I tried most of those advices, because “parting ways” was the last thing on my mind. 

It started impacting my day-to-day life, like once at lunch, my friend asked me, “am I eating fast or you are eating more?” I had no answer to his question, but I felt, it is affecting my life and I must take some action. 

I always dreaded this visit, but when you have to visit, you have to visit, you can’t avoid it. When all the suggested remedies failed, I gathered all my courage and finally went to see a dentist. My tooth was ruining my days and nights.  

The doctor advised to get an X-ray done so as to decide the line of treatment. After getting the X-ray reports, the doctor asked, “What do you want to do? Would you like to save your tooth or prefer getting it extracted?” I was like “What? Is it me who has to decide? Are you not going to advise me about the treatment?” I had no answer to his question. I had never even imagined a doctor asking me about the line of treatment. I was perplexed. 

Like an innocent child, I asked him, “What do YOU recommend?” to which he answered, “You should get it extracted, since it is a wisdom tooth that anyway doesn’t serve any purpose.” For a moment, I thought “I was losing my sleep because of something that doesn’t even have any use.” Anyway, I had to decide and to make it easier, I asked another question, “Which procedure is less painful?” I thought, when it doesn’t have any use, why to take so much of pain. To me, it seemed like a tough decision, however, his answer made it easy. He said, “RCT is a longer process, however the extraction would be completed in one sitting.” I had got my answer. I really like it when I have clarity of thought, but I must say this clarity was quite painful. Somebody was going to pull my beloved tooth out. Ouch! With a heavy heart, I conveyed my feelings to my tooth and told it, “We are done”.  

I told my doctor that I will be going with his recommendation. He put a note on my prescription and told me to go to another section, where I can get the extraction done. I said to myself, “are you not going to do the procedure? You know my entire case”, not that I had a long history, but by now perhaps he had become a bit familiar to me. Anyway, I didn’t have a choice. So, I went ahead to face the final frontier, “The Tooth Extraction”.  

After a few basic checks, I was told to wait. It was quite tough to wait, not that I like waiting otherwise, but waiting to get pained is even more painful. Though I had eaten Aaloo-Paranthas just a couple of hours ago, I felt weak and empty inside. I thought of going out for a quick-bite, but I suddenly heard my name being called out. 

Now, I was facing my fear. But, let me tell you, that the fear was quite attractive. Her mask clearly failed in hiding her beauty. I was cursing my fate. I had such a beautiful woman in front of me and I was sitting or don’t know lying on that peculiar chair with my mouth wide open. She read the card filled by the other doctor and started examining my teeth. I had a problem with my tooth on the right-hand side however, she was examining my teeth on the left-hand side. I got worried and gestured to speak, to which she asked me, “What happened?” 

I told her that it is the right tooth which has a problem, to which she smiled and told me not to worry as she was just examining it in general. I always had this weird anxiety of getting the wrong tooth extracted. I don’t know why and I wonder where these thoughts come from, but they usually gravitate towards the scary side. She prepared herself for the procedure with all the things that she needed. Now, the most fearsome tool “the syringe”, was getting ready to hit me. The thought itself of getting pricked in your gums is so painful and seeing it live was giving me shudders. Anyway, I didn’t have choice, so I closed my eyes and surrendered. 

I remembered the mantra that my mom gave for such difficult situations, “breathe in and breathe out” and, it really helped. She kept working on my tooth, though I couldn’t feel any pain after the injection, I was still afraid from those terrifying thoughts that kept coming back to my mind about wrong tooth getting extracted. After a while of getting attacked with variety of tools, my tooth finally gave up and came out. She told me to open my eyes and have a look at the tooth, as if it was a precious stone that came out after a mining operation. I pretended to look with no focus on the tooth and said ok. I didn’t look at it, as I had already made my mind to break-up with it, so what’s the point of looking back. I was relieved to know that it was finally over. 

She took another 5 minutes to complete the procedure, and explained the medicine dose that she had prescribed. She said a lot of things, but the only thing I could clearly recall is, “have some ice-cream after an hour.” I think I was lucky to experience a break-up that ended with a dessert. I must say although it was a hard call to take, my life got smoother after that break-up.