the thing the dentist is teaching me is that good dental health is when your throat and lips and gums and tongue and mouth hurts, and the more your mouth hurts all the time and makes it hard to talk or swallow or sing or just exist, the better you're doing at taking care of your teeth
the other thing it's teaching me is that nothing i do matters and i'm completely disconnected from cause and effect and all my teeth are just going to fall out no matter how much i try or what i do. it doesn't matter that i brush my teeth twice a day every day for my entire life i still have gum disease because i'm not good enough and i will never be good enough