Two weeks ago, my jaw locked shut. Was this God’s way of telling me to shut the fuck up? I still have a small gap open, enough to force food in, not enough to chew properly. It hurts to yawn, to laugh, to yell, to sleep. I tried to eat a single Minstrel and almost cried because I couldn’t bite down on it. I googled what to do and step 1 read: “don’t panic. It will keep it locked.” Easier said than done, you bastards. “The longer you leave it, the more likely it will need to be unlocked through intervention like surgery.” I went to the doctor who was fucking clueless. “There are jaw exercises you can do online,” she smiled, never saying where the fuck online I’d find them. I’d stayed with the same doctor even though she’d brushed off almost every complaint I’d had for the past 10 years. She has short raven hair, a long neck and pale skin with piercing ocean eyes, very middle class, with an air of authority which makes you think you know what, maybe I am overreacting. This time, I decide it’s finally time to stop seeing her. It’s not me; it’s you.
Since I gave birth my jaw has been tense, clicking, rock solid. “You’re grinding your teeth at night,” my dentist murmured, “I can see them wearing away.” They gave me a mouthguard. I went on a 3am google search fest while breastfeeding and read about the connection between the jaw and the pelvis, how pregnancy can affect the jaw. I read about the way most mother’s necks eventually start to sit out of place when breastfeeding; it’s all that tilting your head forward to look at baby. That change puts pressure on the jaw, and the jaw starts to misalign and pop out of place. TMJ.
I go to see a male osteopath as my usual postpartum osteopath (a woman) had left the clinic. He was lovely, and he was also a different type of ‘path’ - a psycho. Smiling manically and telling me about his three children in a bid to distract me from the fact that he was manipulating my jaw so roughly that he was about to rip my head off, I left with my jaw still locked but now radiating heat. I placed my cool hand on my poker hot face while I sat on the bus fuming that I’d paid £60 to be beaten up by a man. Should I write a complaint?
Gone are the days of slow motherhood, the newborn phase, where it’s all uncharted territory and people are gentle with you. I rush through my days now, run to the gym, skip to the farmers market and buy sorrel and ginger and lions mane and hope it will make me feel better, feel something. All it does it make me feel like a cunt for spending £10 on mushrooms. I google ‘oral fixation’ because most of the ideas I have to make me feel like a human being who wants to live are via consumption. I rush home from the market, grab the baby and rush out of my flat to meet my dad for a coffee, heading down the communal stairs with my trainers barely on properly.
Suddenly I trip with the baby in my arms. Like most awful fucking moments, it happens in slow motion, but also too fast for me to stop the damage. My ankle rolls inwards but my only focus is not dropping her, so I put pressure on my rolled ankle in an attempt to stabilise myself and hold onto her which makes my ankle injury 10x worse.
I manage to collapse gently onto the stairs with some control, wailing into my coat on the grubby communal floor. My toddler stands up and I think uh uh, I can’t chase after you. Through the black spots I’m starting to see I to get my phone out of my pocket to put nursery rhymes on Youtube and she sits down promptly, giggling at ‘hop little bunnies’. I gave myself fifteen minutes to sob and breathe through the pain over the soundtrack IF YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT CLAP YA HANDS when I finally accept the truth - I can’t stand up.
I did what I’d always do in a crisis and I called my dad and despite him needing a literal hip operation he managed to carry my baby back up to the flat while I followed them on my hands and knees. Dignity had been lost. I couldn’t walk for three days. The hospital gave me crutches and when I returned home from a&e I had a horrible deja vu of the time I’d given birth, when everything I did was terribly slow and painful as I recovered from my c-section, how I struggled up the stairs in the exact same way just over a year before. I cried at the memory, at how I despise feeling vulnerable, how unsafe it makes me feel as someone who lives in fight or flight mode.
Living in fight mode isn’t working, but abolishing self-destructive behaviours isn’t easy either. I look at the top of my right foot; below my toes sits a thick white scar, alien on my skin. It’s the shape of a crescent moon or the Nike tick, however you decide to decipher it. I was 14 years old when I kicked my front door in anger because I’d locked myself out. I was in my school skirt (which was way too tight), diamond tights and dolly shoes. It was the era of Maybelline mousse foundation, excessive pencil eyeliner and CD walkmans. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I kicked the thick glass door once, twice, three times, until my foot came through the other side. A four-inch shard of glass sank in, and I pulled it out and shrugged it off. But the bleeding never stopped so hours later when my dad came back from work I told him “hey, I have a hole in my foot and also I broke the front door btw.” He took me to a local hospital and as they stitched me up I cried like a baby, holding his hand. I can feel my dad’s hand now, thick and solid and warm, slightly roughened fingertips, once huge compared to mine. He held my hand when we crossed the street until I was way into my 20s.
I don’t think you see your parents in yourself as much as you do as when you become a parent. I see him in me, the way he’d run up the stairs, often tripping up because he was a bull in a china shop 247. The way his fists would curl in a traffic jam, the way he’d blast music (Abba, Boney M, Bee Gees) as catharsis. Every door in my childhood home has a hole in it where he’s kicked it; every single one.
One morning I feel so irritated by numerous minute things that I punch a wall and my ring leaves a grey mark on the white paint, my middle finger hurts for days from the impact of the ring smashing into it as I collided into the wall and I think, it’s not worth it.
I find a new osteopath and she’s wonderful. She feels my blocked lymph nodes and asks me if I had grommets as a child (yes), did I have my adenoids removed (yes), what was my birth story? Did I know my right leg is slightly longer than my left? (no.) I’m holding stress in my body that’s been building a long time, she says as a fact, and your body can’t take anymore, it’s why your jaw has seized up and no longer functions.
She instructs me to buy a new bra and new shoes with the right support; a woman needs a good bra and good shoes, she tells me. She does this thing where she stretches me until I burst out laughing because it’s so tense, so uncomfortable it’s almost unbearable and I don’t know what to do. When the stretch is done and she releases me she bends down, puts her hands on my knees and looks into my eyes. “Are you ok?” she smiles every so softly, and it makes me feel like a child who is finally safe. The osteopath pushes. “Outside of the stress of looking after a toddler, is there anything else?”
I don’t know where to start, so I say the easiest thing. “Nothing I can think of,” and then I laugh again.