It’s emotional triage.
I sit down next to people who would rather be anywhere else. They’re anxious, ashamed, angry. Terrified of pain. Terrified of me. And somehow, I have to make them feel safe. I have to be safe.
Even if I cried in my car that morning.
Even if I flinched when I heard the bathroom faucet running at home.
Even if my body still remembers the weight of hands forcing me underwater. Even if my brain replays the sound of the gun cocking in my own home like a memory trapped in Dolby surround.
No one sees that when they recline the chair and say, “I hate being here.”
They just see me. The dentist. The one who’s supposed to make it better.
So I soften my voice.
I lower the lights.
I tell them they’re doing great.
I tell them they’re safe.
And sometimes—God help me—I believe it. Just for a second. I believe they are. Because I made it so.
I created this space. This office. This haven. And it is clean and calm and filled with people I trained to be kind. It’s the only place in my life I have total control. The irony is not lost on me.
Because when the last patient leaves, and the last instrument is sterilized, and the staff has gone home—I go back to a place that is not safe.
I go home to a man who once tried to erase me.
And somehow, I’m supposed to fall asleep next to that.
The empathy feels endless. Until it isn’t.
I care for my patients. I care for my team. I listen to their problems, celebrate their victories, absorb their panic. I write the checks. I solve the conflicts. I make sure everyone’s okay.
And then I go home and try to remember if I’ve eaten today. If I’ve breathed.
If I still exist outside of service.
Here’s what no one tells you:
Trauma doesn’t stop you from functioning. It makes you overfunction. You become a master of regulation—for everyone but yourself.
You know how to read body language, anticipate panic, meet needs before they’re spoken. Because you’ve had to. Because you lived with a human landmine and learned to defuse it with a smile.
You bring that skill to work. And patients think you’re warm. A “natural.”
They have no idea your nervous system is operating at DEFCON 3 just to get through a crown prep.
And yet—I keep showing up.
Not because I’m healed. Not because it’s easy. Not because I’m some kind of saintly empath. But because this practice? These people? This job? It’s the only place in my life where I am in charge of the outcome.
At home, I wait for the next outburst. The next threat. The next manipulation masked as a memory.
But at work—I sculpt smiles. I rebuild things. I bring relief.
I can’t fix my marriage.
I can’t undo the night I almost died.
I can’t rewrite the laws that protect him and not me.
But I can numb a tooth.
I can calm a child.
I can make someone feel seen and cared for, even if I don’t feel that way myself.
That’s not nothing.
It’s survival with a purpose.
It’s trauma as a livelihood.
It’s strength in a lab coat.
And one day, when I finally do leave the house that hurts me, I’ll have something to carry with me. A thing I built. A thing that is mine.
And that, in a world that tried to dismantle me, is the most radical thing of all.
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