Teeth, Love, and Growing Up

When I was little, I hated falling asleep in the back seat of the car. More specifically, I hated the feeling of drifting off---not all the way there, but too tired to keep my eyes open---while everyone else remained awake. Hearing hushed whispers of "I think she's asleep" from the front seat made me feel self-conscious. I'd bolt up defiantly and say, "No I'm not!" When I stayed at my grandparents' house in Bombay during elementary school summer breaks, my cousins and I would sleep in the cramped living room with our parents. One night, after my closest cousin and I were put to bed, warm light and boisterous laughter continued to emanate from the apartment's singular bedroom down the hall. We pleaded with our Cool Aunt to let us stay up and join the adults' festivities. "Try to sleep for fifteen minutes, and if you're still awake, then you can join," she said. I soon fell asleep. The next morning, I was disappointed to have miss...

  I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that something was wrong with my heart.  As a little kid, my chest would randomly seize with small spasms, and I’d stop breathing out of fear my heart would pop if I dared to take a breath. When I became a teenager, my heart turned as mercurial as my moods. In quiet moments of journaling or doing homework, my pulse would suddenly flutter to an uncontrollable speed, prompting me to set my pencil down in mild fear that I was having a heart attack. Within seconds, my pace would return to normal, and I’d pick my pencil back up while questioning in bewilderment if it ever even happened. But my concern for my heart transcends physicality and to the peculiarities of its more metaphorical connotations. For 23 years, I’ve observed people fall in and out of love, empathizing with their infatuation and anguish while quietly wondering why those emotions were never drawn from my own experiences.  My experiences, unlike theirs, felt akin to script...