this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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I mean, my dad dying when I was a preteen, is the thing that stands out. Pretty much everything that's happened since then has been shaped by his death in some way, everything from my philosophy and politics, to my material hardships, to my heroes and role models, to the way I clean my teeth, to the places I've been and people I've met and media I've enjoyed, and even to the ways I relate to gender, family, work, nationality and language, and society in general, and that's certainly not an exhaustive list, and all of these things go into each other as well.
I'm not sure if something so profoundly impactful on every facet of one's life can be described as "for better or worse", though, rather than that it simply is what it is...
you piqued my curiosity with the teeth thing, what's that?
To spare the more morbid details, I somehow got it into my head that my dad died because he'd been "poisoned by accidentally swallowing mouthwash". And so I stopped using mouthwash because I was scared that it would kill me "too". Eventually this came up in conversation with my mom, and she told me that I was mistaken โ but I just never really got back into using mouthwash despite that reassurance. I think a part of this was just that I associated mouthwash with my dad so strongly that using it without him was too uncomfortable.
It's funny what small details kids latch onto and carry with them for the rest of their lives. If it helps, you should check out the song "What about Mouthwash?" by the late Trevor Moore