Let me preface by saying tooth pain is by far the most excruciating that I have ever experienced. A dental infection is sheer agony. I remember one occasion where weed, ibuprofen, tylenol, and an old lortab combined still couldn't take the edge off. I nearly went to the ER for it.

I'm still sort of reeling from my partner's appointment with the oral surgeon on Tuesday.

They performed a CT scan, shortly after right there on the 65" monitor was a 3D image of my partner's skull.

I felt stunned when I saw it. He only has five teeth left.

He had managed to conceal it so well that I had no idea he's been getting by with so few teeth. I'm only missing three or four myself and am already starting to encounter situations where I have difficulty eating.

What made me struggle to keep composure at that moment was the realization that to my knowledge, he'd only had a couple of teeth extracted; which means he likely just.. suffered through the process of 20+ teeth falling out on their own.

And because he spent nearly a decade being brainwashed into believing he was human garbage, I'd bet money that he was convinced that he *deserved* to suffer like that.

On top of this, my partner really struggles with swallowing pills.

Which means he probably endured losing most of those teeth without any painkillers.

One of the sweetest, most amazing people I've ever met in my life experienced the same pain that I described at the beginning of this novella as the worst I've ever lived through... over and over and over again.

I just kept thinking about how much pain I've experienced due to neglecting my own oral health, and that he probably experienced magnitudes more suffering than I did, all while completely convinced that he deserved to be punished like this.

No wonder he's psychologically fragile.

The only person on the face of the earth who can tolerate me as my 100% authentic self *all the time*, who taught me that it's okay to be the "real me", has survived so much to get to where he is now that I can't even comprehend it.

None of this is his fault. He was so abused and manipulated that he genuinely believed he didn't deserve to be healthy. The fault lies in the trauma he tragically experienced, and the abuser who tried to destroy him.

I believe if anyone deserves a healthy set of teeth (artificial or not), it's my partner. Teeth that will stay in place comfortably and also allow him to taste his food.

I'm extremely worried we won't be able to get him dentures before the bone loss becomes so great they can't make it work.

Goddammit I need to figure out how to make this happen quickly.