Diary of a Gum Monster

Teona Galgoțiu

Teona Galgoțiu is a Romanian filmmaker and writer, living in Berlin.

She is the founder and curator of interdisciplinary platform Gura Mare, which celebrates literary and visual experiments through publications and events. Shown in festivals around the world, Teona’s award-winning short films, theatre plays and debut poetry book revolve around tensions between intimate and exterior spaces and the extremes of fascination versus discrimination of ”the other”. https://teonagal.com/

Diary of a Gum Monster

10 oct 4:37

I’m thinking of the metal petalled pears used for torture in the Middle Ages. I have a miniature one on both sides, inside my gums, they want to open full force but they keep creating tension in that tight space. When they’ll open, they’ll throw pieces of my head everywhere.

10 nov 2:10

I wake up with pain, I fall asleep with pain, and I do everything in-between with pain — walking, working, loving, plotting against the world and myself etc. I’m obssessed with my pain. Small talks get intense immediately, I’m ashamed, bored of hearing myself talking about it, angry, shut the fuck up. At least the old ”I have a monster inside” feeling is more palpable. How does it look like, though, and where is it operating from? Is it gracefully flowing through my trigeminal nerve? Is it very small and muscular, imprisoned in my gums? Prison of flesh.

26 dec 19:45

A vise tool keeps on tightening my jaw. I didn’t know it’s called like that in English. ”Vise” in Romanian means dreams. The dream tightening tool. In case your dream life visions ocuppy too much space. That’s not good for you. Here, open your mouth, we’ll shove this tool in, latest model, close your eyes, lay back, your big dreams will not bother you again, feel how the distance between you and the world grows bigger. Now you’re in space. You have to admit, it’s the most beautiful view you’ve ever seen. No, my lover and my cats are, I want to take care of them, too, not just the other way around. Xmas discovery: putting pads soaked in whiskey under my lips, numbness, bliss. Had to drop it, of course, after reading about the consequences on the tissue.

 18 feb 7:20

Started the treatment with the famous Carbamazepine, even though doctors still don’t agree on my diagnosis. The dizziness and nausea remind me of my peak hangover days. Yesterday I took a higher dose by mistake, which made me soOooOOoo high (the bad kind). Woke up on the floor with a drooly chin, then treated myself with chips, then threw them up. Watched Elio, cried like a fountain.

5 mar 16:09

My eyes are closed and I’m listening to the train’s weight pressing down the tracks, taking me somewhere nice, I hope. This sound is travelling through my gums, digging further down, creating new tracks through my infected flesh. This is not nice. I rub my gums with my index fingers, as I always do, faster, faster, how do I look from the outside? The people who love me tell me I’m beautiful but I know I’m becoming even more of a freak. I have an expensive new mouthguard, half a one month salary if I would be employed. Filthy, rich guardian of agitated sleep. I alternate the rubbing with pressing the hot tea cup on my face, around my mouth, on my cheeks, ears, throat. For a few moments, I’m almost pain-free. They pass. I start over.

4 apr 9:25

In my gums, there are two long nails (the ones you hammer down, not the ones on your fingers, even though they would fit, too, if they were thick and gross enough), so long they reach my throat, they make me talk with a lisp. I don’t recognise my voice anymore. I was attached to it, because my body is long gone, a swamp swallowed it. I am a swamp on two legs. New discovery: Duck Plump Lipgloss. It burns the lips, making them bigger. Numbness, bliss.

5 apr 6:26

There’s tons of salt on my gums and my gums are an open wound. ”Carne vie”, as we say in Romanian, ”living flesh”. Flesh that’s alive. Beautiful, right? Also conflicting, because that means

what’s not a wound, is dead? ”Pain makes you interesting”, ”pain is a reminder you’re alive”. Pain is the pinch you need to check you’re not dreaming, taken to the extreme. When mom told me that after queuing for hours in Bucharest to check my health insurance, she found out I don’t have to retrospectively pay for the German one because you can’t be insured in two countries from the EU at the same time, I cried tears of joy.