rotting is contagious

When I was at home, like really at home, in Istanbul, I went to my dentist to have a check-up. She took an xray of my teeth, and told me that my wisdom teeth should be removed, since they were far back, and eventually, they were rotten. She also told me that I had a random tooth which was also rotten, out of nowhere. I explained to her how I paid attention to my dental hygiene and how it’s impossible for this tooth to get rotten. That’s when she told me that, rotting is, in fact, contagious.

I know we were only talking about dental health but… she is kinda right. Rotting is really contagious, when someone is rotten, they tend to rot the people around them. We see this all the time with political corruption, which starts with only one organ being rotten, and it just dissolves into other ones. We can even take this in a Macbeth kinda way, since Lady Macbeth really dissolved her own poison or rot into her husband, only to bring their own end.

I firmly believe that this applies to relationships of any kind. Friendships, family bonds, romantic or physical relationships, they can all suffer in the end if one party is rotten. I’ve seen it many times, especially in romantic relationships, how one party can insert their rottenness into the other party who is just… seemingly pure. In the end, when the relationship ends, the rotten one stays rotten, but the pure one is now a hybrid of pureness and rottenness. It only damages the people it’s around, it’s incredibly powerful, like when you have a sick fish in the fish tank and you try to cure it but it ends up dead and its disease just kills the other ones as well.

I wonder if this rottenness has a cure. When you have a rotten tooth, you get a filling and it will just cure the rottenness. But, if you don’t care about your dental health so much, your teeth can get rotten again. I believe this is the same for rotten humans. Eventually, it’s up to the rotten person to get better, they have to choose to be better and they have to take care of themselves to not get rotten again, or to just not transmit this rottenness into anyone. 

This gets me to what I am most afraid of: a lying repentant. Much worse than a liar or even a sinner. This type of person knows what they are, but still lie to themselves and their loved ones about who they are and will just be this poisonous, rotten, dangerous person who only cares about themselves in a strange way where they hate themselves and who will definitely hurt the people around them.

In the end, I got two of my wisdom teeth removed, and got my other rotten tooth filled. I will handle the other two when I go back to my (other) home again. In the meantime, I will try to take care of my dental hygiene more thoroughly now. Maybe I should add a mouth shower to my shopping list.