End of an era?

Last week, as I was eating a piece of toast for breakfast, I suddenly felt a tiny hard ball rolling around in my mouth.

Get your minds out of the gutter!

My tongue ring had, once again, unscrewed itself. It's not something that happens often, but it is common enough that I'm paranoid about it. I swallowed a ball once and considered myself lucky. I've read about people swallowing the shaft and it piercing their intestines on the way out.

So, with that in mind, some of you may be wondering why anyone would have a pierced tongue. There's no easy answer, and no one answer will fit everyone. I had plenty of reasons for getting mine pierced 8 years ago, but lately I've been wondering if it was still something I wanted.

Honestly, I've been debating this with myself for months! Do I or don't I? Because the thing is, the tongue heals so quickly that if you do decide to take the jewelry out, the hole closes pretty quick and if you change your mind you have to repierce. So I really wanted to be sure of my decision to leave the stud out.

I took the incident with the toast as a sign.

I do miss it a bit. My mouth feels a little lonely. After all, it's been nearly a decade having a ball resting on my tongue, making me aware of my mouth. Suddenly, it's the absence of that stimuli that's making me aware. And as silly as it sounds, even to me, I feel like this one little thing is redefining me. I have to figure out who I am all over again because of the loss of something most people didn't even know I had.