a bitter pill to swallow

i have a confession to make. for all of my life, up until about 2:30am last night, I, Charlotte, could not swallow pills. "how absurd!" you must be thinking. "a 15 year old girl who can't swallow a teeny little pill? now that's just silly."
well, it was the truth.
now, before you go thinking i have some sort of disorder that i'm going to rant about that won't allow me to swallow pills, allow me to correct you. it's not that i physically CAN'T swallow the pills, it's that i mentally won't do it. you've heard you parents or friends talk about that "mind over matter" issue that nobody ever listens to, at least i know i don't. well, that's really all it was. i psyched myself out to believe "im trying to swallow something that i haven't chewed, i'm going to choke, and I WILL DIE." my mind is a very powerful object, and when i lead myself to believe something, you best believe i will cling to that with all my might until i can convince myself otherwise. another example of this is i could never ride splash mountain in disneyworld because i had convinced myself it would be me plunging to my death and completely irrational to ride such a thing. with this mind set, when i tried to get on it once last year, i had a panic attack and nearly fainted. yeahh, i get pretty intense. but then once i told myself "hey, this is stupid, just get on the little kiddy ride" i was fine and i realized that splash mountain was indeed NOT a plunge to my death.
but anyway, back to pills.
so the other day i went to the dentist to get a filling done. you know how when they do that stuff, they have to encase it with a glue of some sort to keep it safe or whatever? well, my dentist obviously wanted to be SUPER safe so she put approximately 597 layers of glue on my tooth, give or take a few. so, as you may imagine, this made that particular tooth a lot larger than the rest. so what happened was, when i'd bit down, my teeth would be uneven because the large tooth touched my top teeth on the right side before my teeth on the left side could touch together. this made my jaw crooked and cause my great pain. but wait, there's more!
because of the somewhat ceramic encasing of my tooth, when it hit against other teeth when i chewed food or simply open and closed my mouth, it caused my upper teeth extraordinary pain, which gave me an incredibley horrible headache.
so here i am, with a sore crooked jaw, hurting teeth, and a sharp headache that just won't go away. what would be anyone's solution? swallow a few tylenol, of course. and here's where the problem was.
so first i tried to swallow these tiny tylenol with the old fashion drinking the water method. didn't work, i swallowed all the water, the pill got stuck, i panicked and spit it back up.
Pill Wasted Count: 1
then my mom had the idea to put it in ice cream, because you don't really chew that, you just swallowed it. this seemed like a fool proof plan! so, i tried the ice cream, and what happened? my tounge seperated the pill from the ice cream, swallowed the ice cream, the pill got stuck, i panicked, spit it back up.
Pill Wasted Count: 2
at this point i was extremely disheartened. i felt like an idiot. everyone can do this, why can't i? my dad can swallow horse pills with no water, how come i can't swallow a thin round pill the size of a tic tac?
i went to my room for a while and tried to sleep. it was around 2 am i realized i couldnt sleep with this pain. after hours of research on tips to swallow pills, i set out to the kitchen to grab 4 tylenols, a bottle of water, and some crackers. i was going to swallow one of these pills or i wasn't sleeping.
first i tried to chew up a cracker, then right before i was going to swallow, put the pill in and down the hatch. i figured this would trick my brain into thinking i was just swallowing some food i chewed, not a pill. so what happend? my tounge felt the pill, i panicked, couldn't swallow anything, and spat everything out.
Pill Wasted Count: 3
then i tried putting it into the bottle of water and just chugging that until the pill went down with the water. this backfired when it sank to the bottom and dissolved.
Pill Wasted Count: 4
next i tried the old fashion stick it wayyy down you throat and then just drink. my gag reflex kicked in and up came the water and the soggy pill.
Pill Wasted Count: 5
finally, i was getting aggravated. what the hell was my problem? i went to the mirror and looked down my throat. there was more than enough room for this puny pill. why couldn't i do it? then i realized: it's because i can feel it. when i know the pill is there, i freak. is there a way for me NOT to be able to feel it? that's when i got the idea...
i sipped some water to get my mouth wet, and then took a fair sized gulp over water, enough so my mouth was pretty full. then, with my lips pressed together tightly, i stuck the pill in and paused a minute. it seemed to be floating in the water in my mouth because it didn't feel like there was a pill in my mouth at all. i then pretended i just needed to swallow this normal gulp of water, and by the time i realized there was a pill in my mouth, i could feel the little circle sliding down my throat. I DID IT! i swallowed the pill and it didn't even hurt.
now i'm not afraid to anymore, and i decided to write about it here, because as silly as it is, i'm extremely proud of myself :)