I bit my lip last week when I was asleep. I’d never done that before. I mean I’ve bitten my lip dozens of times in my life, but how does one bite his lip in his sleep? I heard the crunch even while I tripped over a white cloud and awoke immediately and felt the sting of a bitten lip. I tasted the blood leaking from the bite and knew, “Oh man, I’m going to feel this for several days now.” And I feel it still, sure enough after a week of my teeth chewing on it. Why do my teeth chomp on it constantly rather than letting it heal for God’s sake? Not only that, but I’ve had a canker sore near my upper lip for even longer, and it’s healing finally.

Not to mention, sores have been appearing on my nose and forehead for the past several weeks. My dad kept telling me that it was skin cancer.

“Go to a doctor right away,” he was saying.

My mother and I thought he was ridiculous. I chalked it up to stress which can do mysterious things to my body.

I don’t get hurt usually. I’ve never broken a bone in my forty-seven years, never put myself in the position unlike other people who injure themselves a lot. My mother wouldn’t let me play football when I was a boy.

“You’ll break your bones,” she would say, and she could’ve been right.

I went downhill skiing once and kept falling on my ass. I couldn’t stay upright when I slid down the snowy hill. I told myself this is the last time I’m doing this, and I’ve never been back. How could anyone enjoy it? Some people live for skiing. Some people don’t mind getting hurt. Some people get in many car accidents.

I panic at the thought of rear-ending someone on the highway at seventy miles per hour, the damage it would cause, how much I could injure those in front of me. So I keep both eyes on the road, my hands at ten and two, and not let things distract me, although I’ve done so in the past. I remember texting people on the highway, going past the speed limit. My thumbs pressed the keyboard on the screen while my knees steered the wheel. I stayed in my lane somehow after becoming quite skillful at driving from being a delivery driver for many years. That was just about everything I was good at. If there’s one thing I can brag about myself, it’s that I’m a hell of a driver. How can I drive so well that fast, keep my eyes on the road while reading text messages on my phone? I’ll go through phases where I’m scared in disbelief at how I could drive for several miles without even looking in front of me. Maybe I was looking actually but I never remembered. What a scary thought. It’s like driving home and forgetting how I got there.

I’ve done that too, like entering a room and forgetting my reason. It takes about five minutes until I realize why. I’ve been doing that since I was a child and always wondered about the phenomenon.

But anyway, I keep biting the sore on my lower lip as if it will make it heal when I’m making it only worse. It sucks when I’m eating food and my teeth crunch down on my lip, which happens every now and then. I wish there were a protector like a muzzle I could put on my lower lip and prevent that from happening.