a windy transcription 

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we lived on a big hill. most of the city was at sea level, built over marshlands that connected to the bay. but to the east there was this big wall of hills that seemed to come out of nowhere, it was flat and then it was hills. we lived up there, there was nothing up there, no there there. we drove down the hills every day. my ears started to feel funny. a pressure behind them, always. to relieve it i would open my mouth and push my jaw forward a tiny bit. that momentarily unplugged them but they sealed up again right after. so i was always doing this tiny tick, unhinging my jaw to pop my ears, my mom said why do you keep doing that, you look like a fish. i think we were at the petstore in china town, lucky goldfish, when she asked me but i could just have stitched those two things together. i never complained much about it. i think it started when i was 11 or 12. i remember the topic came up amongst the girls i ate lunch with. one was eating a bagel and complained about her jaw clicking and i thought oh that happens to me too. i remember asking my parents about it, my dad said his did sometimes. those are my first memories of it. not physical memories, i remember knowing my jaw clicked. and one day when i was 16 it just started feeling very different. like i couldnt open my mouth all the way unless i shifted my jaw to right and then the left and then down. as the months passed i had to get increasingly more elaborate with my jaw opening maneuver. ontop of the left right wiggle i also had to jut it forward, unhinge it all the way. like the motion i did to pop my ears but now tied to more.it was scary. it felt like my jaw was being pulled to the right. started only sleeping on my left side, hoping that gravity would pull it back down. i didn’t tell anybody i was having problems. my friend had a jaw surgery for her underbite the previous summer. the kind where they entirely break your jaw just to set it back half an inch and then you had your mouth wired shut for 7 weeks and just layed in bed and drank milkshakes and craved meat. i was convinced that if i told anyone about my jaw i would have to get that surgery, and that if i had my jaw sealed for 7 weeks the whelp who i thought i couldnt live without who was kind of my boyfriend but wouldnt admit it would break up with me. so i didn’t tell anybody for two years. it got so much worse.