At first glance, reading the history of how tumultuous my relationship was with dentistry, it might appear that I am placing all of the blame on bad jobs, mean bosses, or difficult patients.  But those are just details.

The fact is that I am responsible for how this all ended up.

I had a choice.  I could have chosen to start my own business and not be subjected to the whims of an unreasonable employer or problems I could never fix.  I could have chosen to react differently to miserable patients. (I’m not calling patients miserable, but I’m referring specifically to the miserable type.)  While I made a lot of mistakes along the way and admittedly sometimes did little to improve things for myself, I did choose to nurture my clinical, caretaker, and communication skills in attempts to achieve positive changes in this relationship.  But in the end, the result was always the same.  Like the woman who repeatedly dates the same kind of men, I repeatedly chose less than desirable work situations for myself.  Each time I thought I was doing the right thing, and each time I thought things might be different.

These were my choices, my responsibilities.  I am not a victim.

I look back and think that in the depths of my soul I wanted this relationship to fail all along… because… dentistry, it’s not you, it’s me.

I hope we can still be friends.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, I can get on to better things.  Up next: how we love to hate our bosses.