Chapter One: “Never Ever Google Anything, Especially When You’re Bored During a Global Pandemic”
So the first piece of information to know about me that’s key to this story is that I have never slept well, since I was about 12 year old. I can probably count the number of times I’ve woken up feeling “refreshed” in my entire life on two hands. (Yes, I drink a lot of Diet Coke.)
The second is that, like most millennials living in Los Angeles, I’m pretty vain. I like to think I’m vain the fun way: Tim Ferris. Biohacking. Body Optimization. Be your best self. Etc etc. But regardless, vain.
Get A Tale of Two Faces’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Anyway, during 2020 there was a global pandemic (you may have noticed) and, like everyone else, I had a lot more time. So I started to research all the things. The first thing I looked up was why I could never sleep well. And the second was how to become more handsome. (I know, I know.)
So anyway, I started Googling. And like everyone else who has ever googled anything medical, I ended up at WebMD about my lack of sleeping. However, unlike everyone else on WebMD, I did not immediately discover I was going to die in the next 17 seconds. Their analysis was basically “Eh, you’ll be fine. Go see someone if you’re really worried”.
Next, I wanted to learn how to be more handsome. Eventually, I discovered this idea called mewing. Mewing is basically the practice of tongue placement to define your jaw and cheekbones. There are all kinds of guides on YouTube for it and after about 3 minutes I realized something really strange — I literally couldn’t do any of the exercises. At all. Even a little bit. It was like my tongue wouldn’t move that way, and if it could, wasn’t strong enough to complete a repetition.
Wondering if there was a link between my inability to mewl and sleeping, I started googling again. Back to WebMD and problems sleeping can be caused by problems with your mouth, jaw and tongue etc, and fixing that usually requires something called myofunctional therapy, or at least, they will be able to point me in the right direction. And so, I scheduled an appointment with Hope, a myofunctional therapist in the Valley.
