Brace Face | Teen Ink

Brace Face

December 2, 2014
By Tangled_fruit BRONZE, North Las Vegas, Nevada
Tangled_fruit BRONZE, North Las Vegas, Nevada
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

I had only lost three baby teeth by the end of fifth grade, which was in 2011. I got braces the summer after fifth grade, I was eleven. When I got my braces on, I have to admit, I looked hilarious. I only had two front teeth that they could put a bracket on.  I have had them on for four years, and I still have 2 more years to go. Last year I got dumped because of bad breath; my metal expander caused bad breath. No matter how many times I brushed my teeth, they would still smell of metal. Getting braces made me learn that people aren't kind, how it made my self esteem plunge, and it made me learn how to deal with it.


When I got braces, very few people took my feelings into consideration. They would say such unkind things. This always made me feel inferior to everyone else. When I was younger, before I got braces, a kid on the playground called me the kraken. I was too little to understand what he meant, but I somehow understood because it made me cry everyday for two years. I know I must have known what he meant because I still remember it to this day. Kids would also call me snaggletooth, or Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. After all the things I've been called, I think those top the charts. I've been called short stack (because I'm short) all the way to b****. I wept every day because of how I was being treated at school. I never let my parents know I cried, so I just kept it hidden. I was always afraid of getting other kids in trouble, afraid they'd do something to hurt me. My mother finally caught on and decided to get braces for me to try and end the bullying. It didn't really change my situation. My orthodontist was the type of man that liked to take things slow, and let nature take its course. He wanted to wait for me to lose all of my teeth and for them to all come down before we put any hardware on. He didn't do anything for me for 6 months. I however wanted all of this to be done as soon as possible so I wouldn't have to endure the teasing. The problem with me was my teeth never fell out on their own. They didn't come down either. I was the kid in kindergarten that didn't lose any teeth, while everyone else was losing teeth left and right. Feeling like I never fit in from five years old to fourteen years old damaged me. I didn't even lose my first tooth until third grade. I was ten. Now to this day, I have lost all of my baby teeth. I lost my last one at the beginning of summer, this year. I've lost 3 teeth on my own, and I've had 29 pulled. Plus, I've had 5 teeth exposing surgeries. I'm due for my last oral surgery in December of this year. I thought my torment had ceased up until the beginning of this year. On Valentine's day, I got dumped. The explanation he gave me was he didn't like the smell of my breath. The smell he was referring to was really the smell my expander caused. My expander and braces gave off a metallic smell. It hurt so bad to find this out because I thought that I had found someone that liked me wholeheartedly. Finding this out devastated me. What he did was cruel. Everything would have been so much easier if I had just never known. Years and years of bullying piled on like pancakes, until the stack of pancakes got so large, that it all fell over. Right after he told me this, I remember running to into my parents room and just crying. That night I cried myself to sleep. Even though I had braces, my teeth were still snickered at. They were still a joke. I felt like I was a joke. Smiling felt like I was advertising my teeth for the world to stare at. It made me want to hide in a corner and never talk to anyone ever again. Getting braces taught me how cruel and insensitive people really can be.


Becoming a metal mouth caused the way I view myself to plummet. My self image was nothing. It was around the same time when I discovered social media. Seeing girls with pristine teeth made me feel like I was the scum of the earth. They were in magazines, on Facebook, in games, and basically everywhere I went. It never helped that all of my friends had perfect teeth either. Every day was a constant reminder that I had screwed up teeth and they didn't. To be honest, it killed me inside. Throughout my pre-teen years, I never felt pretty with my jagged, spacey teeth. I was different from other girls and my friends, and at the time I couldn't accept it. I've done my best to erase the memories from the early stages of my braces. I went through great lengths to avoid cameras and photos. You can image, the absolute worst day of the year for me was picture day. I was the girl who always did a closed mouthed smile. There was always a dark cloud that loomed over me on picture day. That dark cloud was my mother. Don't get me wrong, I love her very much, but the disappointment she would always show when I smiled without teeth was like weights weighing down my shoulders. My mom was always down my back for me to smile, and it was always so hard to make her happy. It seemed the only way to please her was for me to smile in pictures. Believe me I really wanted to. Never having the confidence to smile held me back. How could I make her happy if I couldn't even be content and happy in my own body? She never seemed to understand that. It's partly my fault though, because I've never expressed to her how it makes me feel. I've always been to afraid to speak up for myself. Too afraid of being mocked or judged, I stopped showing my teeth in pictures, despite what my mother desperately wanted. My dislike for the stares of people and little children asking why my teeth were like they are, fueled my isolated behavior from smiling. My thought was, if no one can see them, then I can't be hurt. This obviously wasn't the case, because not being able to be myself and be comfortable in my own skin damaged my self esteem. I realize now that this mindset that I was in, is the only reason why my self image was so low.


I've grown and learned how to deal with it. It being my braces. I didn't know it at the time, but when I got braces, it came with a four year package of tunnel vision. For four long years, I couldn't find happiness at the end of the tunnel. This year, I've emerged from that tunnel. All things in the world take time, therefore it requires a lot of patience. My biology told me that the secret of the universe is that everything is moving all the time. Even though my painstaking experience with braces has gone on long enough, it's a work in progress. Slowly but surely, time is passing, and I'm getting closer to the day where I feel I'll be free. That day being the day when I get this god awful contraption out my mouth. While I am bitter, I also feel excited for the future. I'm getting them off in less than 24 months. I feel fortunate that that's all the time I have less. Another way that helped me deal with the whole braces dealio, was having friends. They've helped me through everything, just as I've done for them. I called my two best friends after he broke up with me and we talked for hours. I cried while they consoled me. I have the best friends a girl could ask for. Plus they are so very honest, so I never have a problem with not trusting them. My grandma tells me that there are some things that you just can't control. That applies perfectly to my situation. I never had a say in my genetics. They just are what they are, and there is nothing that I can do about it. So you just have to deal with it. I finally learned to deal with how my teeth looked, because this year I love my yearbook picture, and I think I look awesome.
Four years ago, I could never had  imagined I could feel pretty. Four years later, I'm confident in almost everything I do. I love taking pictures with my friends, even though there will always be reject photos.  When I first got braces, it affected almost every aspect of my life. It affected my self esteem, how well I did in school, my ability of playing the violin, and basically anything else. When I got braces the quality of which I played my violin was really low. My mouth hurt all the time, and when it did hurt, it was extremely uncomfortable to play the violin. Never feeling good about myself affected the quality of my playing. A couple years ago, the way I felt about my teeth, reflected the way I felt about my whole body. My hair was never long or thick enough, my body wasn't fit and lean, and my skin wasn't clear. The way I feel about my body hasn't changed drastically, but it's improving. When I look in the mirror I don't want to cry in front of my reflection, I want to smile.


The author's comments:

My teeth are a constant insecurity that I carry around with me everyday. Writing this essay, in a way, took that weight off my shoulders. I feel lighter without my insecurities weighing me down. I'm setting a part of myself free.


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