What My Braces Did To Me In The Past Ten Months

I admit to be the one with the weakest self-control. My desire to want things often overpowers every other sensible issue in my life, that I end up devoting most of my time, attention and compassion to a thing which might not be worth all the tries.
I don’t know why that is, really.
This post isn’t going to be the usual abstract lines strung together to something that carries you to an analogous moment of your own. This article is about how braces did the few things that I had failed so miserably in.
Braces are a part of many a teenagers lives, usually who end up having a nice set of near perfect teeth before they turn sixteen or so.
I was a little different than the rest, I always had been.
My decision to get braces was solely mine, and driven by this deep and intense insecurity I had about my physical appearance. And I had my braces, the very prominent metal wired with grey bands, when I turned seventeen.
I’ll tell you what I was thinking back then.
For me, my braces weren’t an orthodontic appliance to improve my crooked set of off whites.
They were more of a shield, a shield that would keep people from judging me.
You know, at seventeen, you have this intense desire to look, if not stunning, then atleast normal. This  is universal, except for a few people who have accepted themselves with whatever they were given. This is often driven by a social image you wish to attain, and more so often, the attention and appreciation of some one .

I was driven by none. Well, a part of me would say the latter has chances of being true, but no. My increasing self-consciousness about my looks was not because of one set of foreign eyes. They were more so because when I looked into the mirror, I did not see the beautiful girl my mother would tell me I was.
To me, a dusky complexion, crooked teeth, a fat nose and chubby cheeks with elephant ears were not the perfect combination. I wanted to be lost in the crowd. My nature at the sixteen and seventeen years of my life was very alike to what I had about my looks. I stayed away from people and avoided as much of interaction as I can. Well there was another reason to that too, but this being the more important one.

I had my braces for ten months and eleven days of my life. And trust me, these ten months transformed me. From something to someone.

I’ve had a bad  habit of biting my nails out of shape with my teeth, and that was the first thing I got rid of once I had my braces off. I would think to myself how that came as a hidden surprise. I always believed I was going to live with that habit of mine.

I learnt something thereof.

 You have to get rid of something that’s causing you inconvenience, that holds you back from doing what you should, no matter how beautiful it might look. And that if you must get rid of something so, it should be done neatly. Why do you need to ruin a perfect relationship/friendship with a sad bitter fight when you can gracefully accept that it’s no longer giving you the happiness you deserve and move on for something better?

When my orthodontist told me I’d have to brush as often as I had anything to eat, it was depressing. I was the kind who could skip a day brushing without any complains. So it was a habit hard to get accustomed to. But when I did, I had myself yearning to clean my mouth sparkling white and settling for nothing less.

I learnt then, something so true.
There are times when you need to clean up your life more often than you should. When you ignore everything for a while, there comes a time when you need to regulate and change for good. The more often and the quicker you rinse away the bad, the more time and space you give to the beautiful future ahead of you.

My braces were, as I said, a shield to keep people from judging me. I wanted to stay unknown, keep doing my thing and not to be noticed more than required. I believed that getting braces would automatically turn people away from me. They would think, Oh she is in the making. Stupid but that’s exactly what I had running in my mind. I wanted the eyes on the street to not think “Oh, sad little below average looking thing”. I wanted them to not give me much thought, more than imagining what my smile would look  like once the braces would be off. I did it to keep attention away from my nose, something I’ve always been conscious about, and from the scars on my face that my menstrual cycle gifts me with, every month.

Everything changed.
The braces were no more a shield. I made friends. And you know why I treasure these more than my very own life? Because they are the friends who did not judge me for my mediocre looks or my crooked teeth. They did not care for what I looked like, what my skin seemed like and what I thought about myself.
I opened up to people more than I ever had. I became free, if not completely, then to a large extent from the insecurity that gripped me so hard that it made it hard to breathe easy.

I realised, If you do all the thinking, if you decide everything, you don’t leave anything for others. And not everyone has to be necessarily the same. Not everyone’s priority would be looks. Not everyone is perfect. And actually not everyone has to be.

And the best thing my braces did to me apart from giving me a smile so perfect, was that they made me fall in love with my life.