I used to have a perfect smile, but during the summer of 2008, I was riding my bike and hit a speed bump at a wrong angle. I flipped over my handlebars and my chin collided with the road. My wrist snapped, asphalt tore up my chest, and my front teeth were chipped and knocked loose. It wasn’t until I was in the emergency room that I learned my jaw was broken. Within 11 weeks, I had three surgeries and lost 20 pounds. I didn’t speak for a month. It was a good day whenever I got more than 600 calories in my stomach.
Within the first year of recovery, we knew my jaw hadn’t healed correctly. My lower jaw is still slightly off center, my teeth fell on top of each other—or would if they could touch. My bottom front teeth grew closer shifting together. When I was 11, my parents took me to an orthodontist. I wasn’t a candidate for Invisalign then, but I could have had braces. I cried when he had told me, my parents weren’t happy either—that summer was hard on everyone in my family; we didn’t want to look at a metal reminder of that time for the next two years. The subject wasn’t breached again for another 10 years.
A few months ago, my orthodontist told me that if we weren’t able to fix my bite, I would likely have to have my jaw wired shut again. My teeth and bite were in a position where if my mouth were to close, the pressure would cause so much stress to my front and back teeth, they were all likely to crack.
This was the first time I considered doing something to fix my teeth. Healing from breaking my jaw was such a dark time, not because I had broken my jaw, but because of the wires and wax and rubber bands covering my mouth, the red healing stitches on my chin, my blistered puffed out lips, and my full-arm cast. I felt ugly. I felt like a freak. And I never wanted to go back to that feeling again. So, no matter how much my parents pushed getting Invisalign or braces, I said no—my smile, despite being noticeably imperfect, was mine to give freely.
But the mention of the slightest possibility of having to re-break my jaw, had me reconsidering my decisions. And on August 21st, 2019, I drove home from my orthodontist’s, staring at my newly plastic covered teeth in the rearview mirror, and I told myself I would only cry on the way home. And I did. The rubber bands rubbed my cheeks the same way. The attachments that clung to my most visible teeth cut like metal. I couldn’t open my mouth wide anymore—and that darkness of never wanting to talk again returned; seeping on to my tongue as if it never left. It was that same unshakeable shame I felt 10 years ago.
And with my luck, the next day I drove down to Virginia Tech for the start of my senior year, fear packed in my throat. It was really hard the first few weeks of school—getting used to something I was deeply insecure and embarrassed about, surrounded by thousands of people. And they never mean to look, and they don’t actually care, but for a split second it’s all they would see about me. When they first see me smile, when I have to brush my teeth in public restrooms after each meal, when I take the trays out and spit trails from my teeth to the plastic. It draws eyes and I always hated feeling singled out and alone.
I wish I could say there is an instant cure for dealing with insecurity. I wish I could pinpoint the moment I stopped feeling so disgusted with my current plastic-covered smile and just let myself express my happiness. I wish I could lie and say there aren’t days when I wished I had taken the offer 10 years ago to get braces because everyone at 11 had braces and I would have been just another kid. But that’s not how confidence works. One day you’re halfway up the mountain and the next you have tripped all the way back to the ground. It takes time.
I remember one day during my freshman year of high school, I had been complaining about how obnoxious and embarrassing the quite sizable pimple on my chin was, when my friend turned to me and said, “most people are so wrapped up in themselves and how they look, they are never going to notice anything you deem wrong about yourself.” This has always stayed with me and it is what I always try to focus on when I have one of my “lower self-confidence” days. Everyone has their own insecurities and their own problems, and everyone is just trying to make it through their day unscathed. No one sees, or more importantly, no one cares about the breakout you have, or the fact that you’re bloating, or if your arms are super hairy, or if you have braces. The only people that will care are the people that care about you, and they just want you to be happy and unabashedly yourself.
I believe insecurity to be a reflection of what we wish ourselves to be, what we think is normal and good, with no regard to realism. It’s why insecurities will always exist in everyone because there isn’t actually a “perfect ideal,” but we try to mold ourselves to one anyway. Dealing with Invisalign brought up emotions and feelings I had long struggled with and will continue to struggle with because it was never about my teeth, it was about feeling alone and different. I didn’t defeat my insecurity because I can now smile with my retainers in, I don’t know if I ever will. But with the reminder that we are all our own worst critics and that the people who truly care about will never care about my looks, I can let myself smile freely.