Anxiety Building
Thursday is the day my bottom braces go on. Mentally I am prepared for the soreness and pain and general discomfort that will occur (can’t be any worse than when the top ones went on right?!). I am even prepared for the elastics, got my ibuprofen all ready.
The thing that is really freaking me out about the impending brace addition is the aesthetics of it all. Superficial or not I am deathly afraid of what I will look like. I am finally used to the braces that I have - as awful as they feel they are basically clear and unobtrusive. The bottom ones will be metal, more visible, and I will have elastics. Let’s take this one at a time shall we?
1. The Elastics: I am imagining them to be neon in color - and SUPER noticable. I 
picture not being able to open my mouth and when it does open it will be awkward. I imagine eating will be nearly impossible and won’t be able to eat in public again.
2. The Braces themselves: They will be metal and therefore much more noticable than the tooth colored brackets on the top. Everyone keeps saying that you won’t be able to notice because they are on the bottom but my mouth is ALWAYS open. I smile and talk A LOT, and I know for a fact, after much research (looking in the mirror and smiling and talking to myself in a non-crazy way), that my bottom teeth are in fact visible. Also, with shining metal protruding from them they will for sure be noticable.
3. When i got my top braces on my teeth felt too big for my face, I hate that feeling because it makes my tongue stick out (i have decided that my tongue is claustrophobic and hates to share my mouth space with the Evil Braces and therefore attempts to escape…what? Do you have a better reason for why my tongue likes to stick out of my face when it never did before?! I didn’t think so.)
4. Because only my top teeth are braced I can get away with eating a lot 
of stuff I am not allowed. It takes some maneuvering and careful chewing prowess but I have been known to have a Twix, crunchy granola bars and other forbidden foods. With the addition of the bottom braces I won’t have ANY leaway at all - there will be no forgiving teeth to make up for the bracket-infested ones.
So, flashback to last year and my anxiety was about 80% pain concern and 20% aesthetics now I am at about 95% aesthetics and 5% pain concern - I don’t think i can consider this improvement- if anything I am plateaued in a state of perpetual fear, the fear changes but the anxiety level stays the same. Great.
Also, I am getting anxiety over the inevitable unpanned horribleness that always seems to happen whenever I go see the ortho. It never fails, I go in and know what to expect and then she goes ahead and springs something completely out of left field on me.
I took the morning off from work on Thursday so I’d have some time to recover from the inevitable sobbing fit that I will throw but I don’t know if I will be emotionally ready to handle the comments when I do get into work. I don’t want to randomly burst into tears when one of my co-workers comments on them (even if it is a nice one).
On top of that I need to figure out how I am going to tell my current boy/love interest that my face is about to get ten times worse than it already is? I know he will most likely be “fine” with it - but there is always that fear that he (or really anyone I know) will make some inadvertent comment that will crush whatever teeth confidence I have left.
Before I go I must say a very happy (but insanely jealous!) CONGRATULATIONS to Wired Lady who finally got her braces off!!!!! Congrats lady -your blog has been a comfort to me and lots of other braced up peoples. Enjoy all of your brace-free days you have ahead of you!
P.S. The New York Times recently did an article on Braces and the Recession and it was a horribly offensive piece that basically stated that braces were superficial and unneccesary…I have a very heated response to this but have not had time to write the thoughtful and clear headed response I would like - so be on the look out for that coming soon!
