Tomorrow I get braces. I need and want them. I need them because my top front teeth are very worn down because of where they are and because I grind my teeth very badly when I sleep. I will wear then through or break them in the next couple of years. I want them because the smile I see in the mirror doesn’t match how my smile feels.
It is supposed to take 18 months for the teeth to move and set so today I am having a few apples and chewing a bunch of gum. People have told me that it can be a little uncomfortable and there will be adjustments that leave my mouth feeling a little punched. I’m not looking forward to that, but I’m welcoming it. I have felt ugly for a long time and other than getting braces, there wasn’t anything I could to about the way my smile looked. I hide it some of the time and then just gave-up trying. But thoughts about what other people thought about my teeth would pop into my head when I was talking to someone new.
It’s a first world problem and frankly I’m lucky to have it, but living in Canada, I have an expectation of dying with most of my original teeth so I’m going to buy that future. I’ll trade my time now for my teeth later. It’s a good investment.
Tomorrow at lunch, when I leave the office my smile will be something different than it is today. It will be a vision of a brighter future because I am taking action about something that has bothered me for a long time.