Nine Months

Today marks nine months with the braces.

Nine. Months.

My orthodontist is still a source of great comfort and his happiness with my progress is so gratifying. Today he stretched an elastic chain across half my top teeth and half my bottom teeth as well. This, I can assure you, is painful. I sucked in my breath when he first put them on, surprised that the sensation was so visceral and immediate. In nine months, I have not felt anything like this. I've had individual teeth hurt before, but I've never had a chord of teeth hurt before--a dissonant, sharp chord, that's for sure. But I think since I've identified the pattern of pain in the past, it will ebb in about three days. It's a small consolation, but a consolation all the same.

There is a yearly event that I plan at work, and I saw some folks that I haven't seen since last May. One woman came up to me to say hello and the first words out of her mouth after "hello" were "Oh my god, when did you get those?" After I told her she said, "how much longer to you have to wear them? Are they utterly horrible?" I think she meant to be kind, and offer empathy, though in the retelling of this, I see how really unfortunate this conversation was.

But I think it shows how long I've come that these comments honestly didn't bother me that much. I think I'd rather have someone be up front with me and ask about the braces point blank, than the strange, subconscious hands that seem to wander up to the lips of people I've just met. This has happened so often, that people inadvertently cover their mouths when they look at my teeth. It hurts my feelings more than someone saying, "Dear God, another year and three months? I'm so sorry!" possibly could.

Shashi Deshpande said, "self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real you never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces." It's amazing to me that I have a different face to each person who newly meets me, and each of his or her reactions is its own biosphere, taking on a life of it's own and setting off an equal and opposite reaction in me. I know I am not the person I was nine months ago when I got the braces, and I know I'm not even the person I was a month ago, making my slow peace with it. I am painting my own picture of idealistic self-revelation, and though as Shashi says, the process might be cruel, the revelation is anything but. This is akin to what many parents say--that the process of being a parent is the hardest thing they've ever done, but they wouldn't trade it for a world.

Maybe there's a reason that this experience happened at the nine month mark after all...