I Can't Wait To Get Them Off Already/Shallow Boyfriend
Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 5:58 pm
I'm nineteen years old. I'm originally from Eau Claire, Wisconsin and have lived in several places all over the midwest. I recently relocated to Winston-Salem, North Carolina and am working for a credit card company and slowly building myself a life out here. I decided (after finally getting a job with decent benefits) to talk to someone about getting braces. I have an older friend at work (in her 40s) and she is a mom with braces and I thought, "Hey, you know what? if the can do it with the social stigma that's attached to these metal contraptions, why can't I?" She recommended me to an orthodontist named Kelly Mitchell who, I found out, has amazing credentials. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from UNC-Chapel Hill (a very prestigious university) and is one of the rare doctors to pass her orthontics board with a perfect score! So imagine my excitement in meeting somebody with excellent credentials. She has a partner who recently left the military about five years ago and is very friendly, quick-thinking, and they make an amazing team. The two doctors colloborated on my case and determined my treatment plan with a free consultation.
We worked out a very sensible payment arrangement plan. In consideration that they didn't take my insurance. No interest financing but it also meant that I had to somehow come up with almost two thousand dollars in order to get treatment! This is pretty hard for a teenager to come up with, but it means a lot to take care of myself. I've needed praces since I was at least eleven. My mother claimed she didn't have the money and my smile was fine. Now, keep in mind I don't have a functional bite and the right side of my mouth doesn't even connect when I bite and there's severe crowding on the bottom! After the diagnosis with the doctors I yelled at my mom (she's still back in Wisconsin) over the phone about not giving me treatment earlier, eventually calmed down and realized that this will help me build character and I should just suck it up and take care of my own problems.
I coughed up the dough for the treatment and got braces on my upper and was ordered to do an extraction of my first molars on my lower before braces were put on. Now, that freaked the heck outta me. Pulling two teeth that are incredibly straight and are perfectly healthy? And then they also had me get a cleaning, and I hadn't seen a dentist in two years.
So I went to the dentist and was given a cleaning (no cavities! yay!) and they gave me plenty of anesthetic shots in my gums. I probably got about nine shots in my right side because I wasn't feeling it. The extraction was freaky. He gripped the tooth with some pliers and yanked on it and wiggled the pliers back and forth with a lot of force and it just ripped out. I was bleeding for the next three days profusely. I would wake up with a pool of blood in my mouth and I had to keep biting on gauze and cotton balls that I had to buy because the pads they gave me got soaked with the blood that kept gushing out.
So let's cut to the chase. My boyfriend told me he was uncomfortable with me getting braces before I got them and told he didn't know how he'd feel if I got them. So I told he was superficial as hell. And then I got them and he acted really aloof towards me...really distant and didn't act the same around me. Then he ended up acting like a complete jerk when I was staying with him in his dorm room (which is like an hour and a half away from where I live so I only got to see him like two days a week). I made him feel like a jerk for acting so shallow about some metal in my mouth that I made him cry and he said he had no idea why he was acting that way. He turned 20 a couple of weeks later and a few days before his 20th birthday he told me it was probably a good idea for us to go on a break because there's something about me that's changed?
hmm...I wonder what? He said we haven't been treating each other well lately and that we should take some time apart to evaluate things and that he was falling in love with me but something has changed and we need to figure out why we like each other again. He said he used to be really excited to see me and now he doesn't even care that much anymore and he says I'm really stressing him out when I'm around him and needs to focus on school...
And yet, he couldn't get enough of me and wanted to make out with me every chance he got before I got braces and now... he wants time apart? He even cried over them... He claims he was crying because he was really upset with himself over the way that he was acting, but I don't buy that. He said he still wants to be friends and wants to still see me, yet...I went to his birthday party a few days after we were "on a break" and he partied and got drunk and we barely talked. And then I tried to see him the following weekend and he said, "maybe it's not a good idea for you to come out here....I'm going to have pot cookies" so he'd rather get high than see me? And the weekend after that I text him that I really miss him and I want to see him and so he calls, I talk to him for like ten minutes and guess what he does? "Oh I'll call you back later" and then he called the next day and apologized and blew me off for another weekend...and now this weekend he's going to a wedding and next weekend he's going to Orlando with his mom to like Sea World and doing all this stuff with his family and that will be like five weeks apart.
So really? he wanted to be friends? Yeah, I really believe that. He's just trying to make himself feel better about himself when really he's so darn shallow and can't stand that I have braces. Well, I don't need that and I realize that there are plenty of fish in the sea, but I wish he could just be honest and tell me that he finds them unattractive and say something like, "I'm 20, I'm sorry but I find your smile unappealing...maybe when you get them off we can have something, but right now I'd prefer something without a metallic smile." and I could take that. I'm an adult, but it hurts worse when someone pretends to care and cuts your heart out.
But back to the braces! Geez, this is a long post, huh? anyway, they put the lower brackets on and only put a small amount of archwire for the front teeth because my premolars are so crooked, they're pointing inwards, that the doc had to attach a "chain" from the second molar to the premolars to get them straight so they can fit a wire in about a month. My teeth are aching...
But anyway, I needed to rant! I'll update later!
We worked out a very sensible payment arrangement plan. In consideration that they didn't take my insurance. No interest financing but it also meant that I had to somehow come up with almost two thousand dollars in order to get treatment! This is pretty hard for a teenager to come up with, but it means a lot to take care of myself. I've needed praces since I was at least eleven. My mother claimed she didn't have the money and my smile was fine. Now, keep in mind I don't have a functional bite and the right side of my mouth doesn't even connect when I bite and there's severe crowding on the bottom! After the diagnosis with the doctors I yelled at my mom (she's still back in Wisconsin) over the phone about not giving me treatment earlier, eventually calmed down and realized that this will help me build character and I should just suck it up and take care of my own problems.
I coughed up the dough for the treatment and got braces on my upper and was ordered to do an extraction of my first molars on my lower before braces were put on. Now, that freaked the heck outta me. Pulling two teeth that are incredibly straight and are perfectly healthy? And then they also had me get a cleaning, and I hadn't seen a dentist in two years.
So I went to the dentist and was given a cleaning (no cavities! yay!) and they gave me plenty of anesthetic shots in my gums. I probably got about nine shots in my right side because I wasn't feeling it. The extraction was freaky. He gripped the tooth with some pliers and yanked on it and wiggled the pliers back and forth with a lot of force and it just ripped out. I was bleeding for the next three days profusely. I would wake up with a pool of blood in my mouth and I had to keep biting on gauze and cotton balls that I had to buy because the pads they gave me got soaked with the blood that kept gushing out.
So let's cut to the chase. My boyfriend told me he was uncomfortable with me getting braces before I got them and told he didn't know how he'd feel if I got them. So I told he was superficial as hell. And then I got them and he acted really aloof towards me...really distant and didn't act the same around me. Then he ended up acting like a complete jerk when I was staying with him in his dorm room (which is like an hour and a half away from where I live so I only got to see him like two days a week). I made him feel like a jerk for acting so shallow about some metal in my mouth that I made him cry and he said he had no idea why he was acting that way. He turned 20 a couple of weeks later and a few days before his 20th birthday he told me it was probably a good idea for us to go on a break because there's something about me that's changed?
hmm...I wonder what? He said we haven't been treating each other well lately and that we should take some time apart to evaluate things and that he was falling in love with me but something has changed and we need to figure out why we like each other again. He said he used to be really excited to see me and now he doesn't even care that much anymore and he says I'm really stressing him out when I'm around him and needs to focus on school...
And yet, he couldn't get enough of me and wanted to make out with me every chance he got before I got braces and now... he wants time apart? He even cried over them... He claims he was crying because he was really upset with himself over the way that he was acting, but I don't buy that. He said he still wants to be friends and wants to still see me, yet...I went to his birthday party a few days after we were "on a break" and he partied and got drunk and we barely talked. And then I tried to see him the following weekend and he said, "maybe it's not a good idea for you to come out here....I'm going to have pot cookies" so he'd rather get high than see me? And the weekend after that I text him that I really miss him and I want to see him and so he calls, I talk to him for like ten minutes and guess what he does? "Oh I'll call you back later" and then he called the next day and apologized and blew me off for another weekend...and now this weekend he's going to a wedding and next weekend he's going to Orlando with his mom to like Sea World and doing all this stuff with his family and that will be like five weeks apart.
So really? he wanted to be friends? Yeah, I really believe that. He's just trying to make himself feel better about himself when really he's so darn shallow and can't stand that I have braces. Well, I don't need that and I realize that there are plenty of fish in the sea, but I wish he could just be honest and tell me that he finds them unattractive and say something like, "I'm 20, I'm sorry but I find your smile unappealing...maybe when you get them off we can have something, but right now I'd prefer something without a metallic smile." and I could take that. I'm an adult, but it hurts worse when someone pretends to care and cuts your heart out.
But back to the braces! Geez, this is a long post, huh? anyway, they put the lower brackets on and only put a small amount of archwire for the front teeth because my premolars are so crooked, they're pointing inwards, that the doc had to attach a "chain" from the second molar to the premolars to get them straight so they can fit a wire in about a month. My teeth are aching...
But anyway, I needed to rant! I'll update later!
Just like nobody is "his glasses" or his "haircut". 
Even when I get grumpy about having braces or I say "I wish I could take these stupid things off!" He says "You're going to have a really straight smile after, so just live with it." Not once has he said "UGH! I don't want to be seen with your gaps and ugly braces." You do what you need to do, and your confidence will skyrocket and shine. People will begin to flock towards you, like flies on poo!
