When I first got my braces on, it was October of eighth grade. That October was a turning point in my whole middle school experience: for once, I had one of those tightly knit group of friends plastered on movie posters, two best friends that knew me better than I knew myself, people I could call countless hours every day, obnoxious bright neon tie-dye t-shirts, and newly secured braces to close the immature gaps in my teeth.
Looking back on it, October was the highlight of any social kind of friend group I’ve ever had: I’ve never felt more accepted or loved by a group of girls that just six months later virtually iced me out with exclusive, invite-only nightly Facetimes during the seething storm of a world-wide pandemic raging around us.
It only got worse when I got into the private school that my parents quickly paid the deposit for, almost immediately when the bolded Arial font spelling out “Congratulations!” popped up in their email boxes. My best friends of four years started to splinter away, small chips of an iceberg melting into the frigid inky blue ocean below, leaving me stranded on my own island.
Still, freshman year, I clumsily held onto my melting edges, showing up uncomfortably at parties, watching people eye me like an unusually out-of-place exhibit at some sort of art museum. Occasionally I got a few hi’s, but what kept me going the most was my two best friends, who’d been in my life since I was 10.
The childhood affection for them, the nostalgia and missing, caused me to attach myself to the two of them, like one of those stubborn stickers that never fully peels off, leaving a thin, sticky layer of film on the surface.
And then this summer, summer 2021, was the breaking point, where they finally scrubbed me off at camp together, letting me fall into their past and history, leaving me in a broken pile of tears and nostalgic heartbreak.
Going into sophomore year, I was a completely different girl. Having the confidence to branch out and shake off the people who only cared about me for convenience, I learned how to make myself happy without the constant reassurance of my old cornerstones, two people who I left in the past just as they had left me. Occasionally, I’ll still smile at a picture of us, my arms flung around their necks, a bright grin dazzling my eyes, but I don’t cry at those pictures anymore.
And now, I’m getting my braces off in just three weeks. The orthodontist will probably see the same girl he’s known for two and a half years now: a brunette with bright green eyes, slightly reddish cheeks always seeming to be kissed by warmth, excited to close gaps in her teeth that she’d dealt with all her life. But he won’t know that now she’s grown to realize her worth and depend on herself, learning how to redefine who she is.