Empowered to Change.

One of the bigger challenges in this Year of Self-Love is that I have one major commandment: I cannot speak poorly of myself.

Turns out, that’s a pretty hard habit to break.

Nobody is a bigger critic of me than me. It’s been in full effect since I was a kid and this Chatterbox that I’ve written of many times in years past is a ceaseless, relentless, cruel bitch whose only purpose in this universe is to make me feel like shit. Yeah, I don’t need internet comments, 1-star reviews, drive-by hate speech on the socials. My Chatterbitch is worse than any enemy I’ve ever encountered. She’s in my head every waking moment and gives no quarter.

And, since I could never get away from her, I fed her well.

How can I set any boundaries with the people around me if I can’t set limits on the sadistic voice inside my own head?

Therefore my boundary has to start there.

In the month or so I’ve been amping myself up for this challenge, I’ve had that mental check every time I have had a mean thing to say about myself. The impulse to critique myself harshly is so deeply ingrained, it’s like breathing. Of course, many times it’s wrapped in the “joke” I wish to steal from my detractors. Only from my head, it sounds more like truth, and hurts more like physical blow.

It’s so unconscious, in fact, I began to wonder how I was going to make this change. I felt like I was setting myself up for failure, like telling myself I can lose ten pounds in a week.

Interestingly enough, another secret journey has helped me develop a strategy to tackle this challenge. It’s been a self-improvement project that I’ve kept under wraps for a few months now, waiting for the right time to make the journey public, but something that has had already had a huge impact and it’s not even something that I can mark off as “done” yet.

This is a big thing for someone in constant search of a Checked List and a Gold Star.

The shame surrounding my smile has been an issue since grade school, when my baby teeth started to fall out. I was all smiles in kindergarten…

But by first and second grade, I lost the fullness of my smile.

As my adult teeth grew in, everything went sideways in the most literal of ways. By the time I was in middle school - or, in my case junior high - my smile became my least favorite feature, second only to the extra weight.

And, unlike the extra weight, this was a whole lot harder to change. I was stuck with it, and that was that.

This sucked because I love to smile. I love to laugh. I like joy and prefer to be a cheerful person. I don’t want to think about how I’m going to look to other people, or shy away from my own reflection in the mirror, or hide from any camera.

In true joy, I don’t think about it. But apart from those blissful moments, I do. If my mom had had the money when I was a kid, I would have been all over getting braces and fixing the “problem.”

But, alas, just like I didn’t have an Atari, or MTV, or roller skates, or any variety of the clothes and accessories my more privileged peers did, I didn’t get braces either.

Worse, by the time I was a young adult I was a young parent, who had no money to spare for such things and no dental insurance to cover it.

Any changes would just have to wait.

And wait…

And wait.

I waited so long that I kinda gave up that it would happen for me.

In the last few years I casually pursued what it would mean to get the smile of my dreams, but the severity of the misalignment posed some initial problems. Finally, my dentist, whom I love, started encouraging me to pursue Invisalign. They convinced me that neither my age nor the condition of my smile, crooked though it clearly was, would be dealbreakers should I ever wish to correct my teeth, which would make them healthier as a result.

I thought for a while that it would still be out of reach cost-wise, but then I was presented an opportunity to begin treatment in July of this year and I finally pulled the trigger before I reasoned my way back into mediocrity. I went in to get scanned and was told that it would take 24 trays to straighten my teeth and give me the confidence-boosting smile I had always dreamed of.

Two hundred and forty days. That was all that was standing between me and a checked box… a gold star.

I’m on my thirteenth tray now and the change already is pretty remarkable. I don’t just mean my smile. There is a lightness to my interactions now. The insecurity about my smile has all but kicked rocks down the road and all that’s left is the joy. Unbridled, shameless joy. It’s what I feel. It’s what I project, making me more approachable and attractive to complete strangers who now want to interact with me.

And I don’t think it was my smile that kept those interactions at bay for all those decades. I think it was the way I held myself. I shrank from attention. I turned from the limelight, even when I was promoting myself as a writer.

Now I don’t shy from the camera. I smile into the mirror. I feel free to be me.

And it’s been a revelation.

I’m going to be 55 years old next week and I’m still figuring out that I am empowered to change.

If I look in the mirror and see anything reflecting back at me that I don’t like, I don’t have to beat myself up for it. I am empowered and emboldened to make whatever changes I like, age and challenges be damned. I can make progress and improvements and make all the In Between pictures as beautiful as I want to be.

In the end, they’re all just In Between pictures.

Best of all, I don’t have to wait for permission (or agreement) to feel beautiful. As I look at my reflection, it’s finally starting to feel more like the me I wanted to be. Someone who goes for what she wants, doesn’t let things stop her, and smiles from the true joy of learning how amazing it can all be.

And wonder of wonders, she’s pretty easy to love.