Starting my road to recovery, lost and scared.

[affirmatice]

The last few months have been hard for me. In particular, the last few weeks. I started to think more about suicide, reading suicide articles, and just living in an extremely deep depression. I don't want to die. I want to live, I want to be happy, I want to do so much in this life. Thinking about suicide only came about because at this moment, I simply cannot see a future for myself, and the pain of my own thoughts is almost too much.

I would like to share my story. And I know we all have different stories, and mine may sound trivial to some. But it's my story nonetheless.

Growing up, I had an extreme aversion to brushing my teeth. My parents failed to establish good habits, and it was something I avoided at all costs. Not too uncommon right? Well, unfortunately during the ages of 11-13 years old, I had braces on. I also consumed sugar constantly. Before the age of 14, I had done irreparable damage to most of my teeth. Countless fillings on my teeth and on all the front teeth - cavities had started to develop around the metal squares of the braces.

By the time I was 18 (about 5 years ago), I first started to understand the damage that had been done. And this drove me into extreme depression. I was finally feeling better about my appearance heading into college, going to the gym, etc. But I realized my teeth were damaged for life. The numerous fillings that I had would eventually need to be replaced constantly. And if I wanted a better looking smile, my only options were to consider veneers, but even that brought about tons of anxiety for various reasons. I didn't want fake teeth that cost 30k$, might not look good, and would also need to be replaced overtime. All I wanted was MY natural, healthy teeth. And I had lost that forever. I saw no hope for the future.

I struggled greatly with this throughout the next 5 years. I began to have very dark thoughts that no young adult should have. I'm unloveable. Gross. Disgusting. How could a girl hear my story and still want to kiss me. I would never be what I wanted to be - an attractive, confident person. And this was all my fault. Maybe my parents share some blame. Maybe the doctors should've monitored me better. Regardless, I'm the one who has to deal with this for life. I went into the past almost constantly, calculating millions of ways this was preventable, and why this had happened to me.

I hid my smile in shame for 5 years. People called me too serious. Too boring. The reality? I hated smiling and was severely depressed. People asked me why I wasn't dating, after all, I'm an attractive person and I looked reasonably confident. The reality? I couldn't imagine any girl who would love me and not judge me for my past. How can anyone love someone so physically damaged and gross. I looked around at all the people around me smiling and laughing carefreely, and the hatred for myself became too much to bear. Anytime people mentioned something related to teeth - even casually, I almost froze and just felt a dreading, sinking feeling in my stomach.

It killed me everyday. I felt physically uncomfortable in my own body. Constantly distracting myself, because my hatred for my self was too much. And when the distractions ran out? Severe depression returned.

Ultimately, here I am. The last few weeks have been hard. It scares me and saddens me that my mind started instinctively considering suicide. I'm still young and I have a lot to live for, at least I hope I still do. It's sad that this one, specific thing has completely ruined my life for the last 5 years and I still can't see a way out. But while I'm still alive, I might as well make an attempt to keep living and to seek help. Even if that's opening up to one close person. Speaking to my therapist. Or going to the dentist to see what improvements can be done.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

Welcome to SaSu! I'm glad you give recovery a chance! You find a lot of resources in the sticky threads. Good luck!

 

[Chronic21]

One of the things that helped me was looking at people online who share the same problem as mine especially on reddit. The reason you're feeling this way might be because you think that you're alone and no one shares the same problem as you (given that you said you always observe people's smiles) I know you may not encounter people in real life with the same exact situation as yours but they're definitely all over the place online and statistically people get fillings and have dental issues throughout their lives including myself even most of the celebrities get veneers or fake teeth (if you're considering this choice to feel better about yourself and more confident and if you have the money do your research and see people's experiences who got them and which type lasts longer and decide what is best for you) and I also want to say that some people can take good care of their teeth since childhood and have the perfect set of teeth then get into an accident and have to fix them too so you shouldn't regret anything from your past. something to be grateful for is at least you can afford to go to the dentist and have those fillings as some unfortunate people don't have this privilege so there's that and the point where you talk about not getting a girlfriend because of that is nonsense not all people are judgemental bitches and you shouldn't get into a relationship with such superficial people. personally, I don't give a shit. it's just an addition to get them aesthetically fixed.
Take care of yourself and your health.

 

[affirmatice]

One of the things that helped me was looking at people online who share the same problem as mine especially on reddit. The reason you're feeling this way might be because you think that you're alone and no one shares the same problem as you (given that you said you always observe people's smiles) I know you may not encounter people in real life with the same exact situation as yours but they're definitely all over the place online and statistically people get fillings and have dental issues throughout their lives including myself even most of the celebrities get veneers or fake teeth (if you're considering this choice to feel better about yourself and more confident and if you have the money do your research and see people's experiences who got them and which type lasts longer and decide what is best for you) and I also want to say that some people can take good care of their teeth since childhood and have the perfect set of teeth then get into an accident and have to fix them too so you shouldn't regret anything from your past. something to be grateful for is at least you can afford to go to the dentist and have those fillings as some unfortunate people don't have this privilege so there's that and the point where you talk about not getting a girlfriend because of that is nonsense not all people are judgemental bitches and you shouldn't get into a relationship with such superficial people. personally, I don't give a shit. it's just an addition to get them aesthetically fixed.
Take care of yourself and your health.

I mean, i've spent a lot of time in self-thought and recently therapy. It's not much of feeling alone, because I know there are others out there with bad teeth/imperfect teeth/dentures etc. But even reading their stories doesn't make me feel any better.

I think in my case, I feel a lot of unfairness, shame, hopelessness, and just don't know what to do about it. It's easy to say, just don't care so much. But it's 100% reasonable to care a lot about your teeth as they are a huge point of your appearance/health. In fact most people do. Beyond that there's a huge amount of shame. I mean even though I was a child, and there were a lot circumstances beyond my control. It's nearly impossible for me to tell someone "Yea, i didn't take care of myself and my teeth were all rotting". And it feels incredibly hopeless to have to deal with this.

It's actually almost crazy that this has become my life. I read a lot of stories on here, and no doubt people have suffered a lot. Childhood abuse, financial struggles, loneliness. I mean I almost have it all, good friends, good family, good job. But this one thing has just completely destroyed me. And I don't see a way out. I recently wrote a few notes to my family and friends in case things don't get better. And I'm scared and depressed and angry at this one thing for fucking ruining everything. But I just can't see a way beyond it.

 

[Chronic21]

I mean, i've spent a lot of time in self-thought and recently therapy. It's not much of feeling alone, because I know there are others out there with bad teeth/imperfect teeth/dentures etc. But even reading their stories doesn't make me feel any better.

I think in my case, I feel a lot of unfairness, shame, hopelessness, and just don't know what to do about it. It's easy to say, just don't care so much. But it's 100% reasonable to care a lot about your teeth as they are a huge point of your appearance/health. In fact most people do. Beyond that there's a huge amount of shame. I mean even though I was a child, and there were a lot circumstances beyond my control. It's nearly impossible for me to tell someone "Yea, i didn't take care of myself and my teeth were all rotting". And it feels incredibly hopeless to have to deal with this.

It's actually almost crazy that this has become my life. I read a lot of stories on here, and no doubt people have suffered a lot. Childhood abuse, financial struggles, loneliness. I mean I almost have it all, good friends, good family, good job. But this one thing has just completely destroyed me. And I don't see a way out. I recently wrote a few notes to my family and friends in case things don't get better. And I'm scared and depressed and angry at this one thing for fucking ruining everything. But I just can't see a way beyond it.

I feel you so deeply, and other people's struggles should never make yours any less important. I'm not saying you should just think, "Oh, people have it worse, so I should be happy." My point is more like this: look at the people who have the same struggle as you. They're coping, trying to fix it, and still living their lives and even having partners. There's actual proof out there that this is fixable! You can't always control how you feel about something, even if to others it seems 'not so important.'
I also see that you think you owe people an explanation of your situation, and no you absolutely don't. The only one you should be worrying about is you.

If your situation is fixable, that's great! It'll help improve how you feel about your appearance, but every change requires patience. You should try to calm the strong emotions that are making you hate yourself—just don't suppress them.

If it doesn't work out the way you want it to, screw it. There's more to life and your personality than this. You said that you have great friends so what would that make you feel if one of those great friends told you that they liked a person that felt grossed out by how their teeth looked (or any part of them in particular), You would most likely say that they're superficial and it's not good to be with someone who only saw that aspect about your friend and advice them to look for someone else who would validate them the way they are. Imagine all the experiences you'd miss out because you believed no one would like you for something you hate about yourself. There are people in this world who will love you no matter what, and it's never impossible to find someone like that.

Please don't be hyperfixated on this problem to the point where you forget all the good aspects of yourself. In my opinion, you should take time to sit with yourself and stop catastrophizing these problems. There's a really high chance they can be solved, both by changing how you view them and through real dental work to improve the situation in the future if you want to. Dental problems can be devastating, but they're also treatable. Whether it's a lengthy process or a few more procedures but it all depends on your patience and strong will to change the situation.

I also think you're incredibly brave for going to therapy and doing your best to recover. I wish you well, and I'm sure you can work it all out.

(By the way, I recently had a terrible dental experience. My teeth were in so much pain that even the dentist couldn't figure out what was wrong, and it made me consider hurting myself. During those months, I began feeling really ashamed of myself because I spent so much time in front of the mirror looking at my silver fillings, chipped teeth, and misaligned teeth, all on top of the unbearable pain. I constantly looked at other people's teeth online, to the point that my family thought I was going insane. I also fell two months behind in the most important year of school, and I'm still trying to catch up. But then I realized that the most important thing is to be pain-free; That's why I believe you when you say it's never simple.)
I am very bad at illustrating my points and I digress, maybe I didn't get all your points right but that's how I truly feel about it.