Metal Mouth

I'm 4 days into my braces. And man, I must have completely forgotton how painful they are. Forget the soreness, that I can deal with. (with the help of 2 advil thank you). The insides of my cheeks are cut up. The tip of my tongue is slashed and sensitive and the upper corners of my inside lip are bruised to no tomorrow. It hurts just to sit quietly with my mouth closed. It actually feels better when I smile or just sit with my mouth open like a deranged person with facial twitches. Oddly, I can't leave the pain alone. Every few minutes I'm doing something that makes me shed a single tear in pain. Why??? It's like when your fingers smell and you have to keep smelling them even though its rancid. I suppose I'm a glutton for pain.

This sucks.

But I already noticed that my teeth have shifted - the gap between my 2 front teeth has already become so much smaller that its hard to floss. I coulda flossed with a post-it last week, that's how big the gap was. But my canines have also shifted - into a position that when I bite down, I can't get my molars to make direct contact to basically I can't chew. Which resulted in a very painful dinner trying to eat my steak and pasta. I ended up just whole swallowing chunks of meat. (Very distressing news to my colonics technician haha)

Ideally I'd like to post some pictures to show the progress...but I'm still holding onto what pride I have left. I didn't realize how goonie I'd feel talking to coworkers/starbucks barista/halal street vendor with a mouth full of metal. I've developed this new habit of trying to cover it up with my upper lip when I talk but when I tested it out in front of the mirror last night I realized I've been looking quite stupid and failing miserably in my attempts.

This sucks.