June 24, 2022
My teeth are far from perfect. I used to suck my finger when I was younger and the curve is still there — not as pronounced as it was before, but still there. My incisors are obvious (by that I mean you can see the points). I have a space on the side where the tooth broke in three places to the root while eating a cookie. It wasn’t even a hard cookie. For the record: that tooth was the recipient of a very expensive root canal and it just broke. I had to have it surgically removed and never got a replacement.
For many years I didn’t really smile because you know, the above reasons, but the times when I did, people would always tell me they loved my smile. In my mind I’m wondering — what are these people smoking?! But they weren’t imbibers or people who got high. They also were not pathological liars. They were clearly seeing something that I wasn’t.
But there came a day when I decided to retire the RBF (resting bitch face) because. Hmmmm, now that I am thinking about it, I can’t remember why I actually decided to smile more. But I started to and now I smile more than any other expression naturally and people would still tell me that they loved my smile and I would still wonder why.
When I took selfies, which were rare and only recently, they were always with a serious face. But I eventually decided to also smile in my pictures. Today I took up my phone to use the camera to check on my hair. I smiled as I was looking at the camera. It was in that moment that I saw what I think others saw. All the time, I was looking at the crooked teeth and the gap: the imperfections but they were seeing the transformation that a smile brought to my face. The one that I never saw. Until today.
