Have you ever considered cosmetic surgery? I know ultimately we have to accept our imperfections and find our own inner beauty yada yada yada, but ultimately it's your body and you can do whatever the hell you want with it and I think some people have actually benefited from altering it.
Yes, I'm glad you brought that up and have an open stance on it. Actually, surgery and procedures have been the only thing I've thought about being an option besides ctb.
But I do want to still look natural and the ones I need are so complicated and so expensive and doctors have been such a pain. I feel like I have to go through so many people just to beg to be "pretty." It is demeaning and defeating.
I went through over 4 years of braces as a kid because my teeth were so jacked up but it only camouflaged my teeth by straightening them as much as possible, the original jaw issues and resulting facial structure problems that the teeth stemmed from remain. I should have gotten double jaw surgery and palatal expansion but instead I got extractions of healthy teeth and
now my jaw bone joints are wearing away and my teeth roots are resorbing so I'm losing even more bone. This was shown to me in x rays (I think it's different than an x Ray but they look similar and I forget the name) at my last dentist appointment.
I also had another procedure as a teenager. Elective but part of it was supposed to help my awful breathing. I got my tonsils and adenoids removed but that didn't help. And my teeth were retracted further into my face with the braces so my airway was closed off even more by my tongue being forced back into my throat.
(I had no clue at the time that this is something which jaw surgery also would have helped..opening the airway, etc).
Well turned out this elective procedure was not the thing to do.
The feature I ended up messing with was actually one of my few good ones but in relation to the rest of my face, which is very poor, it seemed too much to me. At that age, I also didn't know of any other procedure that changed someone's looks drastically. I was young, uninformed, I could not properly assess my issues yet. I just knew I didn't look like other girls or even my own family and I was in such distress. I was eager without caution.
I even left school due to feeling so ugly. I was told so to my face and behind my back. I had people make animal sounds and puking noises when I entered the cafeteria. I wasn't overweight or anything. (Although I did go through eating disorders in an attempt to control something about myself, when I felt I had no other form of control over my looks).
It was just pure unfortunate genetics.
So anyway I did get that other procedure and it ended up ruining the feature, both functionally and aesthetically, the surgeon screwed up. There were many red flags but I was too naive to realize them beforehand.
I have since had a few other people contacting me who were former patients, referring to my surgeon as a butcher or just simply giving unacceptable results. He affected even more than just that feature, also causing issues with the surrounding area as a result.
To have this single feature revised is upward of 20k. (Some aspects are not even fixable.) Not counting the mind numbing research, time, and travel for multiple consultations to ensure the best bet be placed on a good surgeon. And there are still no guarantees it will go well.
If it doesn't, the surgeon will not refund or take responsibility. Patient rights for plastic surgery are laughable. Surgeons get away with murder. It's not like other medical professions. This was another thing I had to learn the hard way.
And this is just fixing a mistake. One mistake.
This isn't even getting started on the original issues. Which have been complicated by taking the wrong course with camouflage orthodontics as a child.
And beyond that, 3 years ago, I had a fluke accident happen with the skin on my face. I basically chemically burned it with a product I thought was mild and safe.
It has never been the same and seems permanently and noticeabley aged and damaged. It burns and aches to this day. Since it covers my whole face, it affects every feature of my face, ending just before my ears begin. (A woman I spoke to online who dealt with something similar, literally took her own life after half a year of dealing with it, and I've known of more cases where someone took their life after the same thing occurring. Eventually I had trouble even connecting with others who had the same incident happen because it wasn't even the only thing I was dealing with. Already killing people off on it's own.)
My skin was basically the last good feature I had after all I've been through. I ruined the other one.
I had a bad face, one surgically ruined feature, but my skin was very good after going on accutane because I also began to deal with cystic acne for a short while. I went on the drug to avoid scarring, it worked and I took such good care of that one feature, I already lived like a vampire so avoiding the sun wasn't hard, it was like a filter to the rest of the mess that was my face. Now, even that is ruined. And now after all that, I also have scars (and not from acne).
I've been to many dermatologists about it and other doctors to check bloodwork and allergies to make sure I don't have anything underlying going on preventing it from healing.
I do try my best to help myself even when I feel humiliated just walking outside my front door.
But if I can't even fix the result of a fluke accident, if I can't even reverse one thing, how am I supposed to reverse all these other mistakes, just to go back to the beginning and make the correct attempt at the correct type of procedure. Not to mention these are just the main issues, I have other smaller things affecting my appearance, like the eyebrow and eyelash loss (I'm literally too afraid to check my head for hair loss because some types of alopecia gets worse from stress so I feel like if I am aware of it, it will stress me out more and get worse..I wouldn't even let the doctor who diagnosed me check too far into my scalp.) Even just the stress alone is killing me, the lack of sleep, crying everyday is damaging me further, I have permanent broken blood vessels all over my lids from crying so violently. The list goes on and on like a bad joke. (I am usually never this detailed on the public threads in talking about it, so apologies for the long response.)
I also have issues with my body that are not weight related but I don't talk about those much because I am more of a face oriented person. It feels more strongly linked to my identity and thus more of an identity crisis. The issues below the neck are pretty sucky but not CTB worthy bad to me.
I'm just exhausted, I'm not a kid anymore no matter how much I feel like one, I've lost too much time to continue to go full throttle with cosmetic surgery. I have ptsd from the unnecessary procedure that already occurred, I don't trust doctors anymore. Especially not cosmetic/plastic ones. But I can't mold my face on my own. (I wish I could!!!)
I am in such mental and physical discomfort, that I can't even function properly, I can't even advocate for myself at appointments though I do try my best.
Because I think everyone deserves to be comfortable and confident in their own skin. Some people get by fine without that but I'm just not one of those people and I never will be. I don't consider myself a vain or superficial person as I do not extend my own need to look a certain way to other people. I do not care what other people look like, I only care if they do, as I feel their pain. I just want peace.
This has affected every aspect of my existence, as looks often do. And I have been unable to do anything else with my life that I wanted to do. I'm honestly sick of talking about and dealing with this type of issue but unless it physically all dissapears, I am shackled to it. I cannot be in such disharmony with my own flesh or I cannot survive.
And I agree that there's nothing wrong with cosmetic surgery when it goes right. Nothing wrong with wanting it even if it ends up going wrong. It can be life changing for many people.
No one should have to love something or be okay with something that they had no hand in cultivating themselves. I don't see that as self love, I've never understood people who present it as such. (So I'm glad you describe it as yada yada Lol)
I didn't choose this body or face.
I like who I am, but I don't have to like what I look like.
Yes, I made a bad decision but it stemmed from things that were already out of my control. And the surgeon still gave an awful result regardless of whether it was necessary or not. My parents were not properly informed either so they didn't take the right steps for me early on. Now I have to take several large steps backward before I can even take anymore forward.
And after researching my heart out, the prospect of me ever reaching a level of comfort and In time for it to be worth it, is BLEAK. I am just so tired. I sit here and watch the world go by, watch others around me have what I will never have and live their lives. Everyone has their problems sure, I have more than just the one, but this is the one that I cannot live with.
I just want to wake up, look in the mirror, and be content. I don't even ask for true happiness anymore.
Well, sorry for the novel lol
