-- eight.

mood: Very, very irritable.
listening to: Nothing.
reading: Short stories by Stephen King.
watching: Nothing
playing: Nothing
eating: Nothing
drinking: Nothing

- - - - - >

I'm too tired to talk about my day.
It was good, for once in a long, long time, but I'm too tired, and my mouth is too sore for me to concentrate that well.

The hooks on my braces, where the rubber bands are going to go, have cut nasty scars into the insides of my cheeks. The areas around those scars have swollen up.
No, I do not look like a chipmunk. The swelling isn't even noticeable unless I open my mouth wide enough and let you look in—which I refuse to let anyone do by this point. /stubborn and self-conscious
Eating, talking, laughing, and yawning have all been made extremely painful due to those scars, to the stupid scrap metal in my mouth. I just want to rip them out on my own, but I've been told by so many people that I'd only lose my teeth as well, and it would hurt worse than just getting used to the damn things anyway.

It's during times like these nowadays that I get very, very angry that I had no say in this whatsoever.
If I were, say, seven or eight years old, then I could understand not being given the choice to get braces or not. But I am seventeen, for crying out loud! Shouldn't I have had at least one word in edgewise about this?

For an invention that is so beneficial to me, it sure does depress me a lot.

Does anyone remember, back in middle school, when I would cover my mouth with one hand each time I laughed, because I was worried I looked stupid when I did it? Remember when, after someone told me I looked prettier when my smile was visible while I laughed, I finally stopped that?
I never, ever thought I would have to start doing that again. Hell, sometimes I find myself with my hand over my mouth even if I'm just sitting there, not doing anything, not talking or laughing or grinning at anything. And, most of the time, it's hard for me to take it away again.

Why not just yank my wisdom teeth out now and get everything over with all at once? That'd be another nice dose of karma for me, wouldn't it.

I sound pathetic.
And I absolutely hate when I sound or feel pathetic.