Pages

About Me

The Tainted Beauty

I call myself the Tainted Beauty partly because I've suffered through depression and other things I will mention since my early teens. I never felt pretty growing up. Not unless I was dolled up and wore a ton of cover up. Right after puberty hit, I started to break out. My dad figured this was hereditary because he had skin conditions this bad when he was my age, and frequently saw dermatologists. At 14, my dad put me through the same thing. I saw many different dermatologists all through my teen years. I never left the house without make up on my face, something that I once loved I was beginning to hate. I hated when people got really close to me to where they can see my face clearly or if they hugged me and my makeup wiped off on their clothes because I wore so much. To make matters worse, my skin is very sensitive and even when the acne subsided I still had to deal with acne scarring. Nevertheless, I got accustomed to exfoliation. Microdermabrasion, chemical peels, and eventually at home exfoliants like creams and lemon juice. I became a regular user. It never mattered when it cleared up the scarring because I always got more acne afterward to start it up again. It was an endless cycle. It took me to eat very healthy and cut out some junk food in my early 20s for the acne to fade, but I still struggle with it every now and then.

However, I decided to make this blog after reading a lot of blogs of other people who have had braces and had some type of jaw problem that required surgery. I found a lot of them here on Blogspot, and I started to feel less and less alone. The thing with any kind of jaw problems or even deformities is that it isn't something common, so unfortunately not everyone will understand what you're going through [no matter how close they are to you]. If you have it it's either genetic or formed overtime due to certain habits or due to the way your teeth settle in as you grow. I had always suspected a problem with my bite. I could see it in pictures and mirrors and it made me self-conscious. Even as young as 7 and 8, I would see pictures of myself and found something strange with my face. I could never pinpoint exactly what was wrong, but I just knew I didn't like it. As I got older I developed speaking problems. I can speak normal just like everyone else, but when I get to certain words I can't pronounce them properly. I would stutter them. Most words I couldn't say at all. People just thought I talked fast. Some people found it cool but to be honest, it wasn't something I enjoyed because as cool as it is to talk fast I wasn't doing it on purpose. When I tried to slow down I stuttered. To this day I still practice speaking slowly but still end up struggling with my speech (I've worked a lot of phone jobs and my fast speaking pace is something I always got in trouble for).


I got braces in my sophomore year of high school. About a year and a half into my braces, I'm sitting in the office with the nurses and they're telling me and my parents that I need to have 2 jaw surgeries done: One to have my wisdom teeth removed and another to have my jaw realigned. Since the wisdom tooth surgery was necessary for my teeth and braces, I had no choice but to get it done. I hated the idea of having surgery and so did my parents, so naturally when they were asked about the second surgery, since it wasn't mandatory, they didn't hesitate to decline. I didn't either but mostly out of fear. In the back of my mind, I knew I had to have it done and I really wanted it. It had confirmed my suspicions of having a deformed jaw. But I couldn't bring myself to speak up to have it done. I went ahead and only had the one surgery.


I remember after the surgery, my face was completely swollen and in pain for a whole week. I lost about 8 lbs from being in too much pain to eat anything. Even drinking water was a hassle. About 6 months later my braces were finally removed and I had started wearing retainers. I kept a pamphlet the nurse gave me that explained the second jaw surgery with before and after pictures. Everytime I read it I regret not having it done, not because I didn't like my jaw but because I started to develop jaw problems over time. My jaw would click sometimes when eating certain foods and I would develop a pain after. These are things I've had to deal with for the past 6 years, added to some others.


I used to be the kinda person who took pictures every chance I get because I loved photography and being in front of the camera. When I was a kid living in NY, I did modeling and performing arts. I was always doing different activities and I fell in love with all the arts. It made me decide to continue pursuing modeling up until I was 17 when I started becoming more interested in acting. I was on a stage production at 15 and LOVED it. One thing you gatta have to be in front of the camera is confidence. During the MySpace days, all I did was take pictures. I just loved it. But sometime during my early 20s (when Facebook took over) I stopped. I had an accident when I was 7 where I came headstrong with a blunt object in between my eyes at nighttime and had to be rushed to the hospital. I had 8 stitches that night and the impact was so strong it dented the bone in my nose, but the doctor said I should be fine. Fine was an understatement! In my early teens I had a few breathing problems. Every so often I would feel a sharp shooting pain in my nose and I would start sneezing uncontrollably. I also developed an issue where my nose would run at any given moment, even when I wasn't sick. Imagine having to blow your nose every 10 minutes because it just starts running, or you're talking to someone and your nose would start running. Yes, majorly embarrassing and a pain in the butt! (I was prescribed Rhinocourt from a free clinic but it didn't help much. In fact, free clinics rarely helped me at all so I stopped going to them.) By my early 20s the bone in my nose widened. It became more and more apparent in pictures to the point where I didn't wanna be in them anymore. I stopped taking pictures of myself from then on. My self-esteem got lower. I absolutely hate it when people take pics of me. Everytime I see a picture of me that's recent I get depressed and wanna cry. It's not something I'm proud of. It's not something anyone should go through or feel. I used to be a camera lover...and now I can't stand to be near it.


To make how I feel about my looks even worse, when I was 16 I had a cold sore on the right corner of my bottom lip. I never had that before but I treated it like acne, so unknowing of the consequences, I popped it. Big mistake! It was the second to last class in school that day. By the end of that class that half of my bottom lip had swelled. I tried to suck it in to hide it because it was embarrassing, but then by the end of the last class the other half of my bottom lip had swelled too. My bottom lip had swelled and I didn't know how to fix it. I went and bought Blistex and other fever blister medication but it was too late by then. They did nothing. Overtime I just learned to live with it. But I absolutely hate it. I don't even wear lipstick anymore because my lips are so uneven 
(more than they're supposed to be) it looks weird. 

When I take pictures, this is all I see: A deformed jaw, a wide nose, and a swollen bottom lip. I'm Hispanic but because of these traits people have thought me to be Indian. I began to really hate being called that. My family thinks I look Indian too. What I want now is to fix all these issues so I can be my old self again and look what I actually am.

No comments:

Post a Comment