New teeth, new me? Not exactly.

Since the trays must be worn at least 20 hours a day, I also had to be intentional about when and what I eat. Big meals are simple. Every snack, though, must be accessed with a roving calculus: Is that ice cream worth the time and effort spent sanitizing my hands before I remove the trays, and then removing the trays, and then brushing and flossing my teeth immediately after I’m done eating? (Depends on the ice cream. If it’s Leona’s, yes.)

And then there’s my teeth, which are noticeably straighter. The gaps that had developed, settled, and squatted in my mouth over decades are mostly gone. My teeth are not perfect. Without actual surgery — or The Post deciding to pay me enough to comfortably afford veneers — they will never be. But perfection was not my goal. Satisfaction was, and I am mostly satisfied with them. That “mostly” qualifier, though, is a linger. And a riddle, because I’m not sure why it exists, or how to solve it.

The 56 weeks of Invisalign did exactly what I paid for it to do. The before and after pictures of my smile look how before and after pictures are supposed to. But I don’t feel much different. I don’t know how I expected to feel, so it’s hard to determine what would’ve constituted different. I don’t think I expected a climax, though, so why does this feel so anticlimactic?

I think the answer is that my predominant anxiety about getting corrective cosmetic work on my teeth is that I was too old for this and should’ve accepted my teeth as is. I worried that it would be seen as vain. While that might be true, the feedback I’ve received has been unanimously positive. Compliments, curiosities, and some even shared that they felt similarly anxious about wanting to fix their teeth as an adult and were happy to know they weren’t alone. (Also, multiple people revealed that they were currently wearing Invisalign and showed me their trays — an act of fellowship that could’ve doubled as the most unsanitary meet cute ever.)

I was unprepared for what happened instead. I started Invisalign in 2021, but I’d already begun the process of being less self-conscious about my teeth. In 2019, I was on the road, in front of large crowds, for much of the year to promote my book. And in most of the footage captured at those events, you will see me smiling, uncharacteristically, but happily. My book was such a naked ventilation of my vulnerabilities and neuroses that still possessing a sheepishness about my teeth felt inane. Time-consuming. I’d also, by that point in my life, received a healthy amount of romantic validation. Which just means that enough women I was physically attracted to were also attracted to me. Which meant, to me, that they weren’t bothered enough by my teeth to not be. Of course, romantic validation shouldn’t impact my self-regard as much as it did. But it did — it does — and there’s no point in pretending it doesn’t.

And then there are the personality tics I’d honed over decades of attempting to conceal my teeth (a hand over my mouth while laughing, for instance). They’re still present, because you just can’t correct 43 years of life in 13 months, and I think they’re here to stay.

The before and after pictures of my smile look how before and after pictures are supposed to. But I don’t feel much different.

What I’m trying to say is that while I’m glad I got work done, I waited too long for it to have a substantial impact on my life. If I would’ve got them at 22 or even 32, the impact on my emotional and spiritual chemistry would’ve been substantial. Today, though, I just smile more in Zooms.

I guess that’s not nothing. Especially since virtual meetings are my primary method of face-to-face communication now. And it’s an objectively good thing that I started feeling better about my teeth before they got better. I think that “mostly” is still going to linger, and I think I just need to accept that too. There I go, accepting uncomfortable things about myself again. I might make this a habit.