I Tried Everything To 'Fix' My Face. Here's What I Realized Decades And Thousands Of Dollars Later.

I am 43 years old and, until recently, I was seriously considering a fourth round of orthodontia.

I was born with a severe overbite and deformed jaw, a condition known as a Class II malocclusion and skeletal imbalance.

I had standard metal brackets placed on my teeth when I was 12. The second round of treatment involved sturdy plastic trays — popularly known as Invisalign — at 25. With the third round at 33, I wore metal brackets again, only this time it was topped off with orthognathic (double jaw) surgery and my jaw was wired shut for weeks.

By then, I’d spent nearly $15,000 and almost one-third of my life actively trying to reshape the lower half of my face. Ten years later, I still believed that my teeth were not socially acceptable or eye-pleasing and that I needed to undergo more dental work to fix them.

My teeth have always looked as though they were running a race against my face and, because of it, the bullying I’ve endured has been relentless. It was so bad that sometimes, when I was out doing errands for my mom in our Brooklyn neighborhood, kids would shout at me from their windows as I passed. It was traumatizing.

What I didn’t understand until many years later, when I began writing books for children, was just how life-altering some of those experiences were. Something changes in you when an entire neighborhood of children chants cruelties in your direction every time they see you leave your front door.

As a child, I’d done what many children do to cope: I escaped into books — “The Babysitters Club,” Nancy Drew mysteries, the Hardy Boys, and Beverly Cleary’s novels. I enjoyed these books, but was never fully able to connect with the babysitting or mystery-solving or fun-loving adventures in them. My