I'm a 22 year old female, 23 in two weeks.

At 18, I joined the Air Force and had a few more consultations but could not afford anything on my own. So I waited until age 22. In these couple of years, my teeth moved into horrible positions due to all of the space I had because of the extractions. My gap was now huge, lots of space between upper teeth and overbite even worse than before. I got tired of waiting for them to get worse so I decided to do a little more research and finally found my awesome orthodontist. He estimated my treatment time at 18 months which is way better than the 2 or 3 years I'd been quoted in other places. I paid my down payment and began treatment the next week.
Fast forward to today and it has been a little over 13 months since I've been braced and I'm right on track. My ortho just gave me the good news that I will def get my braces off by December. I have no more wire changes and I'm waiting for the elastics to finalize my overbite corrections. I'm wearing them all the time. My journey has been a good one. I didn't feel any pain which is really weird. Not even with my thickest closing wire with the loops. Slight discomfort but never anything that I would consider pain and I've been eating everything. Even ribs. I haven't broken any brackets or wires either. So far so good. I'm proud of myself for pulling through and for paying for this all on my own. Sorry for being long winded but as you can tell I'm super excited. I hope everyone else is having a good experience as well. It really helps to note all of the small changes. Good luck to everyone and thanks for reading my story!