My teeth aren’t perfect but they were close to it after I had braces and contraptions, and a retainer once they were removed in 7th grade. I grew out of the habit of putting in the retainer quickly making it useless. In hindsight, it was a bad time to have braces because I wasn’t motivated or mature enough to take care of them.

Kicking myself for it now. I also had my wisdom teeth taken out in high school and I’m still amazed that procedure went as well as it did.
I’m at the point where getting braces again would correct a couple of things but don’t want to foot the cost twice. They don‘t look terrible and I don’t think about it until seeing pictures of myself smiling with teeth. They sometimes look a lot worse than they actually are depending on the angle: one of my incisors caves in slightly on the top and the bottom row has a few ‘ rocky’ ones. I’m still fortunate to have what I do though!