I have braces for almost 4 years now!  Crazy the amount of time it takes to get your mouth fixed! First of all, nobody has the same problem and the process speed is different from person to person. I have a dysfunction on my maxillary and it leaded to not so right teeth (if it makes sense) and I also lack of my both upper lateral incisors. 

My initial treatment would fix my maxillary putting it on the right place and also give me space on my upper teeth so I could implant some prostheses. It didn't work. I used a temporary prosthesis but soon got bored of it, I had many problems while eating and using it at the same time. I grew out of my shame and put that aside. I now have nothing, people obviously notice my lack of front teeth but I'm pretty confident and it's not abnormal, it's like any other problem... People lack harms or legs I lack teeth and it doesn't affect much my life as I thought it would. It definitely isn't the most great thing but I won't stop smiling or eating...
I of course have many restrictions, I can't bite with my front teeth so I have to cut everything I eat with my hand or a knife. If I eat/drink too cold or too hot meals/drinks it definitely hurts and it's impossible to have white looking teeth when using braces. I can't properly wash them it sounds gross but it's the truth. Try to put a barrier on your teeth and wash them you obviously will have trouble with that.
As I said my initial goal was impossible to achieve so now I'm pushing my teeth inwards in order to unite them all, so my lateral incisors will be replaced by my canines. I'll have to get them fixed to make them look as natural as possible but it won't look perfect which makes me a bit sad. But well, it's not the end of the world and by far a huge problem.

If it hurts having braces? Of course it does. If I can handle the pain? Hell yeah I can! It works like this: the 1st month you put braces on you won't be able to eat anything stiff and you'll feel like everything spit out of your mouth.. the next months you won't be able to eat every 3/4 days after the monthly appointment. You will have your mouth cut many and I mean MANY times through out the process... you'll sometimes be in so much pain you'll actually take paracetamol to ease the pain.  It's DEFINITELY NOT COOL having braces. 

I can't eat everything, it hurts a lot when I go to an appointment but worse than the physical pain is to see the treatment not working or taking much more of the expected time. I was told I had to use braces for 2 years max.. next January I'll turn 4 with this and I hope it won't take much more than that. The treatment is slow because it failed. I'm on my last chance to make my mouth look decent since I won't ever be able to make it look perfect. What it takes to the money yes it is expensive so make sure you're in for it and do everything as said by your dentist, you don't want to waste money right? 

It is already a big text so to sum it up I want to tell you that using braces is not easy so don't think of using them if you only have like 1 teeth different from the others, probably nobody notices and I assure you it won't pay the work/pain you'll have when using braces. It's a lot of work, dedication and a lot of restrictions too, think about how much you're willing to go for it and make your decision. 

I hope I helped you with this and if you wear braces tell me why and how you handle it!

Thanks for reading,