Autobiography of a Face
... feel self-conscious. It was during her lonely nights in that hospital that she came closer and closer to accepting herself and her face. This was especially difficult during her teen years when she originally believed her face to be an excuse for being “unlovable.” Lucy says, “Instead of proving my worth on the chemotherapy table, I would become a hero through my understanding of the real beauty that exists in the world- I decided that it was my very ugliness that allowed me access to this other beauty.” (150). Her reason for saying this was because of her difficulty to understand why some of the patients in the hospital, who were having cosmetic surgery, did not appreciate how lucky they were to be normal and healthy. Lucy’s mother’s weakness to confront the painful situations of her illness impacted Lucy during her later years, when she not only cried during chemotherapy, but also, had the desire to be a beautiful teenage girl. As Lucy grew, she started detaching herself from her desires, lowering her expectations, and decreasing any future disappointment. However, the more she brought herself down, the more these feelings developed into a self-destructive cycle. This ultimately separated herself from people whom she thought never had experienced everything she has gone through. Her life became a life of seclusion, and she believed being beautiful was to, “live without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like” (177). This feeling produced a deeper separation from society. To Lucy, getting a job wasn’t something she was up for because her face posed as more of a problem than her résumé. Her obsession with her disadvantages eventually created more and more feelings of guilt: “I wasn’t worthy of being looked at, that my ugliness was equal to a great personal failure” (185). Lucy’s fate and faith increased over time, as shown when she stated, “I considered the desire to have my body develop into a woman’s body a weakness, a straying from my chosen path of truth…as I lay in bed at night I considered by powers my heightened sense of self-awareness, feeling not as if I had chosen this bath but that it had be chosen for me” (151). Society portrayed women as having the need for love, attraction, and a successful social life. Lucy’s problem was that a healthy social life was out of the question because of her appearance. Even when Lucy attended the University of Iowa, she dealt through temporary boyfriends to obtain that missing link of love in her life. That, along with random taunts in the streets from strangers, proved her differences as a woman in society and a...