It's actually the title of a novel by Jodi Picoult. I finished reading it a couple of weeks ago. It was a very good read. There's a lot going on in the book--you have a young woman named Sage who has kind of lost her way; she doesn't believe in herself, she's having an affair with a married man, she recently lost her mother and blames herself for her mom's death, and she's attending a grief therapy group that really isn't helping her much.
And then she encounters a serious moral dilemma. At grief therapy, she meets a man named Josef Weber. He's 95 years old, a German emigre to America many years ago. And he appears to have been a pillar of the community--a long-time teacher, community activist, apparently loved by all. But he winds up making a shocking confession to Sage--that many years ago, when Josef still lived in Germany, and it was controlled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, he had joined the SS and during the war helped commit horrible war crimes against the Jews. Now he wants Sage to help him commit suicide, to in a way atone for his past. What should Sage do?
At the same time, Sage struggles with her own issues. For--and this is what makes this book relevant and interesting to the Moebius community, I think--Sage has a facial difference, and this is to a great degree what has made her struggle with life. Now her issues are a bit different than what one encounters with Moebius Syndrome. Sage acquired her facial difference later in life, when she was about 20 years old. We meanwhile are born with Moebius. And Sage doesn't have facial paralysis. She just has a very noticeable scar on her face, from a bad car accident. But people stare at her, and she tries very hard to hide it.
Anyway, there are some very interesting quotes from the book that I believe might apply to some of us with Moebius; that maybe some of us, at times, have thought like this. For example: why does Sage date a married man who, quite obviously, is never going to leave his wife (even though he always promises to do so)? Sage says:
"My only defense is that I never expected to be adored by a man, not after what had happened to me, and yet here was Adam--attractive and successful--doing just that. Every fiber of morality in me said that Adam belonged to someone else was being countermanded by the quiet whisper in my head: Beggars can't be choosers; take what you can get; who else would ever love someone like you?"
A bit later Sage adds:
"I had resigned myself to living alone, working alone, being alone for the rest of my life. Even if I had found someone who professed not to care about the weird puckering on the left side of my face, how would I ever know if he loved me, or pitied me?"
Later, Sage's best friend asks her why she is still having her affair, given that Adam is not treating her right and will never fulfill his promises to her. Sage says:
"I point the tip of my knife at my scar. 'Do you think I wanted this?', I ask. 'Do you think that I don't wish every day of my life that I could have the same things everyone else does--a job that's 9 to 5, and a stroll down the street without kids staring, and a man who thinks I'm beautiful?'"
BUT--see then what Sage's friend says in response, and it's something that we all, always, have to keep in mind; because the lives of so many of you with Moebius--the great jobs you have, the relationships you find, the successes you achieve--prove that it's true:
"You could have all those things," Mary says, folding me into her arms. "You're the only one saying you can't. You're not a bad person, Sage."
***********************************
And that's the key, isn't it? Don't be the only one saying you can't do this or that.
No comments:
Post a Comment