BOOK TALK
So the other day I mentioned that I'd been reading Lucy Grealy's book, titled AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE.  (Here's a link to some good info about it, if you have not read it.)  And it truly was a remarkable book.  Grealy contracted cancer in her jaw when she was about nine years old.  She wound up, by the end of her life, having to endure something like 38 surgeries.  At one point half of her jaw was removed.  Obviously she was a woman, then, who for much of her life lived with a major facial difference.  She was teased.  People stared.  She at times hated herself for being supposedly "ugly."

But at the same time, in many ways, she persevered.  She became a writer.  She attended some elite institutions, became a writer, published poetry, and eventually wrote her book about her life and her struggles.  It sold well.  She became a minor celebrity for a time, appearing on CNN and the "Today" show, and made some decent money.  When she published her book, her face looked better; and, more importantly, it appeared Lucy was coming to accept herself and her face.

But you should also read this book--Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty.  Patchett was one of Lucy's best friends.  On the one hand, her book is a tale of love and devotion, as Ann loyally stuck by and helped Lucy through endless surgeries, recoveries, and times of trouble (the two met in graduate school and instantly became very close friends).  But, sadly, the book also gives us other, more difficult lessons.  For Lucy Grealy, despite all her accomplishments, could never quite accept her life, and who and what she was.  Perhaps asking for that acceptance would have been too much to ask, in any case.  After all, she wasn't born with a facial difference.  Instead, the cancer hit her suddenly, and changed her life forever, just as she was entering important years of development.  Her father died when she was in her teens.  One suspects she never quite got over it.  Her mother was so affected by Lucy's suffering, had such a hard time dealing with it, that she taught Lucy that it was a bad thing to cry as a result of her pain--even though it was sometimes excruciating.  Lucy at times ignored her facial difference, almost seemed to want to forget she had it (I suspect sometimes we with Moebius do that).  But of course it always came back to her.

Most importantly, I thought, was that Lucy always sought to find a perfect, romantic true love with a special man.  She found sex and relationships.  But she never found what she could believe was that True Love.  In the end, she believed the reason why she could not find it...was that she supposedly was still "ugly."  And that made her hate herself and her life all over again; it led to drug and alcohol abuse, and eventually Lucy died, at only 39 years of age (in 2002) from it all.

And that can't help but leave one sad.  I'm sure Lucy and her friends wouldn't want it that way.  They'd urge us to remember all that she accomplished, all the difficulties she pushed through, and to focus on that.  And of course we should.  But I guess we also should say that her life teaches us that we of course need to do our best, to seek self-improvement, to have dreams and to try and fulfill them.  But we also need to accept ourselves, celebrate it, even; and to remember that people who have the relationships we do and the friends we have and the accomplishments that we have are those who are worth having around.  Accept yourself.  Easy to say, of course.  Is it sometimes hard to do?  Well...what is it Lady GaGa sings about these days?  "I was born this way..."  That's more true than maybe even she knows.  You were born this way...and you're making the most of it. :+)


"Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot
be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours." -O.S. Marden