So finally later in the story, our heroine, Sage, who has the facial difference, meets a good man, who becomes genuinely interested in her. (His name is Leo.) He knows though that Sage worries about her face (though she won't talk about it). He thinks:
"I bet whatever Sage is picturing, when she looks at her reflection, is a lot worse than what the rest of us actually see."
For a time, Sage can't escape her depression, her feeling that she isn't good enough. At one point, she thinks:
"He doesn't know what love is like, for someone who looks like me. I have three options: 1] Be sad and lonely. 2] Be the woman who is cheated on. 3] Be the other woman."
Later, Leo begins to help Sage get at the truth:
"'You'd be surprised how hard it is to get people to believe the truth,' Leo tells me later, as we walk across the parking lot. But I'm not surprised. Look at how hard I fought Josef, when he tried to tell me who he used to be. 'I guess that's because most of the time we don't want to admit to ourselves.' 'That's true,' Leo says thoughtfully. 'It's amazing what you can convince yourself of, if you buy into the lie.'
You can believe, for example, that a dead-end job is a career. You can blame your ugliness for keeping people at bay, when in reality you're crippled by the thought of letting another person close enough to potentially scar you even more deeply. You can tell yourself that it's safer to love someone who will never really love you back, because you can't lose someone you never had."
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Sage eventually finds love with Leo, and realizes it's time to stop letting her different face be an excuse for holding herself back. Think: are YOU the one holding yourself back? Don't let that happen.
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