First off: Changing Faces. Because they're good, to say the
least.
This is me. A fairly large chin, a couple of spots here and there,
largely-uncontrollable hair, good eyes, very skinny but fairly healthy
nonetheless. Not exactly a model, but not too bad either. Pretty average
overall.
Firstly, some background. It's called cystic hygroma; a form
of lymphangioma. It's a benign condition affecting only about 1000 people in
the UK, in which tiny, lymph-filled sacs concentrate during the embryo's
development in the womb and form a harmless, squishy mass which slowly grows as
the patient does.
Relative to my size at the time, it used to be far larger
than it currently is, but during primary school I underwent surgery to remove
some of the bulk, as well as several injections with a chemical to reduce the
swelling. The chemical used (called OK432) was known to reduce the swelling
right down to almost nothing, but was not declared safe for use in the UK until
after I had already had the surgery. Surgery makes it (by my sketchy
understanding) far less likely for OK432 to reduce the swelling effectively,
and so I was left with a noticeable swelling where I might have had next to
none.
The effect of the swelling went further than just the cheek.
I briefly wore braces to straighten my teeth, but the constant pressure from
the cheek, combined with uncertainty over whether further surgery was to take
place, was such that the orthodontists abandoned the work and left my teeth in
this crooked state:
They are otherwise completely healthy and fine. No decay at
all. Never has been. But they are undoubtedly a negative aspect of my appearance, and
contribute to the aforementioned insecurities.
I said a moment ago that my appearance is a constant niggle
during social interactions. Call it a slight paranoia. Are they looking at me?
Why are they looking at me? Is it the cheek they're focussing on? Was that
person mimicking me there? The teeth as well. I'll stop talking. And smiling.
etc, etc...
My sense of humour can be strange at times, and deliberately
crude and offensive when I know I can trust people around me not to overreact,
but beyond that I don't think I'm a particularly difficult person to get on
with. I'm reasonably approachable, I hope, if not very approaching myself ("Oh
God, what if I'm just an awkward fifth wheel?"). I can trace back my relative
introversion to incidents more than six years ago now, to when I deliberately kept
myself from expressing most emotions for a long period of time as a coping strategy
for the increasing alienation I was feeling. The result was that I snapped,
punched someone and endured a year-long bullying campaign driving me further
and further down into self-repression. Although I might be mostly over that
now, some scars take a long time to heal, and I remain relatively introverted.
Taking the initiative in social situations is hard.
There's no sense denying
it, or dodging the issue. I am not, and likely never will be, a particularly
good-looking person. I can (and now do) do things to make the best of a bad
situation, but I still come out at a distinct disadvantage compared to others
where, it seems to me, there shouldn't be one.
Attitudes towards appearance and disfigurement in the UK are
better than some parts of the world. From my experiences dealing with people from
the US, for example, it's apparent that they have a far more cold and
unsympathetic view towards it (their obsession with perfect teeth in particular
is astoundingly harsh). But I digress. Despite the UK's comparatively good
collective attitude towards the issue, there are still enough cuntbags about to
ruin one's day every now and again when I might go somewhere busy (I'm looking
at you, sort-of-acquaintance last night who brought on this little ramble here
when they though I wasn't looking). Attitudes against that kind of douchebaggery
are not on a par with those about racist or homophobic behaviour, where they
really ought to be.
