Basically getting a couple of loads off my chest. A largely aimless and poorly-structured rant about appearance, attitudes and insecurities.

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.

 Take the hand away, though, and we find something strange. A lop-sidedness, and a source of more insecurities than I generally care to make public. I'd be being melodramatic and probably plain wrong if I were to say it's the source of every insecurity I have, but it's nevertheless a constant niggle, a constant factor in how I interact with others, particularly strangers and those I don't know all that well.

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.