Autobiography of a Face
Lucy Grealy was my favourite writer for a while there. She is the only writer writing about her imperfections and about beauty and the lack thereof in her physical appearance, that has come close to helping me understand the complex relationship I have with my own face. I was living in San Francisco when I came across her memoir Autobiography of a Face. I hoovered up the chapters in one suction before going back time and time again to pour over the life she led. I had such a mash up of twitchy, knotty feelings with her unmatched ability to be so clear-eyed on a topic I had only shame and anger for.
“This is a very personal journey of finding your own meaning...”
How could this person - someone with the same fear and loathing I held - have such clarity about a subject that to this day, I still cannot properly articulate. Her talents kinda ripped me in two. She’s hideous like me but she can write a book? Get published?! In my defense, do not expect logic from me on topics such as these.
Her story is not mine because she’s not born flawed. Her otherness is exposed after an accident at school requires emergency surgery and after a series of operations it’s revealed that she has Ewing’s sarcoma. The rest of her life is a series of reconstructive surgeries that can never quite keep up with the damage done to her psyche.
Naturally I’ve poured over images of Lucy that I’ve found on the internet and in true bolshie fashion, my initial reaction was I’ll show you a defect. But that laziness and unwillingness to understand her story for what it is, is a testament to my clouded ego because Lucy’s story ultimately is a terrible thing to witness. The agonies that Lucy goes through, either self-inflicted or inflicted upon are terrible. Countless surgeries, addiction to painkillers, loneliness, isolation, and then finally death by a heroin overdose. Instead, I lazily focus on her winning the writing lottery with the publication of her memoir; I’m jealous of the royalties and fame that quickly follow and I’m a lesser reader/person for it. And very shortly after I read her memoir, my envy is further fed with Ann Patchett’s memoir about Lucy called Truth and Beauty. Memoirs at dawn my friends with lashings of how very dare at Ann’s feeder fish desire to write about her tragic friend in this way.
As if I wouldn’t have leapt at the chance to exploit such a tale myself. And why this focus on such petty obsessions? The answers are many but it’s my unwillingness to address what went on with me that is at the root of all this. To keep turning away to that shiny thing over there when the wisdom is in the examining. Lucy’s memoir momentarily pulled me back to myself and lit a flickering thing in my mind that provided momentary and much-needed comfort when nothing else did.