I read this book yesterday. Well, I did really nothing else yesterday but read. I meant to paint, sure, but I was a little less focused than I should have been after spending the day before doing much the same, messing around. Sunday was a 12 hour paint fest so I guess I should give myself a break, but this book I picked up at Barnes and Noble hit me in some ways I didn’t count on. It was on one of those buy 2 get one 1 free things. And I am a sucker for books, and yes, I judge them by the covers most of the time. And I am an awards stickler. With all of those thousands of books out there, I would find it hard to be convinced people are not picking up books according to title or for eye-catching imagery, or award. I am not sure  what aside from the grasshopper drew me to this initially. But the story was about two writers who befriended each other in the early 80’s, and chronicles the story of their friendship from the perspective of the writer of this one, aptly named Truth and Beauty. I typically stay away from female novelists unless it is a memoir they have written, which is true of this novel. I get very tired of the flowery romances portrayed on the backs of many of the female-authored novels, and I have been known to pick a book up and read aloud to whomever is with me in a sappy, honey-dripped voice about the trials and tribulations faced by the characters as chronicled on the backs of these babies. It’s just not my style to read sappy romances.

But that is also relevant to what I meant to write about–the female obsession with being loved and feeling love. This is not to say that those of you who happen to be male don’t feel the same urgency to find that acceptance that a lover or confidante might afford you, but it is largely a female obsession. I, sadly, am not immune to this, which I know comes as a big shock to anyone who has read anything that I have written, haha. In any case this novel was about the friendship sparked by the writer and her poet friend named Lucy, who had a disfigurement of her face from a cancer which invaded her jaw and the resulting cave-in that occurred from numerous surgeries to remove and correct this illness. Lucy seemed initially to just want to be seen and recognized as a writer, but she also seemed to garner a fair amount of empathy for the fact that her face put her in a less than ideal position of being seeing as beautiful or attractive. Though she was able to go out and live the life of a woman in her twenties and thirties and even be a successful poet and novelist, much of the satisfaction she thought she was missing by not having someone, a man, by her side, evaded her throughout the whole novel. She continued to wither and decline throughout the story, crying to the writer that nobody would ever love her and the deafening loneliness that she felt in realizing that it would not be her face which would garner her the attention she thought she needed. In fact, she blamed her face for not having this, which I can empathize with in ways one might not normally assume. She continued on a wild decline down into the trenches of addiction, and used her fears to fuel her bad habits, which in the end forced the demise of her spirit. The book isn’t so sad sad as that, given there is a lot of the happy parts of their friendship revealed and detailed. The characters are both likable, but it was Lucy I identified with easily.

I am pretty sure many people would think I was crazy, given I know I have a photogenic, if not pretty, face. I was a very ugly little girl, very boyish and angled until I was maybe 17. I am not one of those people who sits around hovering closer to 6 feet, thin with a nice face and claims (I know, we all hate these people), “I am ugly!”. I know I am not. My body on the other hand, leaves a bit to be desired and I have been stupid enough to blame it for all of my short-comings in romantic relationships. The scars wrap haphazardly around my torso, down the center of my chest and I have two large femoral scars from being hooked up to the heart lung machine. It reminds me of what a friend said to me years ago…”you’re hot and all, you just have a lot going on,” motioning in a swirly motion with his hands across the expanse of my body. One man I was involved with stopped having sex with me after I had surgery because he could only see me with breathing tubes down my throat, looking pathetic and miserable. We had been together a number of years and stopped having sex and never had it even after I was well, because he just couldn’t wrap his head around this image he had of me, not strong and sexy, but weak and lifeless and torn.

My body is something I am at personal odds with, if not for being covered in road maps of my pain, but also because it clearly does what it wants to without really consulting me of its devious plans. I did take a bit of the power back in making the marks I wanted as opposed to being branded without so much as a question, and covered a lot of my skin permanently with Japanese imagery, symbolic and iconic. Sometimes people don’t even see the scars since they are so taken aback by the markings. And when it comes down to showing anyone, or being in an intimate position to show anyone, they are hard to hide, but seemingly so very easy for people to avoid. It is like the scarred parts of me are not really parts of me. And I wonder how anyone thinks I perceive this. I used to argue with F about it, who claimed they were no big deal, but when you ignore those parts of my body with scars, that is pretty much avoiding touching anything below my neck to my waist. This is not a small part of my body, it’s actually the whole damn thing aside from my limbs. How anyone could use that as a line of defense and still pull their hands away when they feel the bump or awkward rib, or tube is beyond me. But much like the tattoos, I would never blame anyone directly for judging me for something like that. Though with the tattoos, they are clearly marks I had applied. The scars happened without choice–I was not given a portfolio of scars to choose from for style or anything like that. But I know they are not normal or average, and as a result, I cannot blame anyone for looking away or pulling their hands away when they feel the odd keloid or hollow edge. I can, however, question anyone who claims they are “cool with them” but refuse to touch them, or me, rather, given they are obvious extensions of me.

I refuse to sit and believe, however, that my ailment will prevent me from being able to do and have the things I believe I do want and need: happiness, love, to help people and feel acceptance from those who are not in a pre-determined position to care. Sure, I’d like to find a partner one day who accepted and understood all of these different facets of me. But I certainly do not want to sit around pining and waiting and telling anyone ever again that these good things don’t happen to girls like me, which admittedly I did for a number of years. If I met the same end as this writer in this novel, I am very sure that would be a tragedy.

What is it about women that they think they need someone to love them and cherish them and take care of them, though? I really am having a hard time with that, given I flip back and forth between caring a lot about these aspects to not wanting to talk to anyone of the male gender about any of it at all, and really just sitting back and doing my thing without regard to making any of it relevant. One think K told me once is how much she loved that I had no fear, and continued to put myself out there in ways she could never imagine doing, simply because I always had hope. I am fearless in many regards, and quietly fearful in others, but hope for something better is something I have been familiar with since I was all of 15. I could get my head pushed down under water time after time, but I will always find a way to breathe.

I don’t know, but I also know that who I am and who I have become is so shaped by these brushes with death that I can try and remember who I was before, but it’s all a blur. I wish I had been able to form my “self” better before I got sick, but it was just as I was discovering my own independence (at barely 19) that this stuff knocked me down. I don’t have those debauchery-laden stories about being in my 20’s and doing this that and the other thing that many of my friends have detailed to me, their growing and maturing experiences. I was pretty much not even there entirely for a number of years, so sunken into this illness and being sick that I really don’t remember much in terms of “fun stories.” I learned what older people learn after they have lived their lives and had their fun…that everyone dies, and some of us die younger than others. And by the time I was done, my twenties were a mirage behind me, and I would sometimes weep for not ever feeling free, but just a slave to my body’s whims to putter along and fail when the mood would strike.