Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Everyone wants to be liked. The desire to be accepted, to be included and to be considered a part of daily events can be overwhelming.
I grew up with a searing facial abnormality – a congenital condition known as Crouzon syndrome. Crouzon’s is a rare disease in which the bones of the skull fuse and stop growing too early in infancy. This causes deformities of the head, face and jaw. The most obvious trait is oversized eyes. “Bug eyes” or “frog eyes” are widely heard descriptive terms.
My eyes ballooned out like activated airbags. My nose was a slanted, collapsed entity from which taking air in or expelling it out was not possible. My mid-face was an abyss of plummeting skin because I was born without cheekbones. This created a waterfall of collapsing face pooling into my deformed, inverted jaw. I had a massive overbite and rows of winding, uneven teeth.
From my earliest days, I wanted so much to look normal. I had little idea of what “normal” might be. I just knew I wanted a proper forehead. I wanted cheekbones. And I wanted my eyes not to bug out with exaggerated absurdity. I wanted my bite to be even when I closed my mouth.
Due to a bone blockage of my nasal passages, I was a mouth breather. There is absolutely no delicacy in being a mouth breather. The snort-snore that I emitted through that cavernous opening below my nose and above my chin always announced my presence before people saw me.
At the time, asking for all those physical changes seemed impossible.
In Williamsburg, the small Eastern Ontario town of 300 inhabitants where I grew up, there were adults who mocked me and certain kids who verbally accosted me on a regular basis. It was much worse when I went to high school in a neighbouring town, when I played sports or when I was in new, uncharted social environments with individuals who were less than accepting.
I lived with my deformity for more than 20 years before I started a long, arduous series of painful reconstructive corrective surgeries that helped my appearance to become as it would have been without the disfigurement from birth.
Now, at 58, my days of being bullied because of how I look are over. I still get glances and hear the odd mocking remark. People still ask me what happened when they see the light scar that runs from ear to ear across the top of my shaved bald head.
I think of the woman in a Shoppers Drug Mart, some years back, who came over and slapped her hands on my head, squeezing it as if she were shopping for melons at Loblaws, all while shouting “I will pray for you!” Fortunately, most people are less demonstrative. It’s nothing like it used to be.
When my face was making waves – as it was back in the 1960s – there were limitations on how far afield my image could travel. As part of a class picture, my visually distressing likeness would go to many homes in my town and to the homes of grandparents, aunts and uncles, and their kids, in places all over the map. It wasn’t a happy thought.
Humiliation at that time was someone drawing a harsh recreation of how I looked on a chalkboard, where my classmates would see it. That affront could be wiped away with the swipe of a brush.
How much worse it must be in this age of social media, when that type of drawing or caricature can be transmitted to a multitude of people anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. Now, everyone has a phone that takes pictures and video. They can capture the ridiculed image and download it to a website on the Internet and it will be there for the entire world to view, review and critique at will. This is usually done behind the anonymity of a fake name and e-mail address.
As someone who used to think about suicide, largely because of my sense of hopelessness about my appearance, the reality of such worldwide mocking is unfathomable. Thankfully, there are more initiatives and programs now that support and encourage vulnerable young people in our looks-obsessed world. It is heartening that there is a greater focus on messages of acceptance and on anti-bullying campaigns.
I think about the kindness of some people in my life, though, and am grateful for the support I received from family members, neighbours and the parents of some good friends I had growing up.
I will always remember my teacher at the three-room Williamsburg Public School, Delores Mullen, whose labours to help me with English composition gave me hope that one day I could write. Later, MPP Sheila Copps gave me my first job and helped me through the later surgeries with her faith, kindness and belief.
I am truly blessed. In overcoming my demons, I learned it is important to listen for and to hear the people who were offering consideration and support. Some days their voices were not as loud as the cruel, mean-spirited ones, but they were there. You can see the goodness in many people – it’s all in how you look.
Barry Strader lives in Toronto.