I sat at a dining table outside a hotel in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, with three people I had just met. One was a woman about 40 years old. She shared pictures of her two sons, her reasons for living. She was severely burned in an act of domestic violence. Her hairline was altered by the fire that had left her face and body covered with scars and had stolen pieces of her fingers. Her mother, who was caregiver and friend, sat next to me. On the other side of me sat a man who had very little left of his facial features and very little left of his hands. He had been a fireman and an act of heroism had disfigured him, scarring over ninety percent of his body.
We were chatting away and then the woman looked at the man and me and asked, “How do you handle it when people do more than stare? When they are mean to you and kick you out of stores and restaurants because your looks are disturbing the other customers?” I was in silent shock. I listened as they relayed stories back and forth of when society would not allow them to shop or share a meal out with their families and friends. I was horrified by the way people had talked to them. The store-owners, management, and employees had no clue as to the circumstances that led up to these disfigurements. They had no idea of the pain that these individuals had already endured.
For a while, I felt like I had no right to speak. My hair neatly covered my head that day. I had a nose, cheekbones, lips, and eyelids; my makeup was just right, and I had carefully picked my outfit to flatter my frame. Then I looked down and saw my right hand without any fingers. I remembered back to the year that I wore a pressure mask everywhere I went. I recalled the two years that the whole top of my head had no hair and the seven years of surgeries. And I remembered going out in public. The people sitting here with me hadn’t seen me that way. They hadn’t seen me at my worst. I remembered feeling some of their dread.
In the first year following my injury, countless situations happened in public that left me in tears. Ignorant comments, stares, mean statements, endless questions, and children running from me, scared. But I was never asked to leave. Nobody ever intimated that my absence would be better for the majority.
My surgeries were always away from home. I would stay in a hotel for two weeks following my surgeries in case there were any complications. After the first week of healing, I often got cabin fever and was eager to get out of the room. My caregiving friend and I would make outings to local restaurants for a meal and I would think of how my cut-up face must appear to the other customers. But I was never told that I was ruining the appetites of the other patrons and that my presence was unwelcome.
I spoke up to my new friends. I shared with them the words that my mother shared with me when she realized how others would undoubtedly view her beautiful first child that had been damaged in a fire. “Charity, you’re going to have to teach others how to treat you.” My mother didn’t say this to an outgoing, say-anything-anywhere, knows-no-strangers daughter. She said it to the daughter that was shy, who didn’t go to new places without a friend, and who didn’t speak until spoken to.
When I heard my mother’s words, I realized that if people were ever going to see who I really was, then I was going to have be brave, I was going to have to show them. I would show them through my dress, my body language, and through how I approached not only the mundane, but also the new and challenging tests of ife.
I have traveled all over the U.S. and to many other countries. I have conducted business, made many new friends, shopped, ate, sight-seen, and have discovered some simple truths: I can’t always determine the way others will treat me, but I’ve never experienced the kind of behavior that my new friends were talking about. Maybe this is because I never imagined being treated that way. People do catch me off guard sometimes. They ask me difficult questions, but I quickly realize they are voicing what others wonder but never speak. If I treat them rudely, I’ll be treated rudely in return. If I’m waiting for an insult, one will come. I’ve noticed that when I’m having a bad day, if I’m sick, tired, or emotional, if I’m focused on me and think myself unlovely, it’s on those days I notice the stares. Something inside me gives others permission to focus on my differences.
The rest of the days I go about my business. I’m focused on my “to do” list or the people that I’m with, or I’m just taking time to relate to the cashiers or smile at the mother struggling with the toddler in her cart. The thoughts that I’m different, that people are going to stare at me, that I don’t belong, never cross my mind. If people do stare, I don’t notice because I’m not focused on me. If people do treat me differently, they are usually treating me very nicely because I am being nice to them. Most importantly, I’ve discovered that when I’m ok with me, others are ok with me.
