At face value

This post reveals me; and that can be nerve racking and uncomfortable. It addresses a subject I rarely talk about with people other than close friends and family. My birthmark. While reading the following article excerpt, I thought of how the opening paragraph deals with something I struggle with everyday...looking people in the eye.

Have you ever notice that I don't look people in the eye while walking down the street? Over the last few years I have worked on maintaining eye contact while speaking with someone; yet, I still usually avoid eye contact in public places. Once you read the article below you will more fully understand the struggle.

I just wanted to share a small sliver of my life.


Published Date: May 14, 2007
By Alison Benjamin, The Kuwait Times

James Partridge greets me with a hello, a handshake and makes deliberate eye contact. Nothing unusual there - except that for someone with a severe facial disfigurement this every day exchange can be an intimidating experience. Staring, curiosity, anguish, recoil, embarrassment and dread - what he describes as "SCARED syndrome" - sums up the feeling of people meeting you and your face, wrote Partridge, author of Changing Faces: The Challenge of Facial Disfigurement, and founder and chief executive of the charity of the same name that supports and represents people who have disfigurements to the face or body. Since its launch in 1992, the coping strategies and confidence-building techniques detailed in the book have formed the basis for the social skills training provided by the charity.

Partridge, who, aged 18, was badly disfigured in a car accident, refused to look in the mirror for three months. "I knew it was bad from people's reactions," he recalls. "They would look into the hospital room and then turn away. When I finally saw myself, I was shocked to the core." What stared back at him was unrecognizable from the angelic-looking teenager he had been. "The thought of taking this face into the street and meeting old friends ... the self-consciousness level was of absolutely colossal proportions," Partridge says. "The face is so much how we communicate. It's our self image. It's what other people remember."