my character synopsis for my presentation :)

Tomorrow, I have to give a presentation in character from a book of my choice. I chose to present the book Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy. I will be giving a synopsis in the character of Lucy Grealy. Since my audience will not know anything about the book, and most of you probably haven't read it, I decided to post this synopsis as a blog. I hope it is effective in your "getting to know" Lucy Grealy's character in this book.

My name is Lucy Grealy. When I was nine years old, I was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma, which is a rare facial bone cancer. I had surgery to remove a part of my jaw. The next few years of my life were spent in the children's ward of a hospital. I went through 3 years of chemotherapy and radiation. At a very young age, I had experienced more pain, nausea, confusion, guilt, and fear than most people do in an entire lifetime. While I was in the hospital, I was surrounded by other children who had cancer. They experienced my pain. They lost their hair, just like I did. They wondered why their own families felt uncomfotable around them, too. They understood. They did not judge. One day, I got to leave the hospital. I finally got to go home. What would normally be a day of celebration was instead a day full of disappointment. My house did not look the same way it did when I left. Things were falling apart in every imaginable sense. My once financially stable family had been ravaged by an expensive illness, and I knew that it was mine. I felt guilty for causing so much change. I felt responsible for my mother's extreme depression. I felt as if I had been forever separated from my family by cancer. I wondered if my siblings thought I looked funny without hair. When I went back to school, the other kids pointed and laughed. I didn't blame them, and I thought that it was because of my hair, or lack of it. But, the laughing continued even after the hair grew back. And, it was at this time that I had to come to terms with the fact that my face was not normal. It wasn't going to magically grow back, as my hair had. I was "ugly", and everyone who saw me knew it. The boys dared each other to ask me out, and the mothers hushed their children who said, "What is wrong with her face" when I walked by. I was only comfortable on Halloween, when it was appropriate to wear masks. I wanted to wear a mask every day, and I felt this way until I realized that we all wear masks every single day of our lives. Ideally, a face cannot tell you much about a person. You can't look at someone's face and know their talents, their hopes, their dreams, or their fears. Realistically, however, I felt as if nobody could ever love me romantically with a face like mine. I wanted so badly to be normal, while everyone else was wishing to be extraordinary. I spent 5 years of my life being treated for cancer, and the next 15 being treated for nothing more than being different. I had over 30 reconstructive surgeries before I found a face that made me look almost "normal". Do you think that being "normal" made me feel beautiful? Would I finally be able to live? Will people find out what lies behind my face? The pain in this book is real. These pages contain all of the contents from the smallest, most sacred place in my heart. This is my story.