Mirrorings

1.) Grealy opens her essay with mirroring objects to subtly clue in her issues and to look back at yourself even when you don’t want to. You can’t hide your own image cause the world will show you your true self eventually. She suffered from a serious facial deformity and without straightforwardly telling the reader, it drops hints of self reflection. Starting with a mysterious description makes the reader think the absolute worst before she explains. If she started to just describe her physical condition, the readers would think of her differently, and empathize with her instead of just listening to her story.

3.) Her small observation was how she felt when she was talking to the man. After months of not seeing her own reflection, the only way she could see herself is through another person’s eyes. Their feedback was the only self reflecting thing she could see. All her life she had only seen ugliness reflected back at her, and now as she sits in the cafe talking to the man, the only reasonable answer she could come up with was how positively radiating the man was when he was talking to her. This is her great revelation because this is what she has been waiting for, her whole life. Something to give her the right energy back to what she has been lacking of inside her mind.

2.) Grealy uses examples of the different types of disguises she has used throughout her life to hide her deformity she was scared to show. When going back on memories and child stories, she puts in the backstory of how the certain disguises came about and what her feelings were about them. Throughout her life, she has come across many disguises from scarves, wigs, and masks on Halloween. Grealy teaches a lesson of self-deception and self-honesty through her disguises, saying to stop turning a blind eye to what’s not working. Just like with her many attempts of making a disguise work with her daily life, somethings aren’t meant to happen. With self-awareness comes a true and authentic life. And if we continue to deceive ourselves, it only strips down the authenticity we really want in our lives. Grealy believes in self honesty in order to uncover our true selves.

Grealy is surely right about self-awareness and honesty because as she may not be aware, many recent studies show that a lot of people deal with the same type of problems. Teens especially deal with the problem to fit in at school or what society states. Though they may not realize, they are only hiding from themselves and not being true to who they are. Self identity and realization is a big part of knowing who you are. People struggle with the fact that they try hard to do certain things to fit into a standard. But being your authentic self is the only way to truly live your life as who you are. Not hiding things and showin your true colors is a beneficial way to live