Excerpt of A Different Me by Deborah Blumenthal

I have a life, only sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm the right size for my own skin. Am I the only one not secure in the role of being myself? It's not something you can just bring up, like asking what you're wearing to the party on Saturday. I could just imagine asking Jen.

"Uh, nooo," she'd say, like I'd completely lost it. Why should she feel that way? She's not crazed about how she looks.

So I don't sit on my bed and take magazines quizzes like the one I stare at now: "Do You Make the Grade? Find Out How Much You Love Yourself." I know how it will come out.

You're not happy with the way you are...

You're overly concerned with how other people see you...

What's worse is that I'm haunted by stupid remarks that people make. "Hey nose," Kirk called out to me one day on the way to the cafeteria.

And that was kind—for him.

My mom opens the door and I slam the magazine.

Sometimes I think my mom should have stayed with acting because she has these dramatic expressions that tell you exactly what she's thinking. Her blue eyes narrow slightly now so I see creases between her eye brows. She pushes her dark, shoulder length hair away from her face and studies me.

"It's a stupid self-assessment quiz, okay?" I hold it out to her briefly.

Her face relaxes. "I wouldn't read too much into a psychological test in a teen magazine." She sits on the edge of the bed and I stare at the antique gold locket around her neck. My dad bought it for her on their tenth anniversary.

"Then again if you're unhappy, maybe it would help to talk to someone."

"Someone?"

"A shrink." She shrugs. "Just an idea."

Or a surgeon.

My parents aren't the kind you can just start talking to about important things. You have to pave the way slowly because everything they do takes forever.

New job for my dad: two years and a bajillion phone calls, emails, letters, and lunches later.

Search for new couch: one year and about eighty gallons of gas to visit every furniture showroom.

New laptop for me: three months, but only because there was a sale.

"I'll think about it."

She nods and stands, picking up a single shoe from the floor and hanging it on the shoe rack in my closet. She closes the door behind her on her way out.

The truth is that the way I see myself would change completely if I had my nose done. Then if I was taking a quiz about myself, everything would be yes, instead of no.

"Do you see yourself as beautiful?"

Or, more importantly, "do you see yourself as worthy of someone's love?"

It's nothing a shrink could fix. They're always asking how you feel, at least according to Jen and a show I watched on TV about a therapist and his patients. They expect you to talk and think about everything, even if you don't want to, and all they do is sit there and wait and make you feel dumb and self-conscious. My problem is obvious. A nose. It's there. You can't deny it, so what is there to discuss?

Jen went to a shrink after her favorite aunt died unexpectedly, and she ended up unhappier.

"You spend almost an hour unloading and then they give you this blank stare and say, ‘So how do you really feel?'" she said. "Or worse, ‘I'm sorry, our time is up. Let's continue next time.' That makes you doubly depressed because the last thing you want when you're talking about your loser life is to stop in the middle and wait a whole week to start talking about it again."

Surgery is faster. Therapy with a knife.

I hit Google and type the ugliest word in the English language into the search box: rhinoplasty.

Translation: nose job.

Somewhere in the middle of the listings I come upon a website called The Swan. It includes bulletin boards about beauty and plastic surgery. People leave comments, but they also post pre- and post-op pictures and ask for feedback. They bitch about procedures and doctors, ask for recommendations of surgeons in their area, or just vent about things they need to get off their chests.

Click. I'm anonymous. I call myself A.

So I begin.