Blog Prompt 16: Choose a passage from the McIntyre reading that describes a particular aspect of persons as the subject of a narrative. Quote the passage, explain it, and tell a specific, personal, life experience that illustrates its significance with respect to identity (your identity).

MacIntyre says that “man in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth.” Also that “we enter human society, that is, with one or more imputed characters–roles into which we have been drafted–and we have to learn what they are in order to be able to understand how others respond to us and how our responses to them are apt to be constructed.” MacIntyre believes that our identities stem from our background, the foundation of our narratives that our stories build on. Throughout our lives we build our book with stories that hold true to ourselves that apply to our identity. And in addition, not only are we the only character in our book but, there are other characters whose identities shape our own, and vice versa.

A personal life experience of mine that I tie to my identity is my experience with bullying and my physical appearance. Everyone deals with their own insecurities and forms of bullying in their own way, some tie it to their identity and some don’t. It is different for everyone. For me, I know undoubtedly that what I went through has made me who I am because it is something that is very hard for me to talk about, openly to just anyone, and whenever someone asks me about my physical appearance I immediately go back into that space, of my childhood and my experience with bullying.

As hard as it is to talk about, my nose has been a big insecurity of mine since the day I was born. I mean really, since the moment I came out of my mother’s womb. I didn’t know it then, but I sure did learn soon later on in life that it was something that would affect me for life. I will never know why my nose turned out the way it did, but it could’ve been for various reasons, such as being born prematurely or lack of nutrition, or something else. I was born with a flat nose, no bridge, and on the left side of my nose is a big line. No one else in my family was born with a nose like mine. My parents always told me that the line on my nose was a birthmark, and so that is what I told other people when they asked. My mom told me that as soon as I was born my primary care doctor had warned them that I would have struggles later on in life with my health because of my nose, and that I would probably have some insecurity issues. She offered to have my nose fixed at an early age but I was just a baby and my parents were against it.

My doctor was absolutely right. I suffered for as long as I can remember with my nose. I had trouble breathing on one side, I got sick with runny and stuffy noses like every other month, and as soon as I started elementary school I was what every kid liked to whisper about. My teachers even called me tissue girl, because I always had to blow my nose. Not only was it at school but even outside. My relatives, my cousins, everybody would make fun of me, and I would go home and lock myself in the bathroom and just cry. It really made me shut myself off from everyone, and I was quite a gloomy child. My nose had defined me into someone who was sad, someone who learned about beauty standards at a very young age, just 6 years old. I finally got surgery when I was 19, but the results were disappointing and today I still struggle.

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