Teenager May May Liu captured the heart of the city last April when she was brutally slashed in the face by an unknown woman with a box cutter in the subway on the way to the Bronx High School of Science.

Doctors used over 300 stitches to sew up May May's face in the first emergency surgery.

But that was just the beginning of the long road to recovery and self discovery.

Once the shock wore off and the media attention died down, May May was left to face her scars and the outside world's many penetrating stares Ð stares which she says were "unbearable."

"I would see people on the street looking at me and would try not to think about what they were thinking," she told the Post last week from her bed where she is recuperating from the last of her many surgeries.

But when her peers also began looking at her differently, May May, now 17, says she herself started seeing the world much differently.

For the first time, she realized just how much emphasis people put on looks.

"When I talk to my friends we always talk about the way people look," she notes.

"At my age, you tend to pick on someone for what they look like."

Dr. Elliot Rose, Liu's reconstructive surgeon, reports that most of his patients with facial scars or burns are less concerned about function and more worried about having a normal appearance,

"They don't realize how important looks are in our society until they have something horrible happen to them like in the case of May May," he says.

Last week May May had laser surgery to air brush the scars.

"I am really happy with the way it turned out," she says, "but I still wonder why this happened to me."

Rose explains, "People have to keep in mind this is just as much of an emotional process of healing as it is physical."

"It would never occur to me to feel so self-conscious about my appearance," says May May. "But people's reactions are so superficial."

Her ordeal, however, had at least one positive outcome "when something like this happens, you realize that there is so much more than just a face," she says. "But I think I already knew that."