My story

[Romero86]

My name is Mikel and this is my story:

I was born in 1986. As far as I know, my mother had a normal pregnancy, but when I came into the world, I didn’t have a normal face.

I have anophthalmia in my left eye (I don’t have an eye) and various congenital malformations in my nose, eyelid, cheekbone, jaw, eyebrow… all on the left side of my face. I also have back problems (scoliosis) and low vision in my right eye (myopia, hypermetropia, and astigmatism).

As a child, I was very introverted, and I suffered bullying throughout my childhood.

During my teenage years, I had several reconstructive surgeries on my face, which slightly improved my appearance.

Upon entering adulthood, my social relationships gradually improved, but I have always felt rejected by society. I feel good about my body, but I know it makes many people uncomfortable.

This form of social rejection causes me problems in advancing socially and economically.

I have been without a stable job for years, and every day I feel more reluctant to expand my circle of friends or meet new people.

I see how little by little society is moving towards a point where image is given a lot of importance (you only have to look at social networks to realize this), and that saddens me for the new generations.

Reading about these issues, I have realized that we put a lot of effort into “fixing” children who are born different, making them undergo unpleasant surgical operations (as was my case), but there is not as much effort in educating society in acceptance and inclusion.

In this way, I feel like we blame the child, assigning them the problem, when the problem lies with society for not accepting them or providing means for their inclusion.

This is just a reflection that I would like to discuss with you.

Best regards.

[RebeccaChangingFaces Partner]

Dear Mikel, a very warm welcome to the Changing Faces community from me & the team.

Thank you so much for sharing your story, we hope that you'll find like-minded people here, who share your hopes that we can improve the way that society views people who have a visible difference.

Rebecca ~ Changing Faces 🦋

[ACE135]

Hi, Mikel.

Thank you for writing this post. It really resonated with me with regards to making children have operations to "correct their appearance". This reinforces the idea that their is something wrong with the child, which can have devastating consequences on the child, leading to poor mental health etc. The focus should absolutely be on educating people on being respectful of others no matter their visible difference. I unfortunately had some surgeries when I was younger which made my appearance worse. I still torment myself by looking at photos of myself before the surgeries and wish I had not had the surgeries. I wish I had had someone back then to tell me I did not need surgery. My face was a little asymmetrical, but I was attractive. I am looking in to having surgery again to correct the mistakes the surgeon made but it fills me with dread. Intense counselling should also be offered. I was unfortunate not to be offered any therapy throughout that time. I'm glad your surgeries improved your appearance, but I'm sorry your experiences were unpleasant. It is worrying how society is so focused on looking a certain way. Changing Faces is doing what they can to expose and educate, but I'm not sure that people with visible differences will ever be seen as equals. That's just my opinion though. It's up to us to be mentally strong and live the best life we can. I don't know how to overcome the staring; this is something I've always found very challenging, and is the reason I had surgeries in the first place. Had I know the surgeries wouldn't have stopped people staring at me, then I wouldn't have had the surgeries. I carry a lot of anger about that. Anyway, I apologise for writing so much, but like I said, your post really resonated with me. What kind of job are you looking for? I'm sorry that you have struggled to find employment; is this because of lack of confidence or because of discrimination?