"Lucky", You Say - Part 5

My friends have always been a major part of my backbone growing up, along with my parents and my brother. I consider them to be my family because they went through this with me from start to finish as well and still care about how it affects me today. They always tell me that they did not see my skin, and when they see pictures of me from back in the day it is as shocking to them as it is to me, because they were always concerned with the qualities that truly matter... that's how you know you have friends for life, I love them dearly and would not change them for the world. I always say: "Blood may be thicker than water, but some of my friends are like oil..."


Here I am at my eleventh birthday dinner in Pizza Hut with my closest girlfriends. It's been almost sixteen years of friendship! You can see how the Vitiligo has now started on my face. I think by that point my Vitiligo had been such a part of me for so long that I tried not to let it rule my life. I never wore camouflage makeup and only became 'addicted' to foundation, after I went to university, at the age of almost 21 - many sarcastic thanks to the assistant in Boots for meddling and showing me how to wear it! I guess as a child you don't really consider things like skin and appearance until people start pointing it out to you (cue teenage-hood) and making it important. Looking back on a photo like this, I can see that it was a lot more extreme to an outsider looking in than it was in my head at that time - I guess that's when you know you have good people around you encouraging you to do your best everywhere you can, because they never made my skin an issue.


You can also see my hair that is white near my ears and hairline. It would be another year and a half before I dyed my hair for the first time.

My eleventh birthday in Cyprus - like me, my friends all come from very mixed backgrounds and upbringing, those are the people I tend to associate with the most.