Changing Faces

And my scar was angry and raised and red and it was very obvious and I tried to have cut in a very unsuccessful fringe.

So it had only been a month or two before I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and I took to Google in a moment of despair to find Changing Faces within a few clicks.

The charity founded by James Partridge, which is an immense privilege I would only later come to really fully appreciate.

So that first interaction was less about me seeking emotional support and more me being a complete and utter control freak.

And I don't need to convince that to a room full of psychologists, but it was that I hated the idea of others pitying me so much, that seeing the stories of others with the plinky-plonky music and the black and white, I couldn't see that emotional tug in others because I refused to admit or see that part in myself.

So I would later come to discover just how deep the inequities run for this community that go much deeper than media representation and just how privileged I am that my experiences were relatively innocuous in comparison to that of the discrimination that goes on to the community at large and something that I would later become exposed to on a daily basis.

So in the months following that Daily Mail debacle, I continued to volunteer for Changing Faces to put my story out there, whether that was conducive to healing or not.

But thankfully, I was given an opportunity that came along where I could keep working for the cause, but I could also hide a little bit.