It all started in the winter of 2018. A pale scar appeared suddenly on my lips. I thought it was just a mark, so I ignored it. Weeks later, my mom noticed the patch and took a  closer look. She assumed that I had eaten some meat that I was not supposed to eat, perhaps lamb. I continued my work and routines to have a good time with friends and around my family. My condition worsened daily, and as I looked at my body closely, I could notice new patches of depigmented skin. It felt awful.

When I take photos, I will edit some of my pictures, removing the patches on my lips and the upper parts of my right eye with the blur tool. At this point, many people who saw me in real life thought it was some sort of fashion like a tattoo or something. I remember being in a grocery store in New York, and there was this lady who shouted, “oh my God, I love your tattoo.” It was just that simple patch on my upper right eye. She even asked if I could refer her to where I got that done. How funny, but I managed to stop myself from laughing.

My skin became more depigmented, and it was obvious. When I traveled at the time, people came to me to ask if it was vitiligo. They would look at me with empathetic eyes lingering on my skin and say nice words about it, like you’re cute anyway. Their warm and kind statements were the beginning of my acceptance and kindness to myself. I started accepting myself and thinking about it from a different perspective. “Well, not everyone has it, and that alone makes me unique.”—I said to myself.  I am first unique as an author, and a young entrepreneur, and I am a motivational speaker.

Even when I found out there was no cure for it, I made efforts to meet a professional dermatologist in South America. She asked me to stay 16 weeks to get proper treatment and showed me pictures of some of her vitiligo patients. There were remarkable improvements in their conditions before and after treatment, but she also mentioned the progress is slow. I started treatment here, but I couldn’t stay for that long, and the procedure was painful. They will stick a needle in all the vitiligo spots on your body. She gave me a try and then told me to check the progress. I traveled back to the US the following week, but there wasn’t so much improvement. Accepting my situation, I resolved to live with it. I started posting about it on my social media page, taking pics, and making it official.

I have decided to be myself and not make any excuses to stay down. There’s only one solution, and it is simple. We need to accept ourselves and keep moving on. Vitiligo or not, just accept your condition and live your life to the fullest.