I’m Enoch and I was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. When I was younger, I didn’t really feel different, apart from all the hospital visits. But as I progressed through school, it became increasingly obvious that I wasn’t like the other kids.
I started to pick up on little things; people were treating me differently to others. Then, the blatant bullying began. No one likes to say they were bullied, but at the end of the day, I was. I didn’t know how to handle it, so I just took it without fighting back.
After that experience, I didn’t like to put myself out there and kept myself to myself. I was afraid that if I spoke to someone new, they would make fun of me and reject me. This caused me to develop serious social anxiety, and I had problems raising my hand at school and developing connections with people. I thought that I would make no friends, have no relationships and that I would never achieve any goal or dream of mine.
I wanted to change my face so badly, and I was on the path for jaw surgery, but it takes a long time to be seen. At that point, I was just living life on autopilot waiting until I could get surgery, hoping that my life would change for the better. I planned my life around it, took a gap year for it, but it never came to fruition.
During my time waiting, I said to myself “maybe there’s a way I could help myself without surgery by lessening my anxiety”. I read a few books which explained why I felt the way I did. They mirrored my experience, and I tried some of the suggested solutions, such as exposure therapy, which involved going out of my way to talk to strangers. That’s when I thought, maybe my problems aren’t all because of my face.
I still have an uphill battle – being made fun of for how you were born has long term impacts – but each day I try, and trying is what counts.
One day, I stared into the mirror, saw my flat nose, crooked septum, top-lipless mouth and my impeccable jawline and I thought “you know what, I’m not that bad – I like the way I look”. If there is a “perfect” face out there, mine isn’t close to it, but my imperfections interest me. If they interest me, then they’re bound to interest others.
I looked outward at my loving family and friends. They like me well enough looking like this, so what’s the problem with my appearance?
I tested that theory a step further while at university. I aspired to be a content creator and a comedian, so I started posting videos with the mindset that if people didn’t like the way I looked, I would get no followers and no likes. One year later and I’ve reached 60,000 followers and I’m gaining new followers every day.
Having a cleft lip and palate and anxiety has been tough. Anxiety really sticks onto you and sometimes I feel it in social interactions, but I’ve got better at dealing with it. I still have an uphill battle – being made fun of for how you were born has long term impacts – but each day I try, and trying is what counts.
I’m glad to be a person with a cleft lip and palate, I wouldn’t be me without it. I hope to keep doing bigger and better things, so that a person with a visible difference will see me and say, “if he can do that, maybe I can too”. Just because we have faced hardship in our lives doesn’t mean we must stay in the shadows. Let’s prove to those who doubted us just how amazing we can be.
