Our Lives
Cruel taunts had destroyed my confidence. But on my special day, something incredible happened.
Waiting in the corridor for my next class, I heard a snigger behind me. A guffaw followed, and then another one.
I knew it was me they were laughing at.
‘It’s Bubba from Forrest Gump,’ said one, loudly. They’d likened me to the character in the movie whose bottom lip stuck out.
I’d been born with a unilateral cleft lip and palate. I had a gap in the top lip, the bottom of my nose and the gum and palate on one side of my mouth.
My first operation had been carried out when I was just three months old, and I’d had several more as I grew older.
But when I started secondary school, the bullies targeted me because of my underbite, calling me ‘Bubba’ or ‘bulldog’.
I hated my smile and hid my face with my hand as much as I could.
‘Come to the front,’ said the photographer, when we had the class photo taken.
I’d tried to hide myself away at the back, but I was one of the shortest in the class, so naturally the photographer brought me to the front.
Cringing, I tried to keep my mouth straight to avoid smiling.
When I was 16, I had a six-hour operation on my jaw. It was the biggest operation I’d had.
The surgeon was happy with how it went, and the minute I woke up, I reached for a mirror.
My face was so swollen, I burst out laughing.
‘I look like the Nutty Professor,’ I said.
As the weeks went on, the swelling still hadn’t gone down.
I was too embarrassed to go back to college and worried that my face would never change. But after six weeks, I peered in the mirror again, turning my face from side to side.
And this time, I said: ‘Wow.’
My bottom jaw had been moved back and my top jaw forward. It had changed the shape of my whole face and made a huge difference.
Yet I still felt self-conscious about my smile and hated my photo being taken.
Preferring to be on the other side of the camera, I did a degree in photography and became a medical photographer.
After I’d started work, I joined an online dating site and met Dave, a catering manager.
We’d arranged to go bowling but ended up going for a pizza on our first date. He asked how ‘I feel like a princess’ I’d got into medical photography.
I explained I’d been born with a cleft, and this had sparked my interest in this field of photography, but I didn’t go into too many details.
One year on, we moved in together, and the following year Dave proposed.
We booked our wedding in a small venue overlooking the clifftop in Cornwall.
But, with the taunts of the school bullies still ringing in my ears years later, I worried
