In words her
Monica Saranya Selva De Roy, 27, lives with vitiligo
“I realised that I was a much bigger critic than anyone else in my adult life.”
“I was ‘blessed’ with vitiligo when I was around the age of 12. It first started around my eyes, and then some spots started appearing around my hips. Before long, it spread like wildfire. When it was diagnosed, I felt like it was the end of the world for me. I didn’t know of a single other person in school, at home, or in my neighbourhood who had it. There also wasn’t anyone like me on TV. It felt like a disease that needed to be covered up and never spoken about. My insecurities were endless. I’d often stand in front of the mirror and cry for a really, really long time.
When I first started undergoing treatment, which consisted of UV treatments and steroid creams, my skin specialist gave me some concealer to cover up the patches. I started wearing a truckload of makeup. I now know how wrong that was, and I have been taking every opportunity to voice out how wrong it was to have been guided in that direction.
While I had some self-generated insecurities about my face and skin, most of it was external – I received a lot of mixed messages from people. I’ve had people compliment my patches, ask me to remove my glasses so they can take a closer look at them, and say things
