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Back in 2005, when Emma Nelson was just 11 years old, her peers mercilessly made fun of her because her ears stuck out. They called her “Dumbo,” threw her down the stairs, and tossed her into the dumpsters.
It got to the point where Nelson went to surgically correct her ears in hopes of evading her peers’ bullying.
But the torments only continued.
After two years of enduring this teasing, Nelson developed alopecia, a medical condition where all the hair on her head – including her eyebrows and eyelashes – falls out.
When she received her diagnosis, her doctors reassured her that most alopecia patients did eventually see their hair return – particularly if the alopecia had been caused by stress and the cause of stress had passed.
Unfortunately for Nelson, this was never the case. “I don’t think anyone thought that it would never grow back,” she admitted.
Now 23 years old, Nelson is still “having to deal with the affects [sic] and…will have them for the rest of [her] life.” She knows that she had never been a terribly confident person and disliked having to go out and meet people, but now is even more stressed when it comes to making friends and starting relationships.
“I'm a lot more emotionally charged and I'm very self-conscious about how I look,” Nelson explained. She wears a dark brown wig when she goes out, to avoid stares, but behind the hair, she still feels distrustful of others and spent a long time relearning these social skills.
While Nelson has been able to open up more quickly to more people about her alopecia – especially when she’s with guys she’s dating – the bullying is something she actively tries to push out of her mind.
The bullies, she knows, were immature and the best thing for her to do is to now focus on herself and her life moving forward.
