At the time when little girls start playing dress-up with their mother’s clothes, I was living in a forest without food or proper clothes. Grenades were falling, people were dying. It was war. Being beautiful was something for princesses in fairy tales. Months later we were sleeping in a park in Austria, dirty, homeless and hungry, refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Our first home was a cellar, without heating or daylight. From two neighbors I received t-shirts that were too big for me.

We moved to the countryside. I started high school and mobbing became a daily routine. I was the only child that wasn’t blond and pale. Girls were proudly wearing their first bra, having boyfriends and experimenting with make-up, while I was “the ugly one”. Trying to dress up made it even worse, so I shaved my head to give them a real reason for their cruelty. The…