Rory McGuire was 17 and just wanted the emotional pain to stop.
He was born in Ayr, Scotland, with a venous malformation, a very rare birthmark, on his upper lip. From childhood, people shouted “alien face” and “sausage face” at him. “People stared at me and laughed at me almost every day of my childhood”, he said in a video for Face Equality, a campaign by the nonprofit Changing Faces.
Between the ages of 17 and 22, he underwent around 16 operations. Each one meant new weeks of recovery and the uncertainty of not knowing how much his face would change. In 2016, he shared his story on Facebook, and people around the world shared it. He said that when he turned 21, he cried for two hours over the prejudice and bullying he had endured.
When he recovered from his final procedure, he wrote on Twitter: “I’m happy for the first time in my life”. At 23, he opened his first account, @MeAndMyVM, with a clear idea: to help someone else not give up through his story.
