I was born with bright blue eyes, on 7th November 1995 in Sheffield, England. My eyes seemed completely “normal” and no one suspected that they would change. When I was around 12-18 months old, my left eye gradually started turning brown. My mum, as you can imagine, was extremely worried and took me to the hospital. I can’t remember much, but I’m told that the doctors did lots of tests – apparently a change in eye colour can sujest problems with your internal organs.
After many many tests, everything seemed to be fine and the doctor told me it was like a freckled or a birth mark. So that’s what I went with for the first 14 or so years of my life. Whenever anyone asked what was “wrong” with my eye, I simply replied “it’s a freckle”. I’ve had the weirdest questions: “did you eat your twin?”, “are you two people?”, “are you blind?’. But my answer was always the same.
Life wasn’t particularly pleasant at school, I was bullied a lot because of my “odd eyes”. I hated them, despised them in fact. It wasn’t until one of my high school biology teaches brought up the subject of heterochromia, that I really started to research it. I soon found out that it was very unique and the majority of online opinions were very positive.
It took a while for me to be comfortable with my eyes, still at the age of 20 I am no where near 100% confident about them. But I now tell people its a mutation called heterochromia and I am happy that I am unique. I also quite enjoy being a “mutant”, it makes me sound more interesting than I actually am!
I just hope any other heterochromia-kids out there aren’t going through the bullying I went through, I hope they know they’re very very lucky and very very beautiful.
Jade.
Heterochromia Photography Project - Book 