Abandoned By My Parents Because Of My Face | Minutes With | UNILAD | @LADbible

the kid would always pull their eyes down and and that's something that i often thought about and as i pushed my eyes up in the mirror you know i thought that was the answer to everything [Music] my condition is treacher collins was something that i was born with i wasn't born with any cheekbones so that's why my eyes appear the way they do and i wasn't born with all the parts of my ear so i've got the i call them my little bath sims and ears it's also affected my jaw so my jaw's a little receded and and and that's about it really for treacher collins when i was born my birth parents decided that they needed to go their way and i needed to go my way my adoption report says that jonathan lancaster was born on the 31st of the 10th 1984 both parents were horrified by the child's appearance both parents felt no maternal bond and both parents left the hospital 36 hours later leaving the child behind and and and those words you know it's something that's this was obviously stuck with me and um you know when i had yeah angrier periods in my life but you know i focused on those words a lot and and they cut deep at the age of five on the 18th of may 1990 um i was adopted by an incredible woman um called gene she never shied away from a conversation even the difficult ones about my face and my birth parents and yeah she she just gave me this incredible foundation this incredible love for me to live i was totally unaware how cruel people could be i started noticing people groups of people you know one would see me and they would second look me and then they would nudge their friends the people that they were with they would point they all would look some would laugh some would just stare the kid would always pull their eyes down and that's something that i often thought about and so i started to look in the mirror as a child and i always used to push my eyes up and to try and make it look like everybody else's and as i pushed my eyes up in the mirror you know i thought that was the answer to everything girls would ask me out as a dare or as a joke um and and i never really exp i never experienced any sort any form of dating any sort of relationship that snowballed into thoughts of i'm never going to be intimate with anybody i'm never going to have a family i'm never going to experience love because i look like this if i had a face like yours if i had eyes like yours i'd be happy by the time i was a teenager i hated my face and i didn't want a surgery to improve my face i wanted the surgery to have a new face we live in a world obsessed with image and obsessed with looks and for somebody growing up with treacher collins somebody growing up with a facial difference i felt like i i didn't fit in and i had to go above and beyond to make friendships and then 16 17 18 and i discovered alcohol so me and my friends would drink and i would drink excessively and again just do anything to entertain them always at the expense of my own well-being my own health and at that point in my life i had no goals no ambition very much hiding away at home i started to think that i didn't belong in this world and when i had those thoughts i never thought about i'm going to take my own life but i wanted to be in an i wanted to be in a car accident and i wanted to as horrible as it sound i wanted an illness and to take me out of this life and even saying that um you know i kind of feel guilty i did have incredible friends um and one of my friends got me a job working in a bar my first night at work it must have lasted an hour and i heard everybody talking i heard everybody laughing and instead of serving people and i started to hide away got a taxi and went home my friend pushed it and made me go back and i did and then a girl called beth started working in the bar and i i got butterflies every time i saw beth and she loved morrissey radiohead and she was skinny jeans and a beret a big red plastic heart and she did art and dance and i just thought she was the coolest person ever to walk the earth and i properly fancied the pants off beth one night she came up to me and she's like jenna do you fancy going out for a drink sometime and such casually is like yeah if we're all going out for a drink you should join us and she was like nerd just just me and you and and in that moment i proper wanted to play it cool but i was like so gideon and so excited i was like oh yeah i'm i'm free tomorrow in fact i'm free tuesday wednesday thursday friday sunday and when do you want to make this happen and she was just like let's hang out tomorrow every thought which is running through my head you know does she want to ask one of my friends out am i'm either way in um you know is it just a friendship thing is she even going to turn up why why what i questioned her motives but she did she turned up and it was great i was like this is the best day ever and then all of a sudden beth went quiet and she puts down a glass of wine and she's she started to get uncomfortable and when people get uncomfortable with their words around me i know that they're going to ask me something about my face or my appearance straight away i'm thinking oh this isn't a date this isn't cool this isn't sexy i've got this wrong and so i'm thinking it's my time to go it's it's my time to leave and beth's just looking at me and she sees me looking at the floor and she's trying to get eye contact with me and she's like jono i find myself staring at you all the time and again i hate being stared at and i and and i found that quite insulting in that moment and she's like i find myself staring at you all the time and she leans in and she kisses me and she comes back and she's like i just love your face in it and and she was just so casual about it but and we've often spoken about that moment since but to me that moment as casual as it was for her i went from feeling ugly to thinking i'm like the sexiest guy in the world i'm like david beckham brad pitt all rolled into one this this was huge for me we were in a relationship for a few months i had a confidence i had a swagger about myself and then beth was always full of dreams and full of goals and she was like no i i can't do this anymore i want to go traveling around europe and i was like oh right and it crushed me and then but as heartbroken as i was i just had this admiration that was somebody was able to just say this is what i want to do for me it was my first healthy relationship i didn't need sex to make me happy i didn't need alcohol to make me happy i didn't need a filter on my phone to make me happy i didn't need to push my eyes up to make me happy i it was really looking at who i was as a whole and discovering things that i loved about your myself parents did you ever try and make contact with them again i always wanted to ask them questions i always wanted to know why um there were so many things i wanted to say and share with them and and then in my darkest days i wanted to hurt them as much as i was hurting too um so when i'm 24 25 i'd reached the point where i wanted to reach out to my birth parents i want to let them know that they're okay and if they're open to meet me then that would be incredible and so we shared that with them through through a letter a week or so later we got a letter back um very clear regarding this subject we do not wish any contacts further attempts will be ignored they both signed it and that was it and you know i i cried and i felt rejected all over again um but again thinking about my birth parents you know it's they made that decision all them years ago and they've decided to stick by that they've done what they felt was best for them and i respect that and at the end of the day i will always come back to those two human beings gave me life and for that i am forever grateful every milestone that i have in life i i tend to to think about them but i guess the ultimate thing i want to share with my birth parents is that i am happy and i'm okay and i'm healthy and i i hope you are too and what's the future for you i used to think that my face would prevent me from finding work would prevent me from finding friendships and love but it's not about my face that wouldn't prevent me from finding any of those things i'm learning more things that i love about myself and as i've done that i've more opportunities have opened and presented themselves to me i've discovered more relationships friendships i've made truer deeper connections and then now in my 30s we don't have any conversations about surgeries on my face because i love my face and i don't want to change it at all i mean we've decided that even though there are some difficulties like that that our love is stronger than that and yeah we decided that you know we just didn't want to not be together yeah yeah

Channel: LADbible TV

Views: 3,613,655

Keywords: the lad bible, lad bible, lad, bible, videos, viral videos, viral, funny, comedy, funny videos, documentaries, exclusives, interviews, journalism, culture, treacher, collins, face, difference, disfirguement, bullying, disability, sweet, honest, mean, dare, love, relationships, dating, abandoned, parents, orphan, ugly, brown, background, minutes, with, UNILAD, legend, heart warming, tears, make you cry

Id: GIhuCMxkQS4

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021