Bosom Buddies
Growing up in Toronto, Canada—as a recent immigrant with skin a different colour from my mostly white classmates and an accent still adjusting to new pronunciations—I always felt the difference between myself and everyone else.
For as long as I can remember, I was uncomfortable as a teen in my own skin and struggled with confidence issues. We had migrated from Dubai to Toronto when I was 5 years old, and the isolation of a new country was one of the reasons I withdrew into books and music early on. I became an avid reader and diary-keeper, and the versatility and character-building in books I read gave me hope that I would be OK as I was, no matter how uneasy or imperfect.
I believed in the power of friendship. It didn’t matter that my classmates would see me on the school bus and taunt ...