My name is Dimitar Milchev. I’m a 19-year old boy originally from Bulgaria, but now I live in Brighton as I’m studying fashion design here. I do feel okay now, but I have had numerous serious social, sort of, issues in the past. I’m a proudly open gay person, so I’ve been picked up on at school a lot for that. People would hate me for no particular reason, would point fingers at me, whispering “he’s gay” and being judgemental just because of the label “fag”. I’ve had many occasions when I was beaten up. There was this boy which I really liked and once I tried to kiss him, but he got pissed off that I even tried to do such thing and punched me right after my attempt, I started running away from him, but he chased me and caught me at some point, putting a hamburger on my face and spilling the ketchup and mayonnaise on my favourite white blouse back then. I felt very ashamed because everybody was staring at me.But the worse part was that nobody tried to help me. Another case was that this girl whose father is part of the mafia beat me up at the centre of my hometown and nobody yet again did anything, I wouldn’t have fought back because I knew that there would have been even scarier consequences for me if I had tried to do so. The outer door was then broken by a brick with death threat afterwards. The police said that they couldn’t do anything, so the case was over I guess, but the fear remained inside of me. As a result of these events and many other actually, I got in a really dark place in my head. I didn’t want to go to school, I developed an eating disorder, I just lost any perspective of my future. But then a guy I met helped me escape from that dark place and showed me that I was worth it, that I had potential to do something great, to stand out from the rest and that I should not give up because of people that lack kindness and humanity. Eventually, we became boyfriends, had our fights, and of course, broke up at some point. But this is not the important part, the important thing is that I was able to overcome all of my anxiety that I’ve been dealing with and was able to gain this confidence, that I’ve never had before because of that person, and I am really grateful for that. This year I was accepted at the University of Brighton, which ranked 4th in the UK and 13th worldwide. Out of 1000 people, only 40 got in and I felt really great about it. This proved to me that the experiences I’ve had all along my life really made me stronger and helped achieve what I want to achieve at the end of the day. This is my story, I hope it inspires whoever is reading it not to give up at certain difficult moments.