Hey, I’m Annika. And until the age of 17, I had a perfectly normal life. I was pretty, good in school and in a happy relationship with my boyfriend Lewis. Well, at least that’s what I thought. Because one night everything changed. I was on my way back home from ballet practise when a guy ran up to me and threw a bucket full of liquid in my face.
At first, I thought it was a prank, but then my face started to burn more and more until I blacked out.
When I woke up again, everything was dark. I thought the lights were off. But something was different. My whole upper body was hurting. And, when I touched my face, I couldn’t feel my eyes or nose.
My whole face felt like an old margarita pizza and all I had left, was my mouth to breathe through.
I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare: No light, no face. I wanted to cry, but I had no eyes. So instead, I said “Where am I?, “Where am I?”. It was hard to speak without lips.
But fortunately, my right ear still worked, so I heard my mom when she said, “You’re alive! Oh, my love, what have they done to you?” She was crying and hugging me.
After she calmed down, she told me that someone had thrown acid in my face, and it had burned away my eyes, my nose and lips.
So it wasn’t a night mare. My face was really gone. But why would anyone do this to me? I’d always been a very friendly girl. And even when my classmates made fun of me, saying I wasn’t smart, I never talked back. I just don’t like conflict.
But my anger quickly turned to shame when my boyfriend came to my hospital bed. Even though I couldn‘t see, I knew how ugly I must have looked to him.
He asked me, “How are you?”, but it didn’t even sound like he was worried about me. I could even hear a bit of disgust in his voice. And it felt like he had only come to visit me because it was his duty as my boyfriend. Because after just a few minutes, he left again.
I’d never felt so bad before and this time I was able to cry. I could feel that somewhere under my skin, tears were forming.
That day, the police came to visit me. They wanted me to describe what happened. And they asked if I had any enemies or if someone had threatened me. I told them I couldn’t think of anyone.
But 2 years earlier, one of my old classmates had threatened me, saying, “be careful or I’ll throw acid on you.” But that was 2 years ago, and I never took it seriously. That girl had been jealous of me because I was in a relationship with Lewis.
I knew that in my city of London, acid attacks were common within the black and Muslim community. But I’m 100% white, and my parents are of Irish descent.
After a month of investigation, the police found out what happened. They figured out that my old classmate who had threatened me 2 years before had an affair with my boyfriend Lewis behind my back. But because he didn’t want to break up with me, she paid her cousin 200 pounds to throw acid in my face. The police found the exact same acid that was thrown on me on her cousin’s clothes.
The police also took GPS data from his phone that showed he was very close to me on the night of the accident.
The trial went on for several months. When the cousin was asked if he wanted to apologise to me, he started crying and said he was so sorry. But you could hear in his voice that he was only acting. He came up with one excuse after the other for why he’d thrown acid on me. He even said his parents had never loved him and he needed the 200 pounds his cousin gave him to pay off his debts.
Listening to his excuses disgusted me. And even the judge told him to shut up because no one wanted to hear his lies anymore.
In the end, both of them got 20-year prison sentences. But to be honest, I’m not sure if that’s fair considering that they’ve ruined my face for the rest of my life. And, if they behave well in prison, they might get out much earlier.
I recently, visited my former classmate in prison. The one who had ordered the acid attack. Of course, it was weird meeting her. I had no eyes to look at her directly. So all we could do was talk.
I asked why she had done it and she explained that she had always envied my beauty. She said it broke her heart when me and Lewis became a couple. And the only way to take him away from me, was to destroy my beauty.
At last, I asked her if she regretted what she had done and she immediately said yes because now she would have to “spend the best years of her life inside prison.”
That’s when I realised that some people truly only care about themselves. She didn’t apologise or anything. She only regretted being caught for her crime.
I got to be honest, I still sometimes get angry about what happened to me. It was such a senseless crime where everybody involved lost.
The hardest part is that I will probably never find another boyfriend. After what happened to my face, my now ex boyfriend Lewis cut off all contact with me. And I gotta admit that this hurt even more than the acid attack.
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