Coming Home to Myself: Life in the UK

There was a time I didn't think I would survive long enough to leave India.

Not dramatically. Not in a single moment. But quietly, over years, I had stopped believing that my life would become something worth staying for. I was at war with my body. I was at war with myself. And I was exhausted.

Then something changed. The inner work. The medication finally working. The relationship with my parents slowly healing. The toxic relationship ending. And underneath all of that, a feeling I couldn't quite name. That I had outgrown the space I was in. That my life would only really begin when I left.

I applied for my MBA. I moved to the UK.

I want to be honest about how terrifying that was. I had lived with HS for years. Years of medication, of treatment, of managing a condition that could flare without warning. What if it came back? What if a new country, a new climate, a new life triggered everything again? What if I couldn't cope alone, without my family, without everything familiar?

But underneath the fear was something stronger. A feeling that said: go.

So I went.

The UK has not been easy. I want to say that honestly, because I think it matters.

The job market is difficult. The weather is a daily negotiation with my skin. The isolation of being far from family, far from comfort, far from everything you know, that is real too.

But here is what is also real: I have never loved myself more than I do here.

Someone once complained to me about the UK, the employment conditions, the difficulties, all of it, and asked me why I even wanted to be here. And without thinking, I said: I like myself more here.

I didn't fully understand it when I said it. But I do now.

Here, I became the person I always was underneath all that pain. Here, I built a business around wellbeing and personal development, helping people feel seen, heard, and valued. The exact things I never felt as a child. Here, I started to date again, slowly and consciously, and discovered that people are kinder than the voice in your head that spent years telling you that you were unlovable.

Here, I stopped being at war with myself.

I also changed my mind about things I had written off entirely.

I used to think I would never marry. The fear of being known that fully, the scars, the lesions, the history, felt unsurvivable. I used to think I would never have children. I was terrified of passing this on, of causing someone else to carry what I had carried.

I have changed my mind on both.

When I look at my art, the colour, the love in every piece, I feel something that can only be described as wanting to create life. If my children ever face something like this, they will have something I didn't: a mother who has been there. Who will not panic. Who will sit with them in the dark and say: I know this. And I know you will come through it.

I have done so much in this life. Software engineering. Corporate consulting. Retail business. Content creation. Art workshops. Part time work. University projects. And now, a business of my own, in a country that is not my home country, built from the ground up, in the service of other people's growth.

I am telling you this not to impress you. But because there was a time, when I was twenty, when I was twenty three, when I could not have imagined any of this. When I genuinely thought I would not live long enough to see it.

I am living it.

And if you are reading this from a place of pain, from India, from the UK, from anywhere, I want you to know something. Not as a motivational quote. Not as empty reassurance. But as someone who has been there:

Your life can become beautiful. Hidradenitis Suppurativa is not your identity. It is just a tiny part of your story. Honour yourself, your physical needs, your mental needs, your emotional needs. Take it one day at a time. Do the inner work. Find the right doctor. Be patient with your body.

You will get there.

I am living proof.

And I am here, if you need someone who understands.

This blog is a support space for people living with Hidradenitis Suppurativa in the UK and India. I am not a medical professional. I am someone who has lived with HS for nine years and come through it. Please always consult a qualified doctor for medical advice. — Bharathi