It’s not easy to have a deformity in a society that puts so much stock into visual appearance. And I can understand why. We’re biologically wired to want to exclude “inferior stock” from the genetic pool. That’s not to say that people with deformities are genetically inferior, just that our ape brains might see it that way. That said, knowing this won’t make it any easier when your peers tease you, when strangers stare at you or when a girl you like gets a confused look on her face the first time she sees your chest.

Now, I never did get teased, and no woman has ever cared what my chest looked like, and I probably get more stares now than my chest is much flatter (and bigger) than I ever did before. In fact I think for most people with Pectus Excavatum the above situations only happen in our imagination.

Despite that throughout my life I was always self concious of my chest. I would try to hide it at any opportunity I thought people might see it. When at the beach or pool I’d cross my arms and suck in my stomach (to hide the infamous PE pot belly), when wearing a T-shirt I’d look at my reflection in the windows to see if my hole was showing. I’d wear under-shirts (even during summer, and I hate the summer heat) to make sure my shirts weren’t sinking in. It was a constant uninterrupted worry from one situation to the next.

And what good did it bring me? Not much. I learned how to deceive people into thinking I have a normal chest, and … that’s it. Looking at it now, it just seems silly how much worry I put into it. Had I done absolutely nothing a few more people might have noticed but at the end of the day nobody really cared. Some people gave me passing comments, and some really bad advice (“just build up your inner chest bro”) but in the grand scheme of things these moments were so insignificant they barely register in my memory.

Honestly, if you are worried about what people might think about your chest, I promise you most chest-normies simply don’t care. And for those that do, if they’re important to you talk to them and help them understand, if not just ignore them. Life is just too short to spend it worrying what someone might think about the shape of your sternum.