Bella Hadid has candidly spoken about her struggle with Lyme disease at the Global Lyme Alliance Gala in New York.
On Thursday, Bella, whose mother Yolanda Hadid has also been open about suffering from the disease, told of how she was diagnosed as a teenager in 2012, and was immediately impacted by the condition.
According to People, the 20-year-old who accepetd an award at the event, said it was dedicated to “all the teenagers out there that have really gone through what I’m going through and have suffered through the disease with no end in sight.”
“I know where you’re coming from, you’re not alone,” she said. “My teenage years were taken from me. I was forced to start homeschooling my second year of high school, which of course I didn’t want to do because I’d rather go hang out with my friends, go to parties.”
She explained that horseback riding "was my dream of my life and what I did every single day until I just stopped and realized I didn’t have the brain power to ride horses anymore, so that was the end of that."
"I know what it feels like to not want to get out of bed from bone pains and exhaustion and days on end of not wanting to socialize or be around people because the anxiety and brain fog just isn’t worth it," she said.
Bella gave up showjumping in 2013, but it was only last year that her family decided to publicly share that Yolanda, Bella, and her younger brother Anwar had been diagnosed with Lyme disease.
"After years of this you begin to get used to living with the sickness, instead of getting cured and moving on with your life," the model described. "Life isn’t always what it looks like on the outside, and the hardest part of this journey is to be judged by the way you look instead of the way you feel."
