My sister my original inspiration

Dheklan Pitaliadda

My mum and dad moved from Sri Lanka to Australia for university in 1996. As students in a new country, things weren’t easy for them—they sacrificed a lot for us to have a better future. They worked three or four jobs on top of study and then in 1999 they had my sister Lexi. They had a few friends here but not a lot of family to support them and so as new parents, they moved back to Sri Lanka.

A few years later, I was born, and as a family we returned to Australia to stay here for good. Lexi and I became very close around this time because she was often another parent to me while my parents worked long hours. When I got old enough to be out in the world and started going to school, I struggled to adjust to the culture here. We lived out in the Eastern suburbs where there were no brown people around at all. I could barely speak English and I used my hands to eat, which is part of our culture back home in Sri Lanka. At school, the kids around me treated me like an imposter. Lexi would come and visit me during her lunch breaks to make sure I was okay.

For most of my teen years I kept to myself and spent a lot of time playing video games at home. But as I got older, I became more comfortable with standing out and not needing to have people around who were exactly like me. Lexi played a huge part in my journey to self-acceptance. She was always someone to look up to and taught me that it’s ok to be who I am, and go after my interests. She was the perfect role model for all of that too—she was studying to get a Law degree, working to support herself and now she is about to start her own business. My parents were a big part of this too. I wanted to go after my dreams to make them proud.

These days, I’m lucky to have a wide circle of friends who are people of colour from many different cultural backgrounds. It’s nice to know that there are people out there who, like me, experienced feeling isolated because of who they are, and that I wasn’t alone after all. I feel so comfortable finally being part of a community that feels genuine and like a family. Lexi tells me I inspire her a lot, with who I am and everything I’m doing in fashion and modelling. That means so much to me because she was my inspiration first.