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To all my fellow Malaysians, we are no strangers to the excruciating heat back home. Just within 5 minutes of walking outside under the Malaysian heat is enough to make any normal person sweat. As the usual Malaysian would say: “Oh my god, why is it so hot!”. Having played ice hockey in the past, the smell of sweat-soaked hockey gear is a nasty yet somewhat comforting feeling. Skating back and forth on the ice rink while your body was drenched in bodies of sweat was just part of the game. I guess it is fair to say that sweating is just a part of everyday life too, right? However, for me and many others, sweating is not just a part of it, it is my everyday life.

For the uninitiated, I suffer from hyperhidrosis, which is a medical condition characterised by excessive, uncontrollable sweating. In my case, I suffer excessive sweating on my palms, feet and armpits. Imagine you are doing your assignments in a room being blasted by air conditioning, your body shivering, and yet, your hands are slipping off of your keyboard. Or imagine you are simply just walking to your kitchen at home, when your feet suddenly slip and you nearly fall. Every person has a unique case of hyperhidrosis; some sweat excessively on their back and chests, while some sweat on their groins. Due to its relatively unknown nature, it is sometimes called ‘the silent handicap’. While my condition does not manifest every minute of the day, it certainly finds a way to make my day harder than it should be in the worst possible times. 

                                                                              Source: Picture provided by Wikipedia

Picture of my keyboard after typing provided by Jaden Woo

Hyperhidrosis affects about 5% of the world’s population, and usually starts during childhood or soon after puberty. Growing up, I went to a Chinese school. I often reminisce about the fierce teachers and the punishment of being hit by a rotan. How simple it used to be then. All we did was go to school, do our lessons, piss the teacher off, and get hit by a rotan. Going into secondary school, however, was when my hyperhidrosis began to manifest. When you enter secondary school, you start becoming more self-conscious about yourself. You start caring about what people think about every single detail of you.  

When I was 13, I had a crush on this girl. Being teenagers, we would hold hands sneakily during class under the desks. This was however far from the usual romantic cutesy swoony Korean drama moments, in which case I was greeted unromantically with “Ew, why are your hands so sweaty?”. So instead of being overcome with joys of prepubescent love, I was overcome with crippling embarrassment and anxiety. I could not get mad at her, because I found my own hands disgusting too. Despite that incident, we are still good friends to this day. But of course, this incident led me to attempt to avoid any, if not all, possibilities of hand contact where possible. Whenever the class played games together that would involve making hand contact, I would always position my hand weirdly so that my palms did not touch anyone. This did not stop people from giving weird looks and saying things like “Why are your hands like that?”, or “Use your hands properly,”. If only they knew why and how I felt.

I started asking my parents, looking up ‘sweaty hands’ on Google, and even asking a doctor. I didn’t get any comprehensive answers, other than to focus on being less nervous, and that it’ll go away eventually. Being a teenager, that was about as arbitrary as it gets. For the longest time, I felt disgusted about my own body, not because of how it looked, but because of how it felt to others and myself. I couldn’t do anything to help myself or to control my thoughts. I tried using stronger antiperspirants, but the moment I felt my palms and feet slip, I could do nothing but surrender to the condition. Seeing the subtle motions of change in people’s facial expressions when I had to shake their hands, followed by the swift motion of them wiping their hands down their clothing just further cemented the feeling of helplessness in me, and it continued to linger on for the years to come. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to blame others. It isn’t their fault my hands are sweaty, but I kept blaming myself instead and questioning why I was the one who had to bear this heavy crown of sweat. 

While secondary school life consisted of arguably the best years of my life so far, it definitely became harder than it should’ve been due to hyperhidrosis. I had to be careful to hold the edges of papers to make sure I didn’t ruin them with sweat. I had to buy pens that had rubber grips (I love you Pilot Pens) to make sure it didn’t slip out of my hand as easily when I was writing essays. I had to buy extra uniforms because the excessive sweat would leave heavy stains on them. I made sure to sit at the edge of my chair when I could to make sure I didn’t leave a giant butt-shaped stain on it. Thankfully, no one really bullied me for my condition. But it still made me sad knowing that this unknown disorder I have would make people feel icky. Even though I had friends who wouldn’t judge me, I still felt so alone in dealing with my condition. I had no one I could turn to, as no one could fully comprehend and understand how I truly felt. The anxiety of shaking hands, sitting on chairs for prolonged periods of time, leaving the Playstation controller covered in sweat. No one else I knew had to even care about these seemingly non-existent issues, while I had to think about every single thing I had to touch anywhere outside my own room for many years.

Amidst all these challenges, I realised that I was not the only one feeling alone, and that some people with hyperhidrosis have it way worse than I do. Throughout all these years, I knew this condition would not go away, and that my feet and hands were going to stay like this for a long while. It took a lot of years for me to finally begin the process of appreciating myself. While there is no set guide on how the process of self-love begins, instead of seeing hyperhidrosis as a sweaty liability, I started seeing it as a testament to my resilience and how, in spite of it, I was able to have a fruitful and memorable secondary education. While it did come with the expense of seeing disgusted faces and failed cute hand-holding moments on dates, I eventually went on this one date, where I said “I don’t think we can hold hands, my hands are always sweaty.”. Her response was one which I did not expect, which was, “I don’t care.”. This girl is now my girlfriend of two years, and she celebrates every minute my hands aren’t sweaty with me. Even though my condition still follows me as I am studying in the UK, I refuse to let it dictate the terms of my personal and romantic happiness. Instead, I choose to live my life as authentically and unapologetically as I can. 

Living with hyperhidrosis certainly presents itself with numerous unpleasant caveats. While each person’s hyperhidrosis differs, I hope my story serves to inspire others who may even have different medical illnesses, as well as show that despite my medical challenge, it is certainly possible to have the ‘best days of your life’, as long as you continue loving yourself whilst enduring any obstacles ahead in your life. I wish for all of us to use our hardest moments as testaments to our resilience and our innate will to fight on.