This piece is part of the Essentially Man “Men’s Stories” series, first-person accounts of men reflecting on adversity, resilience and the lives they are trying to build.
The project exists to let men speak for themselves, in a culture that usually speaks about them.
The streets of Sarajevo are already building towards New Year's Eve. Firecrackers pop between the buildings and revellers from around the world crowd the streets waiting for midnight.
Inside our hostel, homemade spiced moonshine is being passed around among the noise of conversation and clinking glasses. Amid it all is Nico, who is difficult to overlook. He's tall and muscular, moving through the crowd in an open white shirt that leaves much of his chest exposed.
People notice him. At one point, a fellow reveller teases him about vanity. Nico laughs. He seems entirely comfortable with the attention.
That makes what he tells me later somewhat surprising.
Nico has Croatian roots and grew up in Germany. As a child, he struggled to make friends. He was born with a cleft palate and was bullied over his appearance. By adolescence, he had become shy, introverted and suspicious of people who approached him.
The young man I meet in Sarajevo is difficult to reconcile with that description. Nico moves easily through a crowded hostel full of strangers. He's travelled here with Sebastian, his best friend of 15 years, and seems happy to be seen.
Our conversation begins that night and continues through Instagram messages over the following months. Nico tells me about bullying, hockey, surgery and bodybuilding. He talks about Sebastian, the friend he says helped keep him alive, and about gradually becoming more comfortable with himself and other people.
The physical transformation is the first thing you notice. The rest takes longer to hear.
Early challenges and isolation
Isolation was part of Nico's life from his earliest years at school.
“In Kindergarten or elementary school, I was pretty much the weird kid without people even talking to me,” he recalls.
As making friends became difficult, Nico spent more of his time at home playing computer games.
“It was quite hard to make social contact which got me introverted and shy. So, I pretty much stayed at home, did no sports, and played computer games.”
Nico was also self-conscious about his cleft palate. When he eventually ventured into activities outside home, the bullying followed.
“Obviously, I got bullied. I got a pretty defensive and aggressive stance against anyone who talked to me, assuming they would want to make fun of me.”
Experiences with bullying
Around us, the hostel is getting louder as New Year's Eve continues. People move in and out of the common room, drinks are passed around and conversations compete with music and laughter.
“I got bullied a lot in school or at sports I started playing,” he says.
Some of it focused on his appearance. He remembers being mocked for how he looked, called names and teased both in the classroom and on the sports field. Over time, he stopped giving people the benefit of the doubt.
“It kind of shaped me in the way that I just got more introverted and didn’t trust anyone I saw.”
As Nico talks, the party carries on around us. It's an odd setting in which to hear how wary of other people he had once become. He had grown so accustomed to expecting ridicule that friendliness could be mistaken for another attempt to make fun of him.
“I was mean to people even though they wanted to be nice to me.”
It wasn't until hockey that his experience of being part of a group began to change.
The power of male friendship
Those early years in hockey weren't easy either.
“My last years in the hockey club were pretty nice,” he says. “The first years were hard. I was a good player, but I got held back by racism and mobbing because of my looks.”
Eventually, he became captain.
“But the last year, when I was captain of the team, it shaped me and made me happy.”
Hockey also brought Sebastian into his life. He's here with us in Sarajevo, 15 years after they first met. As Nico talks about their years together, he glances towards Sebastian, who nods in agreement.
“And obviously I met my best friend, Sebastian, you know, this guy,” Nico says, gesturing towards him. “I know this guy for 15 years. So, hockey has a pretty big place in my heart.”
Nico also calls him Doc.
“Sebastian, or Doc, was the person who shaped me. We shaped each other,” he continues. “He made me realise I don’t have to look good to get a really good friend. Keeping me alive and going to this day.”
After everything Nico has told me about his appearance, that last line stands out. The friend sitting beside him in Sarajevo is also the person who helped him realise that friendship didn't depend on it.
Turning point: Surgery
Our conversation continued through Instagram over the following months. One subject we returned to was Nico's cleft palate and his decision to undergo surgery.
“It’s obvious that I wanted to look better,” he told me.
The decision came at a time when Nico was becoming more interested in dating. Given everything he'd already experienced because of his appearance, he hoped surgery might change things.
“Yeah, it was really a big step, and the results were pretty good, but I had to wait a while for the results.”
What followed wasn't immediately what he'd expected.
“I got quite depressed after the first operation, not being satisfied with the look. I thought it would make everything easier.”
The operation hadn't removed the effort Nico felt he still needed to make.
“I still had to put a lot of effort into my looks and just in general,” he explained.
In our later Instagram conversations, we sometimes returned to New Year’s Eve in Sarajevo. Looking back, Nico was unequivocal about what the surgery had meant for him.
“But it was the turning point of my life, my social life, just everything.”
Embracing physical fitness
Back in Sarajevo, midnight is getting closer. The hostel empties into the streets as people gather for the fireworks, and Nico disappears into the crowd.
But he's difficult to miss. His white shirt stretches tightly across his shoulders and upper arms before falling open almost to his navel. Under the lights, the contours of his chest and abdomen are plainly visible. Around us, most people are wrapped in coats against the winter night.
People look.
Women let their eyes linger as he passes. Men look too: some give him an approving nod, while others watch him with furrowed brows. In a city where people generally dress more conservatively, Nico stands out even more.
He notices the attention but doesn't appear particularly concerned by it. He keeps walking through Sarajevo with his shirt open, talking and laughing with the rest of us.
Our conversation turns to bodybuilding.
“Bodybuilding was a way to feel better about my body, the parts I could change. It was about balancing out my face, which I didn't think was the prettiest. Looking back, it did more than that; it helped me accept and even like how I look, turning my body into something I'm proud of.”
His appearance had once been something other people used against him. The body attracting attention on the streets of Sarajevo was one he'd deliberately built.
What bodybuilding didn't fix
Changing his appearance hasn't resolved everything. Nico still has periods when he struggles with his thoughts, and the gym isn’t always the answer.
“I started distracting myself with new hobbies, which worked even better,” he says.
One of those was guitar. It opened up a more creative side of Nico that bodybuilding hadn't touched, while new interests brought different people into his life and gave him reasons to move beyond the circles he already knew.
He doesn't describe any of this as a formula.
“I don’t really have a way how I fixed them; I was just facing them when I had them.”
Support systems
Later that night in Sarajevo, the fireworks are over but the celebrations aren't. Nico is still surrounded by friends, Sebastian among them. People he'd met only recently mingle with the one who already knows him well.
When I ask what helped him through the more difficult periods of his life, Nico is surprisingly matter-of-fact.
“I don’t really have a lot of support systems I could use. Mostly it was the gym and friends. Or like the female friends of my friends who had a different view on everything, which was a nice experience.”
Sebastian has already featured heavily in Nico's story but the women he mentions offered something different. They weren't necessarily his closest friends. They were friends of friends who sometimes saw his problems differently.
“They had a totally different view on things which was helpful. They helped me see things from angles I hadn’t considered.”
For Nico, who once assumed that people approaching him were going to make fun of him, relying on others represents quite a change.
“You don’t go through life’s battles alone. The right people, they don’t just stand by you; they lift you up.”
Growth and suffering
As our conversations continue over the following months, Nico starts talking about what he thinks difficult experiences have left him with.
“Looking back and reflecting on my suffering, I think every story or every bad experience in your life can shape you a lot and make you grow,” he tells me in an Instagram voice message. “You can definitely feel that, if you compare me to other 21-year-olds who didn’t necessarily go through a lot in their life. You shouldn’t really talk down on them. You should acknowledge that you’re just a bit more experienced in life. Use your knowledge to teach them stuff.”
But Nico doesn't describe those experiences as simply good for him.
“I don’t think it’s in a positive or negative way. It’s a middle ground. And you have to live with that and those experiences.”
More recently, Nico's sense of stability is tested when one of his friends is involved in a motorcycle accident and ends up in a coma.
“Usually that kind of stuff really pulls you and takes you down. It did. But I didn’t lose my stability. I just continued with life, managing that stuff simultaneously.”
Nico doesn't romanticise suffering. He knows what some of those experiences cost him. But he can also see what he learned from having to live through them.
Nico's advice
As our conversations continue, Nico also talks about what he wants next.
“Right now, I want to travel a bit more and just do a few little things I always wanted to do. Meet new people like you,” he says. “Obviously, I want to succeed in my job. I think maybe just fix a little stuff [few things] on my face like my lips or something, or small things I don’t actually really need.”
For someone who has spent so much of his life worrying about his appearance, the last part is interesting. Nico says he's happy with how he looks now, although that hasn't completely stopped him thinking about changing things.
His advice to other people is more practical.
“My message for other people who are going through things like that is: stop cornering yourself into a position where you’re suffering and have bad feelings. You should try out stuff like new hobbies or a new style or try growing your hair, or something like that,” Nico advises. “It actually helped me a lot. So, I started growing out my hair. And I’m really happy with my looks right now.”
He keeps coming back to trying things.
“Start new hobbies or just try to learn new stuff and discover new things about your own body or personality. I learned how to play guitar. I got to know my artistic side. Yeah, I discovered a lot of different aspects of my character. And I discovered that I’m actually pretty creative. And you shouldn’t be too shy. Meet new people or take some risks in your life. I think that’s the main part. You just have to try new stuff which gives you a lot of dopamine and happiness.”
Nico’s advice is simple: try things, change things and stop assuming this version of you is final.
Conclusion
Nico’s story doesn’t resolve neatly. He describes surgery as the turning point of his life but much of what changed afterwards happened gradually: bodybuilding, new hobbies, different friendships and a willingness to meet people he might once have avoided.
By the time I meet him in Sarajevo, much of that change has already happened. The young man who once stayed home playing computer games is walking through a city full of strangers with his shirt open, celebrating New Year’s Eve with his oldest friend and people he has only just met.
He is still thinking about what comes next. He wants to travel more and succeed in his job. He might make a few small changes to his appearance. There will be guitar, new people and whatever else he decides to try.
For Nico, perhaps the best advice is the advice he gives himself: stop cornering yourself.
Essentially Man documents how men live, not how they should.