How it all began…

November ’91.
Some hour of some afternoon, on some day of that fateful month.

I’m finally home, with as much pain in my stomach as in my heart.
The cold bathroom floor holds my frozen body tightly; my rage forces out the food that should have stayed in my stomach; my arms, resting on the toilet, endure the weight of a girl who doesn’t understand why.
Why, every Sunday, she has to go eat with her—the other woman—whom she had hated for so many years.

I don’t know how, or why, but there I was, relieving my anguish in a way no one had ever taught me. Trembling, I fully understood the consequences of the fate I was mindlessly stepping into. I tasted the bitterness of pain in my mouth. I pressed that button, wishing my fears would vanish with the water to some place far from me.
I wiped the shame from my lips.
And just like that, without knowing how or in what form, came the first of many—too many—days of self-destruction.

And so, on just another Sunday, in just another month of that cursed year, I entered adolescence armed with the one tool I naïvely thought could solve every problem I had—or believed I had.

Days passed, and nothing changed. My surroundings—just as chaotic as my inner world—provided the perfect stage for bulimia to settle deep within me over the years. My little body, despite the abuse I inflicted, endured it with strength; my ego, in its full glory, relished the praise for a powerful physique that was dying slowly on the inside.

Disappointment after disappointment, fall after fall, binge after binge, the years etched into me these great lies—lies that, for years, became my cursed truths:
“You are not worthy of love. You are not worthy of happiness.
Your illness cannot be cured. You have no one—not even yourself.”

In the midst of such unrest, I searched for love in the least likely places, found heartbreak where I least expected it, saw doctors who could not truly see me, and became ill from the very medicine that was meant to heal me.

In this state of not-being, I saw no solution but to end the life I could not heal. And yet, from somewhere far away—miraculously, almost silently—this crazy idea began to grow: if no one else could do it… maybe I could.

And so, suddenly, on a morning like any other, on a day like any other in that wonderful month, I left my family, my studies, my country… and began a 15-year journey around the world that would ultimately lead me back to myself.

Today, as I sit at this computer, looking back on my memories, my diplomas, my battles, and all I have lived through, I know with absolute certainty that this divine plan had a divine purpose:
To give me the tools so that today—survivor that I am—I can help you with everything I’ve learned.