I’ve always been a lively child, full of colors and emotions — funny, and very loving. I’ve always worn my differences with pride: half Italian, half Polish, daughter of two separated parents who somehow learned to care for each other again. So I grew up in a family where love was wide and free. But my biggest love was for my dad. He taught me to be strong, to stay close to nature, to create and stay in touch with the world — because he often told me that the world could be, and often was, cruel. Yet I felt protected; I was little, wrapped in safety. Then, in the summer of my 12th or 13th year, I had my first shock of awareness. I fell into a depressive state, into the depth of my emotions — and the only thing that helped me face myself became writing, poetry. I felt emotions so strong they hurt my chest, and the more I wrote, the more I discovered how sensitive I truly was. So sensitive that on New Year’s Eve of 2020, I felt fear for the first time — the fear of losing the people I love. While others were celebrating a year still unknown to us, I was writing a poem that later turned out to be a premonition. Everything grew after that — dreams, thoughts, visions, tears, fears — until that moment arrived. November 21, 2020. I felt my innocence being torn from my heart. I felt the weight of having to become a woman on my own, with no more safety behind my back. My dad passed away, and suddenly all the sensations I had felt before started to make sense. It terrified me. I locked myself in my room — long nights crying, endless hours of sleep, because sleep felt close to death, but never quite reached it. Meanwhile, life went on. So fast that it didn’t even give me a single day to pause. I kept going with school, all the way to graduation. In the meantime, I had started smoking, I searched for my father’s figure in other people, I opened up to the wrong ones, and worsened my relationships at home. The only constant was my attraction to spirituality — though I already knew my family didn’t agree with these topics.