23/08/2026
* Trigger warning *
There is a me before and after yoga.
This is a short story about my life.
Short because it’s still hard to write parts of it.
I was starving myself at 11.
Drinking by 12.
By 13, it had already started to swallow me.
Alcohol. Drugs. Boys.
Situations I shouldn’t have stayed in.
Things I took that weren’t mine.
Things I can’t even remember anymore.
Depression so heavy I wondered if there was any point in staying.
Anxiety so loud I couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
Panic that came from nowhere and everywhere.
Psychosis that blurred what was real.
I overdosed. Twice.
I woke up in rooms I didn’t recognize, next to people I couldn’t name, with no memory of how I got there.
Then YOGA found me.
Not like lightning. Not like the sky opening. It was slower than that, more like a door left slightly ajar, letting in just enough light.
I was still in it, but there was more space now, more air between the falling.
And little by little, the darkness had less room to live in me, until one day, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time it did.
I’m not against anything.
I just don’t need to leave myself anymore to feel okay here.
Today, leaving is what feels more uncomfortable.
That alone is the miracle.
I still love a glass of wine. Still love a little trip now and then, though even that has grown quiet, rare, unnecessary.
But this is what I know now:
Learn to enjoy your life as yourself first.
Thats what yoga did for me, it gave me, myself back to me.
It taught me how to breathe and live again.