I think I just have this deep need to pour my heart out. Not long ago, I could never have imagined telling my life story in such detail. And yet, here I am, confiding in strangers scattered all across the world... Me, a girl who is usually so closed off, keeping her heartbreaks, her doubts, her fears, and her anger locked deep inside... To the point of trembling, and exploding in rage, throwing whatever I could reach against the walls, all while asking myself : why? Why me? Why does everything always turn out like this for me? What is wrong with me?
I have so much to say and I don't even know where to begin. It will probably be a little scattered, like fairy dust thrown into the wind, dispersing into the air.
Let's start with my childhood. It's strange, I miss it terribly, even though it was far from being bright and gentle. I have forgotten so many things, but certain memories remain untouched, as if they happened yesterday. Some sweet ones, and some darker ones..
In the middle of this dark picture, my relationship with my mother offered no real refuge. She worked endlessly in her bar, to the point that I felt the painful sensation that her customers and her job always came before me. Instead of protecting me from my father's violence, she added her own weight to my pain through constant neglect and repeated put-downs. I felt invisible, rejected by one and belittled by the other.
I remember... I remember that night, though very hazily. I must have been between seven and ten years old. It was the village festival. Long tables were pushed against one another to accommodate a large crowd. People were eating, laughing, drinking, and my mother was sitting at a table with a few friends. A little further away, there was this large wooden dance floor where people danced to the rhythm of the music, and the old wooden refreshment booth where men gathered, including my father.
As for me, I was running around with the other children. I was playing, but only on the surface. I couldn't fully relax.. a bad feeling was weighing heavily on me. I had this silent fear that my father had drunk too much, and that the moment we got home, everything would fall apart. I tried to push the thought away, but the anxiety never truly left me.
When it was time to leave, my memory blurs. I think my father was completely drunk, acting strange... Tears and trembling overwhelmed me. It was always like this : at every village festival, I instinctively felt that the peace would shatter once we crossed the threshold of our home.
But that night, in the midst of my distress, a moment of sweetness cut through the fear. A girl my age whom I had been playing with wrapped her arms around me to comfort me and gave me a little Diddl plush toy. I held that fragile piece of tenderness tightly against me for the entire ride home, only to hang it, like a little beacon of comfort, on the doorknob of my bedroom.
The details of what followed fade a bit in my memory, but I remember coming back home to a massive storm erupting between my parents.
My memory sometimes resembles a shattered mirror : certain fragments remain bewilderingly clear, while others have evaporated with time..
That night, what I remember most are the screams echoing throughout the entire house. The exact words and crossed accusations fade, but the echoes remain intense : my mother’s voice weeping as she screamed at my father that he was sick, and him calling her a bad mother. They were exchanging those adult topics that were far too heavy, way beyond what a little girl could comprehend. Meanwhile, I was crouching at the top of the stairs, shivers running through my body, watching the chaos down below, not really knowing where to hide or where to put myself.
There were so many other fights like that one. I can still see myself curled up at the top of those stairs watching the storm, or suddenly throwing myself between them to try and stop the chaos with my small hands. I used my body as a fragile shield, improvising the role of referee in the middle of a void. And every time my steps drew me a little closer to one side, a heavy sense of guilt would wash over me : I felt as if I were betraying the other parent.
I must have been ten years old at most. It was Christmas Eve. Usually, the celebration took place at my grandmother's or my cousin's house, but that year, my father’s side of the family had gathered at ours. Aunts, uncles, cousins filled the house. As always, my father displayed his best face, that loving, attentive, hardworking, and friendly man he presented to others. But deep inside, I knew his other face, the one he kept for us, the face of a tyrant. Despite the festive atmosphere, I felt that knot in my stomach : I knew that as soon as the guests left, something terrible was going to happen.
And sure enough, it did. Once the door was closed, my father lost his mind. Rage took over, and he began smashing everything in sight, dishes flew and glass shattered onto the floor. Staying there was impossible. In the rush, my mother, my brother, and I had to flee to take shelter at my maternal grandmother’s house. We left with nothing, forced to leave behind, with heavy hearts, the Christmas presents we had just opened.
The next morning, my mother went back to the house while my father was at work, to make sure she wouldn't run into him and to retrieve a few belongings. I remember sitting on my grandmother’s sofa when she returned. She was panicked, repeating on a loop : "He’s sick... He broke everything, he even threw the television on the floor... He’s sick."
Anxiety completely consumed me. I tried not to show anything, but I burst into tears out of fear. I was thinking of my favorite gift, that children's tablet with all its games. I was so afraid he had broken that too... Fortunately, my mother had managed to retrieve it intact, like a tiny piece of sweetness saved from the storm.
It was also around that time, when I was between 7 and 8 years old, that an unexpected event brought a little warmth into our daily lives. My father was working under the car when a stray dog, clearly on the run and abandoned, came out of nowhere and gently scratched his back. Rumors had it that he came from the nearby forest where he had been abused. I begged my father so much to keep him that he finally gave in. That dog became my faithful companion, my silent confidant. He walked alongside me through my childhood until I was 12 or 13... and then, one day, he suddenly vanished. Without any explanation. That sudden loss broke my heart, marking the end of an era just before I entered middle school.
There is also this memory of weekend evenings. My father had a habit of going out, pretending he was visiting his mother. He always wanted people to speak well of him, to feed this image of the ideal son, the only one taking care of her while his brother and sister only visited for special occasions because they lived farther away. But the truth was that he only went to see her half the time. The rest of the time, he went to see his mistresses or prostitutes. At first, I didn't know. Sometimes he would take me with him to my grandmother’s, and sometimes he would refuse, claiming he would be back too late and that I had school the next day.
One evening, my mother, looking panicked, asked if she could sleep in my room. It wasn't the first time she had come to sleep in my brother's room or mine. I think she was afraid of him. So that night, we slept together. But I couldn't close my eyes. I was always on guard, with that damn feeling at the bottom of my stomach that something terrible was eventually going to happen. I tried my best to relax, but the fear never left me..
I was barely asleep when suddenly, the front door burst open with violence. My mother and I gasped. I froze, trying not to make the slightest sound, terrified. I heard his footsteps on the wooden staircase, footsteps that boded no good...
When suddenly, he violently threw open my bedroom door, and a huge fight broke out. He dragged my mother into the hallway. She tried to pull away with all her strength to break free, but she stood no chance against his weight. I saw him drag her all the way down the hall to their room, slam the door shut, and lock it. And then I heard him hurting her. I heard her screaming and crying.
I tried to break down the door, turning the handle every which way, throwing my shoulder against it, but all it did was hurt me. I kept screaming at him to stop, I was so afraid he was going to kill her... Then, exhausted, I went back to bed.
The next day, I went to school, as if nothing had ever happened.
Throughout kindergarten and elementary school, up until fifth grade, I was always a shy, reserved little girl... Yet despite my quiet nature, I made a best friend, Juliette. We became inseparable.
In fact, she was the only person allowed over to my house, and the only one whose place I could visit. My father liked to isolate me, he forbade me from playing with the other kids in the village and didn't want me having friends. She was the sole exception, mainly because we’d known each other since we were knee-high to a grasshopper. Today, I sometimes wonder if it was all just a front on his part, a way to keep people from getting suspicious...
Be that as it may, I deeply treasure those beautiful memories with her, forever etched in my heart. I lost count of all those afternoons spent playing with Barbies, Littlest Pet Shops, or Playmobil, inventing thousands of stories. I also remember our video game nights when I would bring my Nintendo to her house : we spent hours on Animal Crossing or Mario, swept away by fits of laughter under the duvet once night fell. And during the summer, when we slept in a tent in her garden, we had fun making prank phone calls in the dark, stifling our giggles so we wouldn't get caught.
We were so close that we shared absolutely everything. When we were little, we went to dance class together. I can still picture the large studio with its massive mirror, our teacher Elise, the positions we practiced at the barre, the splits, the arabesques, the leap turns, and our pretty pink tutus... Later on, we also signed up for music school together : we were in the same choir, I played the piano while she played the flute. We even had fun dressing exactly the same, and I remember that magical thrill the night we went to see Marina Kaye in concert together, back when we were still so small.
In the summer, we would also go camping together. We loved our bond so much that we told everyone we were sisters. Even at school, the other students were convinced of it, because my mother often picked both of us up at the end of the school day.
We met in my very first school. Even though we were only two months apart, we were never in the same class because I was born in 2004 and she was born in 2005. But that never stopped us from finding each other at every recess.
Then came the time for my entry into middle school, for my sixth and seventh-grade years at a school near my home.
My arrival at middle school was difficult. Because of my shyness, I found it hard to reach out to others. I rarely felt comfortable among kids my age, constantly carrying this feeling of being watched and judged. I did manage to make a few friends at first, but it didn't last. And for good reason : my father strictly forbade me from going out after class. I had to come straight home. When I finished early, instead of going outside for a walk like the others, I was forced to stay in study hall doing my homework until he came to pick me up. Little by little, those girls started hanging out outside of school, inviting each other over... without me. They naturally drifted away, and I found myself more alone than ever. In the hallways, some kids would even make fun of me, seeing me constantly isolated.
Then, halfway through sixth grade, a new encounter changed everything. It was Masa, a girl my age who had just arrived in France after fleeing the war in Syria. At first, some students in my class introduced her to me with a mocking air, saying : "Look, you're both friendless, you might as well become friends together." But their mockery turned into a gift. A very strong bond formed between us, until we became completely inseparable.
In the beginning, she barely spoke French. I enjoyed teaching her my language, and in return, she taught me a few phrases in Arabic. She would also tell me about the war, the bombs that had destroyed her home and taken her loved ones. My heart would ache listening to her recount those horrors. Since I was a year older, I felt a strong protective instinct kick in. I wanted to take her under my wing and look out for her whenever anyone tried to bother her
As the year went by, we became inseparable during recess. As soon as the bell rang, we'd immediately look for each other. The whole school had gotten used to us as a duo : whenever someone was looking for one of us, they always knew exactly where to find us
Yet, the bullying didn't stop. One day during lunch break, some students had fun throwing bread at my face for no reason at all. Another time, some girls walked up to me, grabbed my wrist, and, under the guise of fake kindness, mocked my thinness by pointing out how frail my bones were. From enduring those comments, I quickly developed a complex and painful relationship with my own body.
Amidst all this harshness, there is also this completely absurd anecdote, half-funny, half-revolting...
At the beginning of middle school, I didn't have a cell phone; my father believed I should get one much later. But one day, in English class, the teacher asked the whole class who owned a phone. Everyone raised their hand, except me. Already isolated and marginalized, I felt even more rejected. I begged my parents so much that they eventually bought me one.
One evening, to cheer up Masa and try to take her mind off things, I lent her my cell phone so she could play with it at home. When I got it back at school, I saw that she had installed plenty of apps and switched the entire phone language to Arabic. It made me laugh, and I was simply happy to have brought a little comfort to her heart.
But when my father realized it, the situation completely escalated. He flew into a wild rage, destroyed my phone, and then called the police, accusing me of becoming radicalized... It was absurd. I found myself summoned to my town's police station to undergo an intrusive interrogation. It was exactly what he was looking for: keeping fear alive within me, terrorizing me, all while posing as the exemplary father dealing with his "deviant" daughter.
Beyond these events, my first two years of middle school, sixth and seventh grade, were marked by an immense sense of loneliness. I felt deeply isolated, always on the margins of others, trapped in this routine where the slightest misstep was forbidden.
Yet one day, I wanted to defy this suffocating authority. Finishing classes early, I decided not to go to study hall as usual and crossed the school gates to finally taste a moment of freedom. But as fate would have it, that very day, my father came to drop off some paperwork at the school. He spotted me. He immediately threw me into the car to bring me home. Once there, he exploded in anger: screams flew, and then the blows fell. That timid attempt to emancipate myself closed in on me in violence.
It was the following year, when I started eighth grade, that things finally shifted. I left that school to attend a private Catholic agricultural boarding school.
That year marked a real turning point. The school was huge, combining a middle school, high school, and higher education programs and despite its fairly strict rules, the atmosphere was surprisingly warm and family-like. During orientation in the large amphitheater, the staff described the school as a “second home.” For me, it was so much more than that : those became my best school years.
The weekly routine finally gave me some breathing room, a truce away from the violence at home. On Monday mornings, my mother would drop me off at the bus stop. During the thirty-minute ride, I’d often sit at the back with my headphones on, getting lost in the music I had downloaded beforehand. Upon arrival, we had to walk down a long slope carrying all our stuff. I remember laughing with two boys from my class as we rode our suitcases all the way down. That first year, my dorm room was on the fourth floor. Since the dormitory doors remained locked until evening, I either had to haul my suitcase up all those stairs in the morning to leave it on the landing, or leave it downstairs until classes were over.
Even though I was still deeply shy, constantly burdened by a recurring feeling of not belonging that sometimes made me withdraw, this place allowed me to make a few friends and experience genuine connection. Boarding life was packed with routine : right after class, we’d have an afternoon snack in the lobby : chocolate milk, cereal, bread, jam, and orange juice, followed by evening study hall. I feel a deep nostalgia for it. Night would fall outside while we were in the classroom, supposed to be doing our homework under the supervisor’s watchful eye, often dissolving into fits of giggles and quiet mischief. Between study sessions, the evening break gave us time to play hide-and-seek or just chat outside. The school regularly organized events : sliding down giant soapy tarps in the courtyard, a mechanical bull in the gym, or group outings for anyone who wanted to join.
What made those years so special was also the opportunity to choose electives. Normally, we were only allowed to check one box on the enrollment form. I had come specifically for the horseriding option, but I also discovered the small animal care program. Passionate about animals as I was, I decided to take a chance and check both boxes. Against all odds, they let me take both and I was actually the only student in my class permitted to do so.
In eighth grade, Wednesdays were dedicated to horseback riding at the equestrian center right on school grounds, led by Veronique, an instructor who was strict but fair. Thursdays were devoted to animal studies. Every other Thursday, we went on field trips with two instructors, who were also quite strict, visiting animal shelters and farms, observing reptiles, learning grooming techniques, or taking turns caring for small rodents, before typing up graded reports. The alternate Thursdays were spent doing practical training with our main teacher, a class most of us preferred. Owners would trust us with their dogs, and we’d work on basic commands, agility, and even bite training, where we got to put on impressive bite suits to face a specialized Malinois.
It was during those practical classes that I handled the dogs. The very first one assigned to me was a German Shepherd. After that, I worked with Naya, a female Malinois who became my partner for nearly the entire year, and later with Lucky, a Malinois-Beauceron mix. I’ve always been very comfortable around Malinois, which is precisely why I have one today. On those class evenings, I was so eager to see Naya again that I’d rush through my afternoon snack, sometimes just grabbing a piece of bread on the fly, terrified she wouldn't be assigned to me or wouldn't be there. Whenever she saw me coming, she’d strain against her leash with pure joy, running straight toward me
I spent three years at that boarding school in total : my eighth-grade year, my first year of ninth grade (where I dedicated myself entirely to the animal care program), and the year I repeated ninth grade.
Yet behind this haven of peace, the shadow of home kept haunting me. For a long time, I blamed myself for being an unorganized student, for leaving my locker a mess as far back as elementary school, and for losing track of my schoolwork. With hindsight and maturity, I came to realize it was neither laziness nor a lack of focus : my mind was simply overwhelmed by the sheer need to survive. My brain couldn't focus on notebooks while carrying the heavy weight of trauma, violence, and my parents' endless fights. Even at night in the dorms, those images played on a loop, keeping me from getting any real rest.
On Friday evenings, the bus would take me back, and my father would pick me up. At home, things were steadily deteriorating. I was caught in the middle, burdened by the crushing feeling of being used as a pawn by both of them to hurt the other. My father kept telling me my mother was a manipulator, while my mother warned me about his madness. Every time I seemed to draw closer to one, I felt a heart-wrenching sense that I was betraying the other.
It was during that second year of ninth grade, in 2019, that my mother finally left for good after he broke down the bathroom door and tried to strangle her. She fled to my grandmother's house for safety. I was left alone with him on weekends. That was when the psychological abuse became its most cruel and insidious. Faced with his unpredictable rages, I was reduced to running to the back of the garden to hide, terrified. Sometimes, as a punishment, he would lock me outside, forcing me to spend the night under the stars, trembling with fear and cold. It was during that same period, alone in the house with him, that he beat and sexually abused me again, echoing the trauma I had endured at a much younger age.
He alternated between this cruelty and moments of feigned kindness, making grand promises he never kept. For instance, he had planned a trip to England : he promised we would go by ferry, and I was so thrilled at the thought of it. Then, the day before we were supposed to leave, we went to the beach together. The beach was split into two sections, accessible by two staircases right next to each other, barely a two-minute walk apart. I was 14 or 15 at the time. I just told my father that I was going to head down the other staircase to check out the other side of the beach. For that single reason, he snapped and said bluntly : “Well then, we're not going to England after all.” All that just because I had walked a few steps away from him.. He demanded total control and refused me even the smallest shred of freedom.
Looking back, I know he never intended to take me on that trip. He gave me hope, dangling that dream in front of me, only to brutally shatter it and inflict even more pain. I would have preferred him to be cruel all the time—at least that would have spared me from clinging to false hope.
That summer of 2019 was also marked by a family tragedy and a shattering revelation. When I got back from camping, my father abruptly announced that my grandmother on his side had passed away. After seeing her at the funeral home, we went to her funeral. It was there, in the midst of grief, that my godmother approached me and revealed a heavily guarded secret : I actually had three older half-brothers. At first, no one wanted to say anything more. But when my father overheard my godmother bringing up the subject, he glared at her with pure rage, visibly furious and deeply unsettled.
It wasn't until years later that I truly understood the reason behind all that mystery : ever since I was born, he had been threatening to kill my mother if she ever revealed their existence to me. In truth, my father had fathered those three boys during his first marriage, but he had abused both his wife and their children. They had all cut ties with him years before I was born. To keep up appearances with the rest of the family, my father claimed his ex-wife was “crazy” He had hidden their existence from me solely to prevent me from realizing what a monster he truly was, and to keep me from understanding that the violence we were enduring had already claimed other victims before us.
Then, right in the middle of my second year of ninth grade, my father suddenly vanished into thin air. For six or seven long months, he was gone without a trace, leaving me in total limbo. I went to live with my grandmother on my mother's side, alongside my mother. At boarding school, during evening study hall, I couldn't focus at all. Anxiety was eating me alive. I was already carrying the heavy weight of the abuse I had endured since birth, and now I had no idea where my father was... My grades completely plummeted. During breaks, I would send dozens of text messages and call his number over and over, but my phone remained silent. I felt like he was abandoning me, too.
Then, toward the end of the school year, right before summer break, I tried calling him one last time during recess, without much hope. And to my absolute surprise, he picked up.
Just as suddenly as he had left, he came back, without a single word of apology, acting as if nothing had ever happened. On the phone, he put on his sweetest voice, that honeyed, reassuring tone he knew so well how to master. He announced that he was starting a new life near Nantes with his new partner and invited me to spend a few weeks with them over the holidays. Despite all the abuse, I was so desperate for a father that the sweet voice of this manipulator was enough to reassure me. Naively, the child inside me wanted to believe it. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he had finally changed. So I went to Nantes that summer, where I met my stepmother.
In September, it was time for me to start my first year of high school.
I had to leave my first agricultural boarding school, the one that had been my haven of peace, my protective cocoon with the animals. To this day, I regret that decision with all my heart.. I really should have stayed at my old boarding school. My mother enrolled me in a high school near our house, but instead of letting me commute every day when we lived so close, she forced me to board there. She just wanted to get rid of me and have me around as little as possible. It only deepened that devastating feeling of being unwanted, unloved, and like I belonged nowhere.
Adapting turned out to be impossible. Very quickly, loneliness caught up with me, accompanied by a new wave of suffering : school bullying. In the hallways, the taunting began. Absurd, false rumors spread like wildfire to humiliate me, sticking me with a reputation I didn't deserve. I felt hunted, judged, with nowhere left to hide.
It was right in the middle of that first year of high school that the weight of everything became more than I could humanly bear. The abuse at home, my mother’s rejection, the bullying at school, the humiliating rumors... My mind was completely overwhelmed, and my body couldn’t carry around that backpack full of rocks any longer. I reached my ultimate breaking point and tried to end my life by swallowing all kinds of pills. It wasn’t a desire to die, but a desperate, vital need to stop the pain, to finally quiet that deafening noise in my head.
I had to be rushed to the hospital, where they pumped my stomach. I remember being in so much agonizing pain that I cried uncontrollably, while my body kept throwing up to purge the medication. I stayed under observation for several days, and then I had to spend a few weeks in the pediatric ward, where a psychologist would come see me. I hated feeling trapped there so much that I did everything I could to make it look like I was getting better, just so I could leave sooner than planned.
That was when my father offered to have me move to Nantes for good to live with him and my stepmother. I wanted to escape that high school, that dorm, and my village at all costs. Desperate, I convinced myself he had changed, that he was finally going to be kind to me. I agreed. I left right in the middle of the school year and stayed out of school in Nantes until the summer holidays.
But reality hit me immediately. In Nantes, my father hadn't changed at all. He was still abusing me, though not physically this time because his wife was around : it was a subtle, vicious, psychological violence. In front of her, he played the part of the ideal man, the thoughtful partner, and the perfect dad. And she bought it completely, totally manipulated, she fell for every single lie. Whenever the pressure became too intense, when I was pushed past my limit and tried to stand up for myself or snapped, I was always the one scolded and punished by both of them. I was labeled the rebellious daughter, the bad one, while he played the 'poor, long-suffering father.' I found myself completely pushed to the brink, trapped under their roof, feeling entirely alone in the world and deeply misunderstood.
The following September, I ended up at a third boarding school, this time in Nantes.
At the very beginning of the year, I actually started out strong : I was motivated and focused on my schoolwork. But the pain was too great and my emotional exhaustion too deep. Very quickly, reality caught up with me. I found myself alone, with no real friends, and I didn't even have the energy to try and make any. I was completely drained by everything I had been through. I stopped caring about classes and stopped doing my homework altogether. After a while, my brain just shut down from the overload.
Then, right in the middle of the school year, for no reason at all, my father and stepmother made it clear that I no longer had a place in their home, that they didn't want me around anymore.
They told me I would no longer be staying with them on weekends. On Friday evenings, after an already exhausting week at boarding school, I wasn't even allowed to grab a snack or take a breath : I had to jump straight into a two-and-a-half-hour drive back to my grandmother's house. My father drove in a cold, malicious silence. As soon as we got there, he dumped me and my suitcase right on the curb, without a goodbye, without even looking at me, like I was a piece of trash. Once again, that crushing feeling of being completely unwanted washed over me.
On Monday mornings, the ordeal continued. I had to wake up insanely early, around 4:00 a.m. My mother was already leaving for work at that hour, so either my grandmother woke me up or I got up on my own. My father would drive two hours from Nantes just to pick me up at my grandmother's place, and then we’d make the same two-hour trip all the way back so he could drop me off at the boarding school in Nantes around 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning.
I was so physically and mentally exhausted by this grueling schedule, these absurd commutes, and this constant rejection that eventually, I stopped going to school altogether. I never finished the year.
If my childhood and adolescence were a living hell, the most destructive part was perhaps not just the violence, but the absolute loneliness in which I was trapped. Nobody believed me. Nobody protected me.
My father was a master of performance and manipulation. In public, in front of the family, whether on my mother’s side or his, he wore the mask of a charming, caring, and devoted father. He orchestrated his act so well that he managed to turn his entire family against me. He told them I was a difficult, spiteful girl, a “bad daughter” while playing the poor, long-suffering father. As a result, I have no contact today with my paternal family, who completely bought his lies, even though I was the sole victim in the middle of all his theater.
This manipulation reached peaks of cruelty during medical appointments, particularly at disability evaluation centers or psychologists' offices, where my parents brought me not to help me heal, but to clear their own consciences and maintain a flawless façade.
There’s one therapy session in Nantes I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I had gone there with my father and stepmother (who was also completely under his spell, systematically taking his side and calling me “crazy” or “badly raised” whenever I tried to defend myself. After meeting with me alone, the psychologist brought my father into the room for the end of the session.
Suddenly, the cold, distant man who ignored me daily and had never spoken a gentle word to me completely transformed. He started speaking to me in a sickeningly sweet voice, calling me “ma puce” a classic French term of endearment for little girls, but one he had never once used for me in my entire life.
Just thinking about it brings back a sickening feeling. On one hand, I was disgusted and infuriated by the pure hypocrisy of the performance, knowing it was a deliberate strategy to fool the psychologist. But on the other hand... the little girl inside me, starving for love, clung desperately to that sweet word. Even knowing it was fake, a part of me absorbed it anyway, like a crumb of affection tossed into the middle of a desert. It was a mind game of unbelievable cruelty.
After years of being beaten, abused, ignored, belittled, and pushed to my absolute limits, my mind and body would eventually reach a breaking point. It had been happening ever since I was a little girl. When the pressure cooker couldn't take it anymore, I would spiral into what they called “temper tantrums” I would lose control, screaming, crying my eyes out, and throwing objects against the walls.
It wasn't malice. It wasn't an “anger issue” It was the survival cry of a child pushed past her limit, with no shoulder to cry on, no one to confide in. All I wanted in those moments was for someone to wrap their arms around me. To listen to me. To protect me.
Instead, my parents called me “crazy” and manipulative, telling me over and over that I needed psychological help. Starting in sixth grade, the pain began to manifest through self-harm, which I hid as best I could. When they found out, my father showed neither tenderness nor concern : he screamed at me, calling me crazy and threatening that he’d do it to me himself
After my suicide attempt during my first year of high school, psychiatry added the final blow to this masquerade by prescribing me Risperdal
That felt like one more humiliation. I felt that instead of putting out the fire, meaning stopping the abuse I was enduring, they preferred to drug me to shut me up. I was given medication as if to say, “Shut up, take this, and stop making trouble.” I didn't have a mental illness from birth : my breakdowns were the direct consequence of what I was being subjected to. They needed to address the root cause, not dope me up.
Later, during my boarding school days in Nantes, those medications sedated me so much that I would fall asleep right in the middle of class. I eventually stopped taking everything, refusing to let them numb me just to mask their own cruelty
At that point in my life, the sheer accumulation of trauma, abuse, bullying, and rumors became so crushing and unthinkable that I sometimes found myself asking impossible questions. After a while, I almost wondered if someone had put a curse on me for my life to be so miserable. Everyone goes through hard times, but in my case, it reached such an extreme level that it felt surreal.
As if everything my father had put me through, the abuse and the molestation, wasn’t enough, I was also sexually assaulted multiple times by other older men and boys.
Between all the trauma, the repressed memories, and the fact that I was constantly bounced around from place to place, between my parents, middle school, boarding school, my grandmother's house, my father leaving, then my mother, so many things blur together in my mind.. I don't have exact dates, but I know I was around sixteen when this happened.
Around that time, while I was staying at my grandmother's house with my mother, I started to rebel a little. Since my father had always forcefully isolated me, forbidding me from going out after class or hanging out in town on weekends, I had never known real freedom. So, during one school break, I started sneaking away. I’d slip out during the day or evening and come back later.
My grandmother lives out in the countryside, in a secluded house in a tiny Breton village. One day, a boy my age messaged me on Instagram. We had gone to the same middle school back in sixth and seventh grade, though we were never in the same class. We had never actually spoken back then : we just knew each other by sight and name because the school was small. On Instagram, he sent me a message asking what my username meant. From there, we started talking, grew closer, and he asked if I wanted to meet up.
For me, it was a huge step, the very first time in my life I was meeting a boy just to be genuine friends, after being isolated for so long.
He set a time for us to meet in the evening. I snuck out of my grandmother's house and walked for a long time. Since I lived in a rural village and he was in the neighboring town, it took at least an hour to an hour and a half on foot. We agreed to meet at a soccer field about thirty minutes from my grandmother's place. When we finally met up, we clicked right away.
I've always loved the atmosphere of the night, those surreal moments that feel like an ambient or dark ambient album cover, filled with twilight and liminal spaces. That strange sensation where reality itself feels slightly out of reach. Throughout that entire period, it felt as though I was living inside that exact mood. Things went so well that every single night during that break, I would slip out through the window. Because the countryside was pitch black and walking alone terrified me, he’d stay on the phone with me the whole way to reassure me.
We always met at the same spot, on the soccer field, sitting on the bleachers, laughing and playing. One night, as we sat there in the dead of night, a curious kitten wandered up to us. Just for fun, I told him, “Let's take him! Let's adopt him together and take care of him!” The sky was a magnificent deep blue, and the atmosphere was so dreamy it felt magical. It gave me a tiny bubble of tenderness in the middle of all the rumors floating around about me and the chaos of my life. It felt so good to finally have someone by my side.
But of course, as with every good thing in my life... everything shifted.
One evening, I went back to see him. This time, it was winter, and since it was too cold to stay outside on the soccer field bleachers, he suggested I come over to his place. Neither his parents nor my family knew we were seeing each other; we kept everything a complete secret. There was a camper trailer in his yard. We had to walk for a really long time to get to his house, at least an hour and a half on foot. My feet were completely frozen because of the cold. We went inside his camper to take shelter, staying warm and watching videos together.
After a while, I checked the time and realized it was already early in the morning. Panic hit me. I told myself I absolutely had to get back before my grandmother woke up and noticed I wasn't in bed. As I was leaving, the boy offered to walk me back, but I felt so guilty about making him walk all that way only to turn around and walk back alone that I said, "No, don't worry, I'll go by myself, it's fine!"
The problem was that, having been isolated my entire childhood by my father and never allowed to go out, I had zero sense of direction in my own town. At first, since we had walked there together, I thought I’d remember the way back, that it was just a straight line. But after a while, I reached a spot where the road branched off in every direction.
That's when I started to completely panic. I had no idea which path to take. It was still pitch black out, freezing cold, my feet were numb, and my phone was almost dead, barely 25% battery left. I opened Google Maps and typed in my grandmother’s address. I followed the directions, but every time I walked, it kept leading me into dead ends. My heart was pounding out of my chest, and I kept thinking, "I'm never going to find my way back..."
I realized I had no choice : I had to ask someone for directions. But since it was so early, the streets were completely deserted.. everyone was asleep. The only things passing by were cars driving fast, probably people on their way to work.
Then, I spotted a man standing next to a delivery truck. He was parked and seemed to be working. Even though I'm extremely shy, my fear of getting home late and getting screamed at was stronger. I walked up to him and asked, "Excuse me, do you know which way to...?"
The man looked surprised to see a girl as young as me out all alone at that hour. He said, "That's pretty far, though! That's a long walk!" Then he offered, "If you want, I can drop you off."
In that moment, two conflicting parts of me were at war. On one side was an extremely naive Lena, way too idealistic, who only saw the good in people and assumed everyone had good intentions. On the other side was a hyper-cautious Lena, shaped by years of abuse. Plus, I had watched tons of horror movies, true crime cases, and YouTube videos about women getting into a stranger's car and getting trapped. My paranoid side was screaming at me that this was dangerous. But my naive side kept saying he just wanted to help, and I was so exhausted from walking for hours in the freezing cold, with numb feet and that absolute terror of coming home late, that I ended up accepting.
I got into his truck. But to protect myself, I wasn't completely reckless : I didn't give him my grandmother's exact address, just a spot where I knew I'd recognize the way back and where I'd only have a 20-minute walk left.
At first, everything was fine. But after a while, I noticed he wasn't taking the right route. Panic set in. I told myself, "Lena, you're being paranoid because of your videos, there has to be a reasonable explanation." I asked him, "Are you sure this is the right way?" He replied that he just had to make a delivery at a store first. That reassured me, especially when he actually stopped in front of a store to unload some crates.
But right after that, he got back on the road and drove me to a completely deserted, eerie place with no one around. And there, he cut the engine.
He turned toward me with a creepy look on his face and said a sentence I will never forget for the rest of my life: "If I drop you off, what do I get in return?"
Pure terror exploded inside my head. I could barely breathe. Trying to defuse the situation out of sheer panic, I laughed it off and replied, "Well, I don't know, I have nothing... I don't have any money, I don't have any candy..."
But he started acting predatory. He leaned in closer, physically pinning me against the truck seat. He said, "Don't I get a little kiss?" He was a man of at least 45 or 50, and I was 16. He also started asking inappropriate questions, asking if I had a boyfriend. Even though I didn't really have one at the time, I told him yes, thinking it would make him back off. Instead, he asked in a disgusting tone, "Oh yeah? And what have you done with him so far?"
At that point, gripped by total panic and a surge of rage, I didn't let him get away with it. I snapped, screaming at him to leave me alone and let me out immediately. I screamed so loud that it rattled him. He must have thought I was going to draw attention or report him.
So, to cover his tracks and act like he never meant any harm, he pulled a pathetic excuse : "Yeah, well, I actually did that on purpose to teach you a lesson! Because a girl your age shouldn't be walking around alone at night!"
It was a cowardly, cheap excuse to hide his creepiness, because deep down we both knew that if I hadn't fought back and screamed, he would have gone all the way.
I bolted out of the truck and ran as fast as I could, completely traumatized. I walked the rest of the way to my grandmother's house, my heart hammering in my chest the entire time.
Unfortunately, that traumatic encounter with the man in the truck wasn't an isolated incident. Around that same time in my life, assaults by other men kept happening in brutal succession, as if my vulnerability was constantly attracting the worst predators.
In Nantes, shortly before my father and stepmother kicked me out for good, telling me I no longer had a place in their home, the situation had become completely unmanageable. My father had pushed me to the edge, yet again. I was so psychologically broken that I ended up running away. In my head, I was so desperate that I thought I’d rather become homeless, live on the streets, and give up on everything than endure their abuse.
And yet, Nantes is a city with a reputation for being unsafe, with a lot of knife attacks, and I had only just arrived there. I barely knew the city and was completely lost. On one hand, my distress made me want to stay outside : on the other, I knew perfectly well how dangerous it was for me.
I went to hide a bit further away from my building, in a dark corner. I stayed there for hours, surrounded by the freezing cold. It started to rain, and then it hailed. I was soaked, freezing, sitting in the dark. I wanted to stay there as long as possible, but after a while, the cold became unbearable. My phone was dead, and I hadn't taken my charger with me. After agonizing for hours over what to do, I finally told myself I had to go back to the apartment just to get a drink of water and grab my charger.
We lived on the fourth floor of a building that required a magnetic key fob to get in. On my way back, panic struck me like lightning : I realized I didn't have my key fob on me.
Overwhelmed by distress, I burst into tears. I wanted to go inside to take shelter, but I was terrified at the thought of running into my father or stepmother in the building, knowing full well I would get beaten if they saw me. I stayed slumped in front of the entrance door, exhausted.
That's when I spotted a neighbor who lived on the first floor. He was a young man in his twenties (maybe around 23, 24, or 25) coming back with some other guys, possibly his cousins or friends. We only knew each other by sight : we’d sometimes pass each other in the building and just say hello. Seeing a chance to get inside where it was warm, I asked them if I could walk in with them. They agreed.
Once in the lobby, terrified of going up to the fourth floor and confronting my parents, I sat down on the floor and hid to cry. But they saw me. They came over to ask me what was wrong.
My neighbor then offered me a hug. At that moment, I had such a visceral need to be comforted and reassured after everything I was going through that my naivety took over. I accepted, and he wrapped his arms around me. Then, they invited me to come to their place on the first floor to rest.
Feeling so lonely and miserable, I accepted because I didn't see any harm in it. In my head, I thought they were just going to kindly let me sit on the couch, rest for a bit before I left, and let me charge my phone. Since my shoes were caked in mud from the rain and hail, they suggested I take them off so they could wash them, which I did.
But instead of bringing me into the living room, my neighbor told me to come into his bedroom. I found that weird, but I didn't dare say anything. I convinced myself that maybe it was just to drop off my things or that he was going to leave me alone in there to rest.
He told me to sit on the bed. I hesitated : I was scared. And then, everything shifted.
He laid down on his back, grabbed me by force, and pulled me on top of him, trying to assault me. He held me down with his hands so I couldn't move. I fought back with all my strength, telling him clearly that I didn't want to. Seeing how persistent he was, my rage and survival instinct took over : I got furious, slapped him right across the face, and screamed at him that I didn't want to do this.
Caught off guard by my reaction and my anger, he panicked and started frantically apologizing: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." I told him I wanted to leave immediately.
Utterly traumatized but refusing to show a single sign of weakness, I put my shoes back on and went back up to my apartment. Unsurprisingly, as soon as I got there, I got yelled at and beaten by my father. Once again, when all I was looking for was a little comfort and human warmth, the outside world had proven to be just as monstrous as my own home.
In the relentless storm that was my daily life, I had to hold on to something so I wouldn't completely sink. That’s how religion and spirituality entered my life, becoming my secret garden, my ultimate lifeline, and... a new source of conflict with my parents.
Yet, nothing in my background pointed toward this. On both my father's and my mother's sides, the families were traditional Catholics. On my father's side, it was a deeply devout family with strong military roots, my grandfather, who died before I was born, had served in the military, and my grandmother was a pious homemaker. But as my parents grew older, they completely turned their backs on religion and became atheists. So I wasn't raised in the faith. When I visited my grandmother, I saw the crucifixes on the walls, but no one ever talked to me about God.
Even so, I was always a child of immense curiosity, asking myself questions far too deep for my age : Why are we here? Is there life after death? Who created all of this? To me, the universe couldn't just be a coincidence. I felt the presence of a higher power, of something much bigger than us.
It was around the age of 11 or 12, right as I started middle school, that this quest took an almost surreal turn.
Because of my father's strict rules, I was never allowed to leave early when a teacher was absent. While other students went outside to hang out in town, I was forced to go to study hall or the school library. One day, when my last class was canceled, I went to the library to look for a comic book. And right there, something unsettling happened.
I began to hear what sounded like a clear voice inside my head, trying to guide me toward a specific spot in the room. At first, I was terrified. I thought to myself, "This is it, I'm going crazy, I'm hallucinating from exhaustion." I tried to ignore the voice, but the more I fought it, the more persistent it became. Worn out, I figured I had nothing to lose, so I followed it.
It led me all the way to the back, right in front of a bookshelf dedicated to history and world religions. There, the voice told me to pick up the book directly in front of me. It was the Quran.
A powerful shock wave ran through me. It happened at the exact moment in my life when I was researching religion, trying to find the truth. For the isolated, aching little girl I was, it felt like an undeniable sign.
I still remember the drive home that day : my father was driving, and I had my face pressed against the car window, unable to think about anything other than what had just happened to me. Shortly after, I searched on YouTube how to convert to Islam. I learned the testimony of faith to recite and said it, all alone, tucked away in my garden.
For years, I kept this faith completely secret. I had no Muslim friends to talk to about it, and I lived in a rural village where there was nothing around. At first, I was just a kid : I believed deeply and tried my best but I couldn't fully practice.
If there was one other thing I still clung to in the middle of all this chaos, it was friendship. Ever since preschool, since the age of three, I had my best friend, Juliette. We were inseparable. Even through life's twists and turns, boarding school, and changing schools, which meant we saw each other less on a daily basis, our bond seemed indestructible. We would get together during holidays, and nothing ever changed.
I often thought back to our childhood, when we used to go to dance class together. Around the time we were eight or ten years old, we would admire the older girls during the end-of-year recitals. Watching them dance on stage, we made promises to each other : “You'll see, when we're older, we're going to do duets on stage together! We'll go on vacation together, we'll drive, we'll always be there for each other."
The future we had dreamed of so much, we never got to live together.
Things started to shift. I felt a sudden, harsh change in her. The way she looked at me became heavy, strange. Her parents, who had liked me at first, also started keeping their distance when they found out about my conversion and my choice to wear the hijab later on.
But the hardest blow came from her. Since she had known me inside out since preschool, she knew exactly where my vulnerabilities lay. In a subtle, vicious way, she started taking jabs at me in public to humiliate me in front of others. At first, in my naivety, I refused to believe it : “How could you think that about her? She's like a sister to you, she would never do that.”
Yet, reality eventually caught up with me. She abandoned me. Then one day, on Snapchat, I uncovered the unbearable truth : for months, she had been making fun of me behind my back with a girl who had bullied me and tried to pick fights with me out of nowhere. My only friend, the keeper of my childhood memories, had joined forces with my bullies.
Over time, a massive gulf opened up inside of me. It was as if two different people coexisted in my mind, fighting a non-stop battle against each other.
On one side, there was the deeply religious Lena. The one who, after her suicide attempt and her arrival in Nantes, had clung to Islam as her only possible lifeline. I was so broken by my parents' abuse, so isolated and hopeless, that I had told myself : “This is my only way out. God tests the ones He loves to bring them to paradise. I'm going to follow every single rule, wear the hijab, give up everything, just to finally deserve a little bit of happiness.”
And then, there was the other Lena. The real Lena. The one who, ever since she was a little girl, believed in magic, fairy tales, the power of wishes, subliminals, and manifestation. A deeply spiritual, sensitive girl who needs to listen to music to heal her wounds, who dreams of slipping into pretty skirts, wearing colorful jewelry, feeling the wind in her hair, and running all alone through a field in the middle of the night just to look at the stars.
It was at the end of 2022 that my life took another turn. While I was wearing the hijab, I met a Muslim boy. At first, faithful to my strict religious standards, I refused to talk to him. But after bumping into him over and over again, my naive mind, weakened by so much abuse, saw it as a sign. I told myself that God was sending him to me.
We ended up together. But hope quickly shattered against harsh reality. I thought we would grow together in faith, support each other, and find a sense of peace. Instead, I found myself once again controlled, cheated on, and more alone than ever. I sank into a deep depression.
For the first time, I realized the cruel trap I had fallen into. My childhood had been stolen from me by my parents through isolation and violence; now, my youth was being confiscated by this relationship.. He had thrown away my clothes and my jewelry. He wanted me to keep wearing the veil that no longer brought me any joy. Even though he claimed to love me and softened a bit when he saw my suffering, this wasn't the life I dreamed of..
Maybe I’m too much of an idealist because of everything I’ve been through, but to me, love has to be profoundly deep. Something poetic, inexplicable, where two souls are bound together. I dreamed of a love where we would wander together, in the dead of night, looking for strange and beautiful places, those liminal spaces and dark ambient atmospheres that I love so much.. listening to music in the middle of nowhere, swinging on a swing under the stars. And if that kind of love didn't exist, I’d rather be completely alone and free than trapped in a suffocating routine.
Sometimes, guilt and fear consume me : that fear of having disappointed God, that terror of hell that was pounded into me. And then, anger takes over. Disgust at having made so many sacrifices, stopping music, wearing the veil, giving up my passions,only to realize that nothing got better, that everything got worse.. I feel like I wasted my youth trying to live up to an ideal that was suffocating me.
Deep down, the innocent little girl who believes in magic doesn't want those chains anymore. She just wants to live, to feel, to dress however she wants, and to reclaim the freedom that was always denied to her.
My whole life, people have tried to shape me, to box me in, or to force me to submit to wills that were not my own. My father, the loneliness, fake friendships, and then the control within my relationship... Many thought that my apparent gentleness and trusting nature made me an easy target, someone who could be broken and tamed. But what they never understood is that in the face of this world's cruelty and indifference, I simply chose to create my own universe, a secret place where no one has power over me.
Beyond all the wounds and false illusions, there remains a part deep within my soul that is completely untamable. I am like a wild wolf you try to domesticate : you can put it in a cage, set boundaries, or try to frighten it, but it will never become a docile dog. No matter what happens, and no matter who tries to cross my path to control me, nothing and no one will ever change the little girl who lives deep inside me. My spirit will forever remain rebellious, poetic, a little wild, and deeply in love with life. I will always keep that child-like heart that believes in magic, that love for unique atmospheres, and that unquenchable thirst to run with the wind in my hair.
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