This is me about 25 years ago. I’m about to leave hospital in Piraeus, Athens, Greece. I’m holding my husband’s hand and behind me is a wonderful lady I haven’t seen since that day. I think her name was Katerina.

We’re smiling for the camera but my heart was breaking. Yes, I would say it was a pretty low point in my life.

Four days prior to this photograph, I had set off for our holiday. We were staying on Aegina, an island just off mainland Greece. I’d found out I was pregnant a couple of weeks before, but my doctor had reassured me that I was fine to travel. This was my second pregnancy; my first had ended in miscarriage six months before.

Within hours of arriving in Aegina, I noticed I was bleeding. I can’t speak Greek, but I managed to explain to a doctor, using a mixture of French, German, Italian and gesture, that I was six weeks pregnant and that bleeding was not a good sign.

My husband and I got on a boat to the mainland and were met by an ambulance. After lots of blood tests and injections (who knows what for), I was taken to a gynae ward. There were 8 beds in a room designed for six patients. Two beds were empty. I was allocated one of them and my husband was allocated the other!

The next morning, my husband went to fetch some more clothes for me and Katerina took me under her wing. She was the only person who spoke English, and translated for me. She was a patient in the bed opposite to mine and told me she was being treated for cancer. When I cried, she hugged me and told me that I would be fine. If this pregnancy didn’t work out, she reassured me that my next one would and that one day I would have beautiful children. I didn’t believe her.

Katerina accompanied me to a scan. When the doctors couldn’t find a heartbeat, she explained to me that they must take away the foetus or my womb might become infected. I knew the ropes. This had happened after my first miscarriage. It was horrible but I knew it had to be done.

In the UK, the nurses take you to a side room, and put you to sleep gently. They hold your hand and get you count back from ten. Before you get to zero, you are zonked. They wake you up gently, stroking your hand and telling you that you are going to be fine. When I cried, the nurse hugged me and told me that she understood. They had pulled the curtain around my hospital bed and let me cry a little more. The other women, most of them much older and in hospital for hysterectomies or gynae issues, had reassured me too.

In Greece, in 1994, I was shaved by a nurse. (I never saw her again.) Then, I was given a powerful laxative. Katerina said, “Your shit will be jelly.” It was. In Greece, you cannot put the toilet paper down the pan. It goes in a bin by the side of the toilet. The bin was overflowing and cockroaches were running around the floor. I spent a lot of time in that toilet.

The floors were filthy. Katerina told me to buy slippers and pyjamas from the gypsies that came around the wards selling their wares. She got my husband to buy me food from the local supermarket because the hospital food was inedible. (He had to find a room in a local hotel. He was only allowed to sleep on my ward for a night!)

The porters arrived to take me for surgery. They wheeled me down a corridor and through a series of doors, past a room where doctors were laughing and smoking. They threw me onto the operating table and attached monitors to my fingers. A couple of doctors arrived and switched on the huge surgical light. Someone removed my knickers. I was screaming, “I’m not asleep! I’m not asleep!” No one responded. The monitor was going crazy. My BP was through the roof.

I woke up covered in shit and blood.

“Don’t let her sleep. She will choke on her vomit and die.”

I vomited.

“She must eat and not vomit. Then she can sleep.”

My husband tried to feed me yogurt but I kept vomiting. I just wanted to sleep.

“You can’t sleep,” he begged. I puked all over him.

Katerina helped him to keep me awake. They walked me up and down the filthy corridors and fed me the yogurt. Finally, I kept it down and I was allowed to sleep, but I couldn’t.

There were no showers and no nurses on duty.

The following morning, my husband bought me that outfit from the gypsies. I wanted something loose that didn’t dig into my tender stomach. I rolled up my sheets that were covered in shit, blood and puke and went to say thank you to Katerina. One of the other patients took our photograph.

We exchanged addresses, but we lost touch.

I now have two very beautiful children.

Edit: *Thank you for your lovely comments and upvotes. I agree that Katerina was truly an angel and perhaps I’ll put her photograph onto social media. If only I could be sure of her name!

**Reading back over my story, I realised the dates are all a bit mixed up, so I’ve hopefully corrected that.

I am posting this anonymously because I don’t want to be searched by name. Those who will find it by taking a look at the picture are welcome to do so, and hopefully keep it that way. This is the lowest point of my life. This last week, and the past 3 months in general has been a very difficult journey for me. And I don’t know what to do but to grit my teeth, curse my utter stupidity, and just go with it.

I am a grad student from subcontinent in Adelaide, just moved in 4.5 months ago, doing Masters of Project Management in a pretty good university down here. All of you who know about Education system in Australia is that unless you get funding from university, it is pretty expensive. Coming from a country with an exchange ratio of 1:64, the total cost of my two years masters along with living cost in my currency will reach close to 10 million, being paid by my parents. Now, I knew this was going to be hard. Masters is hard. Doing a masters in a foreign culture and system is harder still. I could have went to Melbourne, and lived with my brother, thus cutting down on costs, but precisely that’s why I avoided it. I wanted to be on my own, be my own man, without supervision, without oversight. South Asian/Subcontinental people will know how it gets with family/relatives. But what I didn’t account for is the crushing loneliness and the general difficulty of an introvert in making social and meaningful connections. My degree is a professional one, which makes most of my classmates local with full time jobs, and family of their own. Hence, they don’t really have time. The desi community around here is small, which I also avoided in my wanting to be private. Add to that, most of my friends and my friendships back home are very personal and face to face in nature. We don’t do phone calls, we don’t do much of social media, and there is only so much you can convey through internet. At some point, you need that physical bond, you crave it. I needed it. Be it someone just being there being silent, I need to feel a physical presence. All of these, and a bit of personal trouble led me to my reemergence of Dysthymia that I was diagnosed with back home. I thought I got it covered by doing a full year of therapy. I thought I would be fine by getting away from most of my triggers. What I didn’t account for is that my triggers and my remedies were all in the same place. Back home. Here, there is no comfort. I don’t have a close relationship with my immediate family. So, all they see is a disappointment, who just can’t settle in life. I can’t tell them either. This has led to crippling anxiety and a total shutdown of my necessary duties. I merely perform through muscle memory. I wake up, get out of bed after two hours, eat, watch movie/series/anime, sleep. My brain simply won’t cooperate with me if I want to engage it for my coursework. It finds a way to be distracted. This right now is a distraction. I am supposed to prepare for my finals. But no, anything but that. I dread my grades, and how I am going to present them to my parents, who are burning through cash to send me here, by my own choice. Add to that, I wanted to pay for at least, my living cost as to ease the burden in any way possible. Alas, it is monstrously difficult for an international student to get any kinds of job in Adelaide. Line cook - experience and reference, cleaner - own car, simply Subway sandwich maker - experience and reference, retail position - experience and reference. Well you get my point. Which I don’t have, and whatever little I had is from back home, which they won’t accept here. I had a cushy job back home, which holds no value in here. Lastly, I was having a roommate issue. So to get away from it, I got myself a studio apartment of sorts, further away from the city with lengthy public transport intervals, and 25% higher rent than my previous place. I have no fucking clue what was I thinking, or even if I was thinking at all. So, here I am. Burning through my parents money, desperate for a job, any job. The last two conversation with my mom have been disastrous. She, bless her soul, although overprotective, and very particular, a very subcontinental trend, which is what I tried to get away from, is exasperated and at the end of her leash. She even mentioned for me to come back if I can’t manage it, to salvage what’s left. I fight with her from time to time, but no children, however fractious relation they may have with their parents, want to hear them cry. It’s hard. It’s inexplicable. It’s a stab wound, it’s that heaviness in your chest. I can’t cry. I am unable to cry. Mostly, what I get is teary eyes, and trickles. I wish I could. I wish I could fucking scream. I wish I could somehow force myself to get to work. I can’t give up. I don’t want to admit defeat, which would mean never be able to face anyone. But I don’t know what to do. How to move forward. Where to go? Where will the money come from? Who would be willing to hire me……. This all feels a like a very big mistake, an immense fuck up of epic proportions. Do you know what’s worse than a fuck up? It is the realization that if you can’t make it, everything that they said about you will be true. That they were right. That you were not worth it. And that’s where I am.

I know exactly when was the lowest point in my life. September 2015 to July 2016. I looked for a picture from that period. I went through my new phone, through my old phone, through 3 different clouds I use. I couldn’t find one. It’s like this part of my life never existed. I remember taking a few pictures with my friends, but I can’t find any. I had just come back to France from 9 months in England where I had finally started loving myself and my body. I was more confident than ever and damn I missed London so much. Too much. I literally fell in love with England, the country, the culture, the cities… and London. My dear London. I knew this city had been made for me and I had been made for this city. When I was there it was like I was finally where I belong. I felt so good there. But I had to come back home. At first it was okay: I was with my family in Cannes, we adopted a cat in August, it was great. And then in September it was time to go to university. I left Cannes for a city in the middle of nowhere in France: Clermont-Ferrand (you can look it up on google maps. Nearest big city is Lyon, 2h20 with the train!). I wanted to work in a publishing house and the only university in France to offer a degree that would allow me to do that was there. I had found a nice flat to share with a nice girl, in the city centre, just behind my university. Rent was cheap, it was absolutely perfect. I made some friends on my first day of uni, everything was well. But then it started. I missed London A LOT. I had a shitty family situation (to make it short, my biological father was never part of my life, but he had 2 children that were a few years older than me. I knew about them but they didn’t know about me). I didn’t like university. No, let me rephrase. I HATED university. Classes were boring, my schedule was f#cked up (I don’t remember exactly but it was something like classes on Monday morning until 10, then nothing until 5p.m for a one hour class, then nothing on Tuesday, Wednesday was 9 to 2pm then 4 to 7pm…). I started skipping classes. My first semester was okay, I even showed up to my exams and passed. Second semester I went to maybe 3 classes and didn’t bother to go to my exams. My sleeping schedule was a mess as well. At this time I was watching a loooooot of TV shows. I would wait for a new episode from the US every week, I was watching about 15 shows like this + 1 show that I would start and just binge watch. I started staying up all night, falling asleep at 8am until 4pm. Then TV shows again. I started to get addicted to food and mostly crisps. When I say addicted, I mean it. I wouldn’t think of anything else. I ate about 2 to 3 packs of crisps almost everyday. At this time I was obsessed with Doritos. I started having terrible migraines everyday. I knew they were not from the amount of time I was spending in front of my laptop: I had had “screen headaches” and they were different. Tried different things: stop the gas heating (I read somewhere that a gas leak could cause migraines. I knew it was very unlikely that we had a gas leak but I thought I would try, who knows?), tried taking magnesium (tablets and in food, tried almonds and pure cocoa for a bit). Took me about 6 months to understand it was from the crisps. Too much salt. I wouldn’t shower in days. I just stayed in my bed all day and all night, getting up only to cook pasta or buy more food/snacks. I would shower only when my friends wanted to go out. I was a pro at hiding my situation to my friends. To them I was probably fine, laughing all the time, joking around, going shopping. But inside I was totally broken. I couldn’t stop thinking about my half-siblings. I wanted to meet them, so bad. I wanted them to know about me. I didn’t want to be a secret anymore. I had very vivid dreams about meeting them. They felt so real I would wake up with my heart physically hurting in my chest. One day I went to a new hairdresser. I had very short hair so had to get a haircut regularly. I explained to the hairdresser what I wanted: the same as now, but just a bit shorter. I showed him pictures from last time I went to the hairdresser. All good he said. When he finished, I put my hand at the back of my head and felt about 3mm of hair. He had cut everything at the back, leaving longer hair at the front, saying it would look “cooler”. I lied and said it was great. When I left I cried. I cried so much. My hair was sh#t. I was far from my mom. From my little brother. From my new cat that I loved so much. I was depressed. Deeply depressed. At the time I had no idea but since then I’ve seen a counselor that confirmed it. It took me weeks to admit to my mom I had failed university. Fortunately I told her just in time to find a new path. She convinced me to go for Tourism. A school was offering a degree in Cannes, normal schedule 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday. I got to stay with my family and my cat, meet incredible new people, and find what I love: tourism. Now I can say I’m happy. I have a job that I love, I get to travel a lot, meet new people every week. I’m definitely not out of this depression. Nobody knows about how bad I was feeling back then, hence why I decided to answer anonymously. It was the darkest time of my life, by far. I know I didn’t post a picture but I simply couldn’t find one. Sorry.

I left my home to be homeless in another country

I came to Germany in August 27th this year for an exchange program as AuPair. I’m a German citizen, and it was my dream to live in Germany.

I was taking care of a really cute 1 year old baby, he was pure love. Unfortunately I had a lot of problems and I thought that coming to Germany would help me to get through it, but I was blind and wanted so bad to come back to Brazil. I never put the baby in danger, I always gave love and took care, but it wasn’t working. In 1 month he didn’t get used to me when I tried to make him sleep, and I wasn’t happy, his parents weren’t happy too. I got an infection in my kidneys, I was in so much pain. I had to pay for the hospital, the doctor, the antibiotics and they would send the bill to the health insurance, who would give me the money back. We decided I should leave.

I had 2 weeks to find another family, another job, another home or going back to Brazil, but they paid me a ticket to fulfill my dream of visiting Krakow,Poland, in that weekend after they asking for the rematch. I went to Poland, and when I came back they said I should sleep in the couch because they were giving my room to a family member who was visiting. I was devastated, because they said I should pack and stay in the couch, and since that day I noticed that it wasn’t home anymore. I didn’t feel at home, and I loved this family but they didn’t care about me enough. They never gave me the money from the hospital back, it was really traumatic to go through.

I went to another family but I was working 15 hrs per day when it should be 30 hrs per week. I was humiliated and treated like a maid when it was supposed to feel like I was part of the family. I couldn’t handle it and left.

I had a friend in Berlin, she is half German and half Brazilian like me, she invited me to stay at her place and said she would help me. I always had depression, PTSD, anxiety… she was taking all of my energy for hr own needs, piling on me all her problems, asking me to cook for her. I paid to stay at her house, I bought all the food. I had to leave because I was just thinking about suicide all the time again. (I had a lot of suicide attempts in Brazil).

I didn’t want to come back to my home country, I’d feel like I’d fail in my only dream. I’d not have this opportunity again, my family couldn’t afford it again, or help me with money. It’s not easy to get a job in Brazil, and if I did get a job, it would take so much time to get money so I could come back. I wanted to go to university here, I couldn’t waste time going back.

I didn’t know what to do but the German government was helping me with money when I came to Berlin. They gave me a shared room in a homeless shelter. This was when I arrived there, it was the 4th day without sleep, 96 hours.

I left my comfort zone so I could learn to be alone, being borderline always made me dependent of people. I needed to be alone. I left my home country to be homeless in Germany.

I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was scared. I was afraid, alone, with big dreams, no money, no home, in a completely different reality than the one I was used to.

Here are some pictures of the shelter: