🌸 Where Words Fall Short, My Story Begins.

Sometimes, when people ask, “How are you?” I don’t really know what to say. So I usually just say, “I’m good.”
Afterward, I often wonder how I’m really doing — and many times, I don’t even know where to begin.
So I’ll start here. Here, where it’s still messy, but completely mine.

I’m 24 years old and I feel like I’ve already had to let go of so many versions of myself — either because I had to or wanted to. And yet I keep thinking: there’s still something underneath. Something that wants to speak.
There’s so much I want to write off my chest, but I don’t really know where to start.
So I’ll just begin at the beginning: my story.

Sunshine
As a child, I was pure light. My silly self, always laughing, bursting with energy, living in a world full of imagination. I was truly a child — and I’m still grateful for that.
That little girl is still my anchor. When I write about the darker parts of my life in other posts, she is the light I reach back for.

Bullies
At a certain point, we encounter obstacles that change our perspective. For me, that started in the fifth grade, at music school. That’s when my light began to dim.
The popular kids picked me as their target. Kids can be cruel — they don’t yet understand the scars words can leave.
In the first year of secondary school, I was still that playful, childlike girl, but the insecurity started to creep in. After music class, I often went home crying.
My mom supported me so I could make it through the four years, but after the fifth year, I quit.
At school, I had lots of good friends, but deep down I carried sadness with me. Without fully realizing it, I started constantly tuning into what others might think of me.

Lack of Oxygen
When I hit puberty, my world became harder to understand. Sometimes I’d cry for no reason. I felt overwhelmed by sadness, which only made me more frustrated. Why couldn’t I just be happy?
Nobody really seemed to get me, so I started thinking something was wrong with me.
That’s when my mom told me something that explained a lot: I had a lack of oxygen at birth.
If you’re unfamiliar with that: it can make certain areas of the brain more vulnerable, and in puberty, that can affect emotional regulation, impulse control, or mental health.
In my head, that translated to: “There really is something wrong with me.”
And that made me even more insecure.

Panic Attacks
My high school years were a rollercoaster of extreme highs and deep lows. I started having more panic attacks and struggled with dark thoughts.
I was constantly worried about what others thought, craved validation, and was extremely hard on myself.
At one point, it felt like I had completely lost myself.
The pit I had fallen into was so deep, I didn’t see a way out.
The panic attacks became heavier. In those moments, it felt like my head would explode from all the voices in it — like I was suffocating under the weight of sadness, fear, and helplessness.
People who’ve never experienced this often don’t realize how deeply that kind of pain can cut.

Over time, I started having attacks almost daily. It felt like I had surrendered myself to runaway emotions.
And then I lost all clarity. The mental pain began to manifest physically.
I developed the habit of scratching it away. I scratched at my neck, as if that could release the overload of emotions in my head.
What made it addictive was that — in a way — it worked.
Did I feel better afterward? No, absolutely not.
Once it was over, I was left in silence, with shame and open wounds.
I would think: “What’s wrong with me?”
But at least it was quiet in my head. No more screaming.

Therapy
To this day, I still feel for my mom. She saw me like that often — or saw the aftermath. It broke her.
She was the one who finally got me into therapy. And she was right: I couldn’t do it alone.
I danced around it for a long time, because in high school I also had many joyful moments.
That was the confusing part of it all: I could be euphorically happy, but also standing at the edge.
By facing my mom’s pain, I decided to be open and honest in therapy about everything I was going through.

I had five years of therapy: four psychologists, family therapy… and many, many tears.
If you’re wondering how I can talk so openly about all this — that’s where I learned it.
It’s been a rollercoaster of falling and getting back up, but I’ve learned so much — and that also shapes who I am today.
I’ve learned to accept that this is part of Celine: that I’m a sensitive person, and that I’ll always have moments when emotions come in deeply.
But that’s okay. Hard is okay too.
Even if it’s not always easy, learning to deal with the vulnerable parts of yourself makes you truly strong.

Relationships
I’ve been a romantic soul from a very young age. My first “boyfriend” was in preschool — no joke. I was heartbroken in first grade.
In elementary school, I had a new crush every week — call it my “player” phase haha.
Later, in puberty, I experienced my first love. We were together for 2.5 years.
But as you might expect, it wasn’t easy.
The boy I was with knew my warm, laughing side — but also my darkest one.
We were both young, and you only realize later how much there still is to learn.
During that time, I also discovered that I suffered from serious abandonment anxiety.

My second relationship… well, I could write a whole book about that. (Maybe one day.)
What I know now: I have a love-hate relationship with men, and that’s something I’m working on healing.
Because deep down, I still want — with all my heart — to build a future full of love.

Trauma
Life is full of surprises, they always say, and I used to think those would be good things.
Unfortunately — let’s be honest — life can also just really suck.
Why do some things happen?
From experience, I can say: so we can learn from them and grow as individuals.
But in the last two years, that perspective has partly shifted for me.

While I was living in my rosy, almost illusory little world, having the time of my life, someone came and shattered all my windows.
Just like that, simply because he wanted to.
Everything I had built fell apart before my eyes.

What happened — I’ll share that later, when I’m ready.
Sometimes things just happen to us.
No lesson, no meaning.
Just bad luck.
And that, too, is part of life.

Deeper Goddess
I know — so far, this has mainly been the darker part of my story (understandably, since that’s what I’m trying to get out of my system).
But what about that little piece of “sunshine” I started with?
Well, I can proudly say it’s still here — behind this laptop.
Beneath all those layers, that girl from before is still there.
She lives, she laughs, and she dreams.

Like everyone else, we fight our way through whatever life throws at us.
But there are always moments of joy that manage to slip into our lives.
It doesn’t matter how big they are or how often they come — if you really pay attention, you’ll see that there’s always a ray of light making its way through the cracks and broken pieces.

Looking at my timeline now, I see that even before, after, and in between the low points, there have been so many moments I’m truly grateful for.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience real love and genuine happiness in this life.
Despite everything, I’ve been given the chance to discover beautiful things, to feel, to live.
I’m lucky to be able to truly be human.

And that — that experience — is, for me, that deeper force that always rises again.
That fights back.
And that looks life in the eye… with a smile.

For now, I’ll leave it at this. So let me close with this:
Sometimes it feels like there are no words for what we go through.
But maybe that’s exactly where our story begins.
Not when everything makes sense, but when it’s still messy — and still ours.

So let this be my beginning.
A soft, chaotic, honest start.
Where words fall short, my story begins.