Julia

“Do you live in Paris?” I asked.
“No, I live in Abidjan, Ivory Coast,” she replied.
“Were you born there?”
“Yeah, born and raised.”

“What brought you here?”
“Holidays with my family.”
“Who’s your family?”
“My dad, my brother, his girlfriend, and my sister. My mom didn’t join us.”

“Do you enjoy living in Abidjan?”
“I love it. It’s home. I spent a few years in France because of the civil war—schools were closed, so I did high school here—but I went back.”
“What do you love about it?”
“It’s familiar. I don’t feel at home in France. The lifestyle is different, and it’s too cold.”

“What does it mean to feel at home?”
“The sun. Paris is grey, people don’t smile, don’t enjoy life.”
“And how do you define home?”
“Where my heart is. Because of the war, we were like a fragment of the country, and I wanted to go back. Also, work—our family business has been running for three generations, and I’m part of it.”

“What does love mean to you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know how to describe it. I feel lost when it comes to love. I thought I had found it before, but it wasn’t real.”

“What did it feel like when you thought it was love?”
“Joy. Happiness.”
“What’s the difference between love and joy?”
“Love takes effort. You have to be devoted, make sacrifices. Joy can come from anything.”

“Why does love take effort?”
“Maybe not effort—commitment. A willingness to compromise.”

“When was the last time you were heartbroken?”
“Right now, actually. Recently.”
“What happened?”
“I was with someone in Abidjan, but when Covid hit, his job struggled, so he moved back to France. I chose not to follow him. We kept a long-distance relationship, seeing each other a few times a year, but it wasn’t real love. Before him, I was in a complicated seven-year relationship with a married man. I didn’t know he was married at first. He was older, intelligent—we had deep conversations, and I loved him. Then this new guy came along, and it was light, fun, easy. But when things got tough, he wasn’t the kind of person who could handle it.”

“So why do you feel heartbroken?”
“I don’t know. I know he wasn’t right for me. But breaking up was hard—I felt abandoned.”
“Even though you didn’t love him?”
“Yeah. I guess I liked knowing he was there. I’m independent, I like being alone, but it was comforting to have him as an option.”
“What for?”
“Maybe I’m afraid of being alone.”
“Is that your greatest fear?”
“No. Losing my family is.”
“Isn’t that the same fear?”
“Maybe.”
“What scares you about it?”
“Being unloved. I know I don’t love myself enough, so I look for it in others.”

“And still, it seems to come back to the fear of being alone. Why is it so important for you to have others?”
“I love sharing. Talking.”
“There are eight billion people on this planet—it’s hard to be truly alone.”
“It’s not the same. My family—there’s a deep connection.”
“Can’t you build that connection with others?”
“I guess, but there’s this expectation—you should have a partner, children…”

“Why is sharing with others so important to you?”
“Because shared moments are what matter most.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think no one can take away your ability to share. Just reach out, and there will always be someone. But let’s go deeper—what else is behind this fear?”
“I worry I’m not close to people. I might spend my life alone. I can’t even travel by myself—I need familiar faces, I need to know what’s ahead.”
“But we never really know what’s ahead.”
“I try to control it.”

“Why aren’t you close to people?”
“It’s paradoxical, but I push away the ones who want to be close to me.”

“Let’s imagine your family is gone. What’s next?”
“It would be hard. But life would go on.”

“Is there something missing in your life now?”
“Love.”
“You said love is joy and devotion. What is the joy of love?”
“I don’t know. I stopped asking those questions years ago.”
“Why?”
“I put myself second. Just kept walking down the road.”
“Why?”
“When I was little… I was bigger. My mom—she’s anorexic—was obsessed with food. I saw her purge after eating. She controlled everything I ate. When I was six, she took me to a doctor who weighed me. There was a chart with numbers and ages—I was just above the line. She didn’t know how to handle it, so she stopped feeding me. But instead of losing weight, I started hiding food. I thought she’d hate me if she found out.
Even now, after losing forty kilos, it’s still with me. For ten years, I avoided social life because I didn’t want to eat or drink in front of people. But then I’d go out one night, and all the weight would come back.
My dad’s mother—she hates my mom. When I was young, she offered her money to take me. I didn’t want to go, but my parents didn’t fight for me, so every holiday, I stayed with her. She fed me constantly.”
Tears ran down her face, her voice trembling.

“Why did you think your mother would hate you?”
“I know she meant well. But the way she did it… ‘You need to lose weight, you need to lose weight, you need to lose weight.’ And she was always so thin.”
“So you felt like your mother didn’t love you, and you started searching for that love elsewhere?”
“Yes. And I still do.”
“What if I told you it’s impossible to fill that missing part, but you can start sharing love instead?”
“When I love, I give everything. But I don’t get love back.”

“Is it hard for you to love yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because of my body. I know I’m more than just my body, but I struggle with self-confidence because of it. For example, only in the last ten years have I started looking at myself in the mirror. Before that, I didn’t respect myself—I was only hurting myself. Eating, smoking weed, doing… I don’t know. I know that wearing a skirt and everything won’t harm me, but… My way of seeing myself has changed. I’ve become harder on myself.
In my memories, I was happier. But it’s difficult to go back and really feel how I was inside. It’s like I shut it all away. I remember smiling more, having more fun. No… it’s like now I try to control everything, to stop myself from gaining weight back. But it’s so hard.
Some people, if you tell them this, they just say, ‘Stop eating and do sports.’ But it’s not that simple. Food is part of life—it’s everywhere, every day. You can’t just stop eating. I tried.
When I reached 120 kilos, I cut out alcohol, carbs—everything. I only ate chicken and vegetables, drank water, exercised every day. But if I missed even one day, I felt awful, like I was gaining weight back instantly. It was working, but it was making me miserable. It was too much control, and that only made me unhappier. Every time I had a glass of wine or a piece of chocolate, I felt guilty.
The other day, I read a book where the author said that very thin people can eat anything they want and never gain weight because they’re always busy, always stressed, always running around. But some people, even if they eat very little, still gain weight—like a bear before winter, storing fat for protection.
It made me wonder if I was eating to protect myself.”
She fell silent.
“From what?”
“I don’t know. I was abused when I was a child. He was two years older than me. Maybe that has something to do with it too—like if I wore sexy clothes, if I looked like a girl… So I wore boys’ clothes instead.”
“I’m very sorry for you.”

“What if, instead of protecting yourself, you tried to give everything away—all the love, all the money, all the fears? Let it all go. Feel the lightness of having nothing. No more judgments, no past.”
“Yeah, you know, my grandmother—when she started working, then my dad went to work—it was just a little shop. When I was young, they weren’t rich. But over time, the country developed, and we made a lot of money. I don’t mind it—it gave me an education. But people tend to think money brings happiness. It doesn’t. I’d rather spend time with my family, doing things together, instead of working like that just to have money.
So, yes, I like money. I work a lot. It’s important, but it’s not the most important thing. And sometimes, when I stop eating, I start over-consuming instead—I’ll buy things. It took me a long time to realize that. It made me happy, but only for a moment.
And like you said, to feel lightness… Even with material things, sometimes I just want to throw everything away because I have too much. But I never take the time to do it.”

“Have you forgiven your mother?”
“Since a few months ago. It’s not that I forgot, but I realized she tried her best.”