I remember the real moment I died for the first time. I was 26.
I grew up in Tahiti. The environment made me paranoid. My mum — God bless her soul — could not fathom being a worthwhile mother if her kids were anything but happy all the time. Trauma from her own mum. Any expression of unease, unhappiness, or sadness triggered instant emotional blackmail or, being a doctor, meds and seeing a "professional" — a colleague.
So I became very good at living in my head. Showing a perfect mask of calmness. Analyzing every social interaction, predicting people's emotions and reactions — all the while racing full speed inside, escaping into fantasies or hidden OCD behaviors.
At 17 I left for France — grumpy northern France, far from anyone I knew. I mostly kept to myself. I tried sophrology for a while. It helped a little with the stress, but I was still on meds and sleeping pills every day. I got fatter, then went crazy with a crash diet that was supposed to make you lose 10 kg in two weeks. I did it for two and a half months and dropped about 40 kg until I fainted after a sweet instant coffee at uni.
I got my degrees without really studying — I was expecting to fail and was surprised how non-serious university felt. A scholarship took me to Japan, to Kyoto University for one year. Same constant stress, adrenaline, Japanese coffee, meds, insomnia and 24-hour convenience stores.
My whole life had one goal: do like my parents — good job, family, kids by my 20s. I was already very late.
Then a phone call with a childhood friend led me to Liège, Belgium, to study veterinary medicine. The day after landing I went through three weeks of hazing on my knees just to belong — and also because "why not?" It left some physical scars, but I got another adopted family. The first years I lost myself in frat life instead of studying. That was my downfall.
The meds I kept receiving from home — taken like candies, mixed with the party life — doomed me. When it came time to study, the fear of failing my parents was so strong I had to bang my head against the wall, hurt myself, or run around with a book reading out loud just to focus for a few minutes.
I started failing. My body couldn't cope anymore — night terrors, insomnia, constant fear and adrenaline, plus all the medications and legal stimulants.
One night, clearly there was no way I was going to succeed in "my" — really my parents' — goal, I got drunk again.
I woke up in bed paralyzed by fear. My body frozen, not responding. Hand over my heart, terrified it would explode.
Thoughts racing through worst-case scenarios: "There is nothing left. I am nothing if I am not what my parents want me to be. I am totally alone."
Not enough energy or will to hold on.
I let myself die.
I couldn't feel my heart or my body anymore.
The only thing left was the breathing. Again and again, for hours. Nothing of "myself" remained — but I was still here, in the breathing. Some kind of separation.
Peace at last. Not numbness, but intense presence in a pinprick of time and space.
I stayed like that for a day apparently. Then the moment passed, of course.
Life went from disaster to disaster — new places, new countries, always alone again. But whenever shit hit the fan and desperation or fear kicked in, I automatically returned to the breathing.
It wasn't dissociation like I first thought. It was something that kept me here, in the moment. The maelstrom didn't disappear. It was an instant physical switch — standing in the eye of the cyclone: observing from a centered space and choosing how much of the wind I want to engage with, and how.
After three more years of doctors, psychiatrists, meds, and getting diagnosed with every bloody thing in the book — while also manipulating the same system — I decided that was it. I was done endlessly speaking around or poking the shit barrel with a toothpick while wearing a safety harness.
I started searching for breathing techniques to somehow find my way back to that constructive state. Went back to my old sophrology tapes. Got yoga books. A few helped but it still felt like I wasn't getting the coming-home element. It was calming at times but there was no nothingness, no deep real self present.
Now I had the scent and there was no way I was going to give up.
So I did the only thing drastic enough: I became a Buddhist monk in Thailand for eight years.
First in that crazy detox temple at Wat Thamkrabok, where desperate people from all over the world come for a last-ditch attempt to cure their addictions in the harshest conditions possible. No calm there — just desperate people to take care of while meditating on the side.
Then I moved to an isolated place. No foreigners — just me, a language method, and a stack of English Buddhist books. I'll skip the adventure and the harsh acclimation. As a new convert I overdid everything. Meditating seven hours a day. The old monks were laughing at me: "You try too hard!"
After a cycle of burnout, disappointment, and grief about my idealized version of Buddhism that lasted three years, I went back to the breathing techniques I had used before and made them mine. No rush, no pressure, just curiosity. Not trying to breathe — observing the breathing. Peeling every control layer: nervous, visual, internal imagery — things I hadn't even perceived at first.
And I found it at last.
It could last longer and longer. It took progressively less time to reach, and I became more and more able to be active while keeping it going. That breath-centered state became my friend — the steady center of my whole being. It lets me stay engaged with life instead of being swallowed by the storm or checking out.
This is what I now share with others who have tasted something real and are struggling to live it when ordinary life pulls hard.
If that sounds like where you are —