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"My Journey Through Life: Adolescence" Part 1

Published: March 19th 2025, 11:19:24 am

Hello, friends!

I’m ready to continue sharing my life with you, even though I’ve realized how difficult it actually is. Not just in terms of how much time and effort it takes, but also emotionally—it turned out to be much harder than I expected. When I first came up with this idea, I thought it would be easy to write about myself. But after some reflection, I’ve decided to keep going. After all, I wouldn’t be me if I stopped at the first challenge! So, let’s continue))

After breaking up with my boyfriend, I fell into a deep and prolonged depression (though, of course, I didn’t recognize it as that at the time 😅). I cut my hair even shorter, to the point where I looked like a boy from behind. People actually mistook me for a guy for a while. My self-harm worsened, and surprisingly, I even found a couple of old photos from that time 😅.

I started drinking a lot. I had no trouble buying alcohol—even rum and cognac—in bars. I could just walk into a place, order a glass of rum, drink it in one go, and leave. And it was during this period that I began taking fully nude self-portraits. At first, my friend would take pictures of me, and then we started looking for a photographer who would shoot the two of us nude together. But, of course, no one wanted to do that—because I was only |6, and my friend was |3 or |4 😅. So, we ended up photographing each other.

No matter how bad I felt, you could almost never tell from the outside. Just like now, actually—if I don’t say I’m struggling, no one will ever guess 😅. But thanks to this crisis, I dove even deeper into photography. I escaped into the world of the camera like a comforting abyss, and in a way, it really did help. I started shooting with other photographers and completely changed my style—it became much darker, almost noir 🤣. (I’ll show you my work in this new style the day after tomorrow.) My main model at the time was my new boyfriend, who I’ll tell you about tomorrow.

During this period, something very important happened in my life—I had a torn meniscus in my knee, which made me limp. My mom took me to a yoga class with Anna Kuznetsova (you can even Google her), who, to this day, remains a close friend and my main spiritual mentor. Despite being six years older than me, already running a major yoga studio, and having a mother who was a globally renowned yogi, for some reason, she took an interest in a miserable, depressed teenager like me. Anna introduced me to a whole new world and continues to teach me so much. Without her, I would be a completely different person today.

We both had difficult relationships with our mothers, and no one understood me better than she did. Sometimes, I would come to her in tears after another fight with my mom, and before training, we would spend half an hour talking things through and figuring out the situation.

For example, when I got a tunnel piercing in my ear, it was a small one—about 10mm. I had to stretch it really fast by tearing my earlobe a little because if I had walked around with different-sized expanders for weeks, my parents would’ve definitely noticed. Especially since my hair was super short, making it almost impossible to hide anything.

One day, my mom accidentally saw my tunnel piercing, and I don’t even want to describe what happened next… Let’s just say it was bad. They tried to force me to remove it, but after enduring so much pain while stretching it, I was absolutely not willing to take it out so soon. Makes sense, right? 😅 My parents had no idea how painful the method I used was. (By the way, I still have my whole collection of tunnels and expanders at home in Dnipro! 😆)

Anyway, I refused to take it out, ran out of the house in a panic, and went to my grandmother, hoping for some support. But her reaction was just as bad as my parents’. So, I had no choice but to run away from home.

I turned off my phone and even removed the battery—because I knew that my dad (who, as a reminder, was a colonel in the criminal investigation division) could track my location even if my phone was switched off. So, I pulled the battery out and went to my boyfriend’s place.

They searched for me until late at night—an entire police team was looking for me all over the city 🙈. That night, they finally found me, brought me home, and, of course, I was punished. They forbade me from seeing or talking to my boyfriend and warned him to stay away from me, even though he had absolutely nothing to do with this situation. (Obviously, that didn’t work—we ended up dating for three years 😅.)

So yeah, Anna was the only person who truly supported me.

At 16, yoga entered my life—not only saving my knee but also bringing one of the most important people into my life. Anna was also the first person to truly see my potential as a photographer. By the time I was |6, I had already become the official photographer for all the events at her studio, capturing celebrations and taking many portraits of Anna and her yoga practice. (I’ll show you all those photos the day after tomorrow too.)

You’ll recognize Anna immediately—she’s a gorgeous blonde with stunning blue eyes! And yes, even after |3 years, I still shoot yoga for her—and not just yoga!

Unfortunately, I lost many of my photos after two of my hard drives stopped working, so I won’t be able to show you everything. 😔 But I’ve gathered everything I could, so get ready—there are a lot of photos 😅