Dear reader, I hope this letter finds you well. I have been contemplating the theme of disappearance. Sometimes I wonder: do people who go missing truly want to be found, or have they been kidnapped?

Is it a form of social suicide, disappearing from social media and the internet altogether, after all?

At times, I find myself thinking about ghosting, not only from the world but also from my family and everyone else.

Sometimes, I wish I could erase my WhatsApp account, just as I deleted my Instagram account yesterday.

Recently, I removed myself from most of the WhatsApp groups, as I consider them to be sources of fake support and fake friendships.

I am not concerned about being found by my old school friends at the moment, as my artistic career is on hold. It seems I no longer want to be a part of the art world, and I have slowly distanced myself from it.

I have rejected myself, and I've also faced rejection in the art world. Sometimes, I create childlike drawings and cease writing, until now, until today.

For some inexplicable reason, I thought that sharing my feelings would somehow make me feel better and release them, as if expelling an infection.

Loneliness and solitude are forms of illness that artists must connect with to nurture their sense of creativity. Sometimes, like today, I wish I could vanish, disappear to a remote and unknown place, and never be found. I yearn to let go of my past so intensely that I wish I could forget it entirely.

My first love, my first friendships, my family—all of them have caused me a great deal of pain, and I no longer wish to remember them, unfortunately.

I want to express my gratitude to everyone who has contributed to my life and helped me become the resilient individual I am today.

I do not want to come across as a victim; everything happened as it did because that's just the way life is, and there was no other way it could have been.

It seems that every time we place our trust in someone we barely know, we end up getting hurt by them. Someone once told me that we can't simply go out there with our hearts in our hands because the world is not as kind as we might hope.

Due to ending up with the wrong people, I had to change homes multiple times this year, just a few months apart. And each time, my creativity is blocked, and I experience a true artist's block, unable to write a sentence or create a drawing.

My new life here in Barcelona is going well, but being a woman alone in a foreign country also brings its challenges, although I prefer not to think of it that way.

Barcelona is perhaps the closest I've felt to home in a very long time, probably ever. I never felt like I belonged in Italy, not even once. I always wanted to leave, dating back to my teenage years, as far as I can recall.

This land, Spain, is the land of my ancestors. My grandmother, Lady Ana María García Taveras, had Spanish origins, even though she lived and married in Santo Domingo (RD).

After my Italian grandfather passed away last November, something within me broke.

After several months, I made the decision to come to Barcelona, Spain. I felt drained after moving from one place to another in Italy, like a lost soul, which I was.

Being here, it feels like I'm truly discovering my identity, a part of my origins that I was deprived of living. I've been kept away from Santo Domingo (RD), the city where I was born.

This place is where I sense my grandmother, Lady Ana's presence close to me. I feel closer to her, and I regret not having had the chance to meet her, as she passed away at a young age. I've only seen a couple of pictures of her.

I would like to dedicate this letter to her and to my readers.

I could not bid farewell to my Italian grandfather or Italian grandmother, nor to my Dominican grandfather and my Spanish-Dominican grandmother.

Death sometimes arrives before we are born, in between, or after. We have no control over it, and no one receives any warning.

So, love and enjoy the presence of those you cherish as much as you can, as you may not have the opportunity to say goodbye to them or see them again in this life, perhaps in another lifetime, in another space, or in another universe.