I am the little sister of my dead sister

When I am one year old my parents leave me behind with my grandmother, furious, in the Yugoslavian countryside

When I am five years old my parents come and take me to their Germany of migrant worker and leave me alone while I go through the lonely adjustment to the strange new place

When I am eleven my father is my confidant and our nostalgia is replaced by prosperity

At the age of fourteen I am not afraid of the use of cocaine among my circle of rich kids

At the age of sixteen I escape to follow a course in the city, far away from my parents’ supervision

At the age of eighteen I marry a Yugoslavian criminal and adapt to a traditional wife’s role

When I am nineteen my husband escapes from a German prison to Yugoslavia, he doesn’t like it there, and I get him to come to Switzerland

At the age of twenty I am living a life of bored luxury and every day I do some money-laundering for my husband’s drugs and arms trade

When I am twenty-five my husband terrorises me with violence and death threats and I start taking cocaine regularly

At the age of twenty-five I abort my unwanted child and try to kill myself

When I am twenty-six my parents come and take me home and have me locked up in a psychiatric institution and my father threatens my husband

When I am twenty-six my husband shoots his way into the institution and frees me, and I use his cocaine, alcohol, crack and heroin

When I am twenty-six I use my power as a wife to put pressure on another dealer and accept lovers with money and drugs

At the age of twenty-eight I lose my Swiss residence permit and deal Swiss drugs in Germany

At the age of twenty-nine I am sentenced to five years in prison in Germany and let myself be carted off to Croatia

While aged thirty and thirty-one I am clean, lead a normal life and am frightened

At the age of thirty-four I deal, and use endless quantities of heroin and cocaine

At the age of thirty-four, I follow my husband to our seaside house, am helpless in the fatalistic use of drugs and allow myself to be terrorised, raped and abused

At the age of thirty-seven I leave my husband and start a relationship with a young Croatian war invalid

At the age of forty I am serving my prison sentence, suffer from Hepatitis C, am clean and will sacrifice kicks for a happy family life