Yesterday I found myself shouting in the hallway again. It wasn’t even about anything dramatic—just that my younger son had used toothpaste to "paint" the mirror while the older one blasted some YouTuber with a screeching voice from the tablet. It’s like living inside a never-ending pinball machine where I’m the ball.

The first time I brought my son to Chacabuco, he was seventeen. I had waited years to decide whether I should take him. He had grown up in England, spoke Spanish with a London accent, and thought of Chile as a warm place where his father sometimes got quiet at dinner. I never told him much about the camp before that trip. He knew I had been a prisoner, but not the details—not how my ribs still ache in the cold, not how the smell of rusted metal can make my stomach turn.

Beach season is coming up again, and with it, the knot in my stomach. Every year, as the days get longer and the first real warmth hits Lisbon, Portugal, my friends start planning weekends at Costa da Caparica or Praia da Ursa — endless days of bikinis, salted hair, and sunburned noses.

The sun beat down hard on the zinc roofs, the heat rising in thick waves from the concrete. I sat in front of my house in Kingston, Jamaica, watching a stray dog nose through a pile of old newspapers across the street. Around here, the days roll slow, like smoke curling from the end of a cigarette.

The air was dry that afternoon, and dust blew across the old main street of Kleinzee, South Africa. I sat on the front porch of my small house, the one I moved into as a young bride when this town still rang with the clanging of machines and the voices of miners. Now, silence fills the gaps between the few remaining souls. I’m 85, and the days feel both heavy and hollow.

Most mornings, I lift the shutters of my small snack bar before Brussels really wakes up. It’s a modest place, squeezed between a laundromat and an old bookstore, just a few tables and a counter. I live nearby, in a small flat above a grocery shop. Life isn’t glamorous, but it’s mine. I’m 55 now, and even though my knees complain more than they used to, I still enjoy opening up early, breathing in the quiet before the city starts buzzing.

I woke up with the sound of our goats bleating nearby, their voices rising into the early morning mist. My little sister still slept beside me, her mouth open like always, and the canvas of the ger above us was pale with the first light. I sat up and looked around. The fire had gone out during the night, and my mother was already outside with my father, preparing the horses for today’s move.

I still remember the way my father used to sit on the floor with his patients, knee to knee, completely focused, as if the rest of the world had melted away. He wasn’t just treating their illnesses—he was listening, really listening. I must have been eight or nine when I first realized that some people walked in barely able to move, and left weeks later laughing, walking straight, glowing.

When I rushed out of the flat yesterday morning, I had no idea the universe had a sense of humor planned just for me. I was already ten minutes behind and barely managed to zip up my coat before hopping on my bike. It was one of those cold but sunny Madrid, Spain, mornings, and the streets were still half asleep. I pedaled like my life depended on it, weaving through traffic with the grace of a sleep-deprived flamingo.

When I got off the bus this evening, I already had that feeling — the kind that crawls under your skin before anything actually happens. I walked up the hill to my small apartment in Capão Redondo, São Paulo,  past the corner bar with the broken neon, and headed straight for the mailbox. There it was. A white envelope, heavy with finality.

I still tie my hair the same way my mother did—tightly, in a low bun at the nape of the neck. It keeps the heat off. When I was a girl, my mother would say, “If your mind is calm and your head is cool, you’ll live a long time.” I didn’t take it seriously then. But here I am now, 106 years old, and I think she might’ve been right.

It started with a flat tire. I had just loaded the pomegranates and boxes of sabzi into the back of the van when I noticed the sag on the rear wheel. No time to fix it properly—just enough air to get me from Shahr-e-Rey to Tajrish before the morning rush. But the whole way, I felt the van dragging like it was tired too.

I never imagined university would feel this lonely. It’s not that I don’t talk to people—I do. I’ve already joined two student groups, and there are always events, lectures, even parties. But sometimes I look around and feel like I’ve landed on a different planet. I live in Budapest, Hungary, and ever since I started my political science studies here, the distance between me and most of the people around me has only grown wider.

I’ve been retired for a month. It still feels strange to say it out loud. After forty years working for one of Geneva’s most iconic luxury watchmakers, my calendar is now blank. No flights to catch. No boardrooms in Singapore or hotel breakfasts in Tokyo. The quiet feels like a stranger who’s let himself in and is sitting comfortably in my living room.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a boy. Not because I hated being a girl, but because I thought being a boy might mean people would stop looking at me like I was broken. I didn’t like my appearance—hated my long hair, hated dresses, hated the way people said I should smile more. So I cut it all off one morning with a pair of blunt kitchen scissors while my parents were at work. When they saw me, my mom started crying. My dad didn’t say a word—just grounded me for a month. I was nine.

He must have been around thirty, maybe a bit older. Tall, thin, with the look of someone who doesn’t quite belong—clean sneakers, a phone always in his hand, glancing around like the street might bite him. He asked for a margherita and sat outside on the bench where the sun hits around midday. Nothing unusual about him, except he didn’t eat the pizza right away. He just looked at it for a long time, like it had a secret written on it.

When I first came to Yongtai, China, the walls were crumbling and the windows rattled in the wind. The nuns had only just begun restoring the place, and my classroom was a storage room with a cracked floor. But I had made a decision. I would stay.

I was waiting outside the magistrate’s court when I saw Jamal come out, head lowered, wrists still cuffed. He’s seventeen now—barely—and this was his third time in front of the bench. Assault again. The boy has a temper, yes, but I’ve known him since he was eleven, when I first met him at the Government Industrial School. That was after his mother threw a pan at him for stealing canned sardines. She was high, and he was hungry.

The sky over Toulouse, France, was that gentle spring blue that makes things seem easier than they are. I wore red lipstick and my white sunglasses—not for fashion, but to feel like myself. I was pushing three strollers along the Canal du Midi. Behind me, Baptiste, five, and Jeanne, three, pedaled their bikes in crooked lines. What looked like a peaceful outing had taken over an hour to prepare.

I still remember the smell of the sea, mixed with diesel fumes and fresh bread, on my morning walk to university. Odessa, Ukraine, always had this strange mix—beauty and roughness, charm and chaos. I used to complain about the traffic, the bureaucracy, the old trolleybuses that never ran on time. Now I would give anything to be back on one of them, watching pensioners argue with the driver over a coin.