The day of my parents’ funeral, I fainted on my way back from the cemetery in northern Bogotá. I’d been desperately thirsty for days, all dried up inside. I’d drunk something like seven or eight litres of water within twelve hours, but when I went to the emergency room, I was diagnosed with gastroenteritis. I spent two more days wrung out as a rag, flopped on the couch or in bed. I’d blamed my ailment on grief, on the sight of their bodies like spoiled fruit, once fertile, now bruised; on their features, so wholly theirs and so foreign to me now; on the gloomy speeches in the chapel, the parade of condolences. I lost my breath remembering their whispers and their shouting. When I came to, I wasn’t on my way to the flat anymore, but in a hospital room, where I stayed for several days before emerging with folders, pamphlets, books, syringes, devices. Diabetic, on the brink. In my head ever since: keep your blood sugar levels under 130 milligrams per decilitre and higher than seventy or you’ll faint. It’s part of my creed.

My parents took everything with them, swept it all away with the details of their destruction: a slow sundering full of intrigue and dependency. I saw them. Then they left, draining me of whatever meagre sweetness I still had coursing through my veins. I’m sure they were arguing, my dad must have lost his temper, my mum rubbed salt in a wound, they started yelling and my name flew out of their mouths before they were gone, for better or worse. And that was it. I can’t be too sad, can’t lose control, can’t stop calculating milligrams per decilitre. Seven years later, I instinctively know how many carbs are in almost everything I ingest, count how much insulin I have to stab into myself when I wake up, before every meal, before bed, in the middle of the night. What I don’t know is how to stop questioning myself, dramatising my condition in its crazy abruptness, in the deranged cannibalistic programming of my defence system, because it’s irremediable and can only get worse. Something went wrong in me. On the cellular level, I’m a battlefield. I have an autoimmune disorder and sometimes I think it’s because I don’t know myself well enough. How do I work? How does the world work? I don’t know anything.