For more than two years now I had been working in the Communication Staff team as a graphic designer for one of the largest healthcare software companies in the world. Good pay, promising future. But for a few years, I had been feeling depressed. I had broken up with my girlfriend because I could no longer feel any emotions. I didn’t know what was going on in my head. All I knew was that I was unhappy, and I was afraid I would feel this way forever.

The worst part was that I couldn’t even think of a reason why I felt like this. My health was fine, my job was fine, and my relationship had seemed fine. I was the youngest person in the company, but the idea that I had already found my “safe place” terrified me.

For months, I had been paying for a gym membership for just one reason: to lock myself in the showers and cry. That’s right. I paid a monthly membership, but the only thing I used the gym for was going into the showers to let it all out. I couldn’t do it at home. I shared an apartment with three roommates, and we only had one bathroom.

It was April 2017. Some friends of mine from Cagliari told me about an event, a festival that takes place in Romania. A techno festival.

Techno was something I had always hated since I was a kid. It had always seemed like drug music to me. I didn’t want to spend money on an event I wasn’t interested in, and most of all I didn’t want my friends to see me in that state. But you know how friends are. Eventually, they convinced me.

So I bought the plane tickets and the tickets for Sunwaves, this famous festival.