Chapter 2 – Formative Years
Childhood
“Childhood is the most beautiful of all life's seasons, full of wonder, discovery, and the magic of growing up.”
— Unknown
It was August 18, 1989. I was only six years old, but the image remains indelibly etched in my memory. The assassination of Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento, a presidential candidate in Colombia, marked the beginning of the horrors my young mind would witness. Could it have been any different? Living in Colombia, South America, during the Pablo Escobar era meant constant danger. To me, it was the bombing era. We didn’t need a TV to witness the horrors; they were right there in the streets. Walking with my mother through the central plaza, I couldn’t avoid the graphic, uncensored headlines of violent crimes on the front pages of newspapers. As a child, I learned more about death just by walking on the street than a first-year medical student at a morgue.
Early one morning that same year, probably in January, as I excitedly prepared for my first day of elementary school, I vividly remember my bunny-shaped backpack—half electric blue and half white, with bunny ears and moving eyes. While quietly waiting for the private transport to take me to school, I watched a beautiful Dalmatian sniffing a palm leaf in the middle of the road. As I focused on the curious dog, a blue Jeep sped by and instantly struck the dog, killing it right before my eyes. What followed was pure horror: the owner, a woman, screamed at the top of her lungs, and then my memory went blank.
I have always felt that my childhood was stolen from me because of these exposures. My mother did what she could to protect me, but there wasn’t much she could do about the pervasive environment we lived in. The previous year, our house had been robbed. My parents had hired a housekeeper that morning before they went to work, and I was barely four years old. I used to joke, even today, that the woman emptied our entire home but left me sitting alone on the front porch. The joke goes: was I so bad that not even the thieves wanted to take me?
I saw her ironing clothes, emptying my mom’s closet, and putting things in boxes. When I asked her what she was doing, she grabbed my hand and put me outside the front door. I remember being found by my mom outside, wearing only my underwear. How dare she leave me there? Later, when the police caught her, I was brought to the station as a witness. It wasn’t enough that I had seen her take everything; as a four-year-old, I had to identify the criminal who could have taken me from my parents. That experience still hurts to this day. Where were the adults who were supposed to protect me, a young child?
Around the same time, my parents were in the middle of a heated argument—voices raised, tension thick in the air. My father, in a moment of rage, grabbed what I believed was a shoe and hurled it, aiming it at my mother. I don’t know what compelled me, but I instinctively jumped in between them.
I can’t recall if the shoe struck me near my eye or if it caused me to stumble and hit the corner of the bed frame. Either way, the result was immediate: blood pouring from a gash near my eye. I remember the chaos that erupted. My mother screamed in panic as I cried in pain. My father stood frozen, and my mother, unsure of what to do, grabbed me and ran to our neighbors for help. .
The neighbor tried to stop the bleeding with cotton balls, pressing gently but firmly, but it was useless. The blood wouldn’t stop. Amid this desperate scene, for reasons I’ll never fully understand, someone thought submerging me in a tank of water and lifting me up and down would help. I remember the sensation of being dunked—wet, confused, and terrified. But nothing worked; the bleeding was relentless.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, my mom made the decision to take me to the hospital. But we didn’t have a car, so she cradled me in her arms and boarded a public bus. Imagine it: a mother holding her bleeding child, blood dripping and staining her clothes, as the passengers on the bus stared in shock. I can still see their horrified faces—wide-eyed, mouths agape, murmuring amongst themselves. The ride felt like an eternity, each second marked by the dull, pounding pain near my eye and the overwhelming confusion of a little girl in crisis.
When we finally arrived at the hospital, everything was a blur of bright lights and hurried voices. I remember being laid down, a doctor looming over me, placing drops in my eye that made my vision blur and fade. The next thing I knew, I was waking up. I stood in front of a mirror, my left eye covered with a bandage. I was lucky. The doctor told my mom that I had come perilously close to losing my eye. To this day, I bear both the physical and emotional scars from that day: a faint but permanent mark near my eye and the haunting memory of chaos, pain, and a child’s instinct to protect her mother at any cost.