All my life, I never truly liked myself.
Not my name.
Not the people I was around.
Not the environment I was raised in.
I forgot what happiness felt like. What it meant to feel joy.
And none of it was my fault—it was the world around me.
I wanted to be someone else.
Most wonder why I don’t go by the name Bhavya.
The answer is simple: Bhavya was never me.
You can be born into a name, a family, a country—but none of those things define you.
I decided to un-define myself.
I questioned everything.
Every idea of right or wrong.
Every expectation and label.
And I chose the opposite.
In the process, I forgot how to smile.
How to feel alive.
Until one day, I found freedom.
I was 24. Alone. Backpack in hand. On the road.
No attachments.
No masks.
No strings pulling me back.
Just the wild.
Just the wind.
Just me.
That was the moment I felt real.
Dancing barefoot in the rain, under midnight skies.
Music in my ears.
Laughter on my lips.
The African in me—suppressed, silent, hidden—finally came alive.
I had nothing. But I was happy.
One evening, sitting by the ocean as the sun kissed the horizon, I turned to a friend and asked,
“What name would you give me?”
He said: Giulio.
And just like that, I was reborn.
Not conformed. Not boxed in. Not labeled.
Giulio was fluid. Free.
Giulio danced. Giulio smiled. Giulio brought people together.
With that one word, a whole new world opened.
I forgave the people in my past.
I stopped chasing the future.
I stopped reliving the pain.
I lived—fully, wildly, softly—in the now.
I slept in a hut with no walls.
Just a roof.
The bed swung gently.
The floor was alive with ants.
A bonfire crackled nearby.
The stars were sharp and clear in the jungle sky.
It wasn’t a low point.
It was an awakening.
That night, I was not surviving. I was living.
I began to embrace every culture.
To blend in, to belong nowhere—and everywhere.
I stopped asking “Who am I?” and started becoming the answer.
That’s when I realized—Giulio wasn’t a name. It was a feeling.
A return to the version of me I had long forgotten.
Bhavya had to break.
So Giulio could rise.
Now, when I feel lost, I remember:
I am Giulio.
Or as my Italian friends call me—Lucky Giulio.
