JANUARY 2001: My husband's youngest daughter, who lives with us, only thanks her father for our birthday present. She doesn't look at me.

JANUARY 2001: At the airport I check my bags in for America. I will spend a year there and feel grown up for the first time in my life.

JANUARY 2001: My uncle kills himself.

JANUARY 2001: My father has to go to prison for defrauding UBS. He is so afraid of this punishment, he tries to kill himself the night before.

JANUARY 2001: When I step out of the cool airport terminal in Mumbai, Sarah almost runs right into me. We hold each other, laugh and embrace. Suddenly I have a sister.

APRIL 2001: I start circus school in Berlin. I don't know anyone there and I am freezing.

MAY 2001: Petra and I marry secretly in Bergell. A liberation for me, an affront for my family.

JUNE 2001: In in-patient therapy my therapist tells me: "You're boring me." I am shocked and understand that my emotions are missing. I have to find them again.

JULY 2001: I sit on a crane in the Rhine harbour after a bout of Campari poisoning, along with Sarah and a man with bread and jam. It's getting light already. We look into the sky until we're dizzy.

AUGUST 2001: I am in a psychiatric ward. After three days I am discharged. I have cured myself with nineteen litres of mineral water.

AUGUST 2001: I start writing short texts. This turns into a regular writing frenzy. In two weeks I have seventy-five of them in front of me. He and I make an artist's book out of them.

SEPTEMBER 2001: On 11th September I am sitting with a friend, sending out invitations for a symposium we have planned. Another friend rings and tells me to put on the television, there has been a plane crash in New York. We sit in front of the screen spellbound and watch the second plane fly into the tower and the whole complex then collapse.

SEPTEMBER 2001: Ton travels to Madagaskar for three months – during that time, I lose myself.

SEPTEMBER 2001: I start another course in art and feel like I'm walking on air.

SEPTEMBER 2001: I am sitting in an Irish pub in Vienna waiting for a friend who is an assistant designer. I am incredibly proud to be working at the Burgtheater and don't understand why the people around me keep staring at the clouds of smoke on television. A few days later my mother visits Vienna and gives me my first TV set.

SEPTEMBER 2001: I am ironing and watching television. Suddenly the programme is interrupted for a live broadcast and I can see the burning north tower of the World Trade Centre. The second plane flies into the South Tower. I feel sick.

NOVEMBER 2001: I am badly injured in a road traffic accident.

DECEMBER 2001: I wake up out of the coma and have no idea what happened and where I am.

DECEMBER 2001: My son has just woken from the anaesthetic. He is almost one year old and has come through his second heart operation well. Now we know that he will live. I am boundlessly happy and relieved and hold him tight in my arms. He looks into my eyes.

DECEMBER 2001: I go to the youth theatre for the first time. That night I become addicted to this drug called theatre.