JULY 1992: I experience the festival of sacrifice in Turkey for the first time. We are at my grandma's in the city and I walk out of the house. A headless animal is hanging from the roof but that doesn't interest me, it's the water mixed with blood in the courtyard which is soaking through my summer slippers.

APRIL 1995: I stand in my best friend's hallway smiling and crying. It was meant to be a surprise. She's back. I am quietly delighted and feel with her what it must have been like being away for a whole year.

JULY 1997: After a year I am back for the summer in my Mum's village and run to the bedroom where my uncle sits. I am frightened to go into the room and put on a smile when I first see my uncle, who is gravely ill with cancer.

MAY 2003: In the last performance of 'Penthesilea', where I play the Amazon Queen, I get my lines wrong in the middle of the intense final scene. Crying with disappointment, I walk off stage leaving the dead Achilles behind me lying in artificial blood.

JUNE 2006: I am massively disappointed after being rejected by another drama school. In a fit of rage I destroy my room. My mother dashes in in alarm and I calm down again.

MARCH 2007: I cycle along my street. The sun is shining, I have no money and no responsibilities. It is time to go and I leave everything behind me. It is spring, sunny, I am in love and look forward to my future in another city, Berlin.

MARCH 2008: I've finally made it. I stand there without a care in the world and look up. A view that I only know from pictures: now I'm standing in the middle of the Golden Horn. All alone in front of the giant architecture and the reality of the view. I am overwhelmed.

OCTOBER 2009: We are both lying naked in bed. He hugs me tight and is half-asleep, I am wide awake and reading 'Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter' by Simone de Beauvoir. It's quiet in the flat, I enjoy the moment and laugh.

NOVEMBER 2012: I am returning disillusioned from an interview. My phone rings and I have got the study grant. I get off the tram, crying with joy and forgetting my bike. I have to run after it all the way to the terminus.

JUNE 2013: I am touring with a show which visits Istanbul at the time of the Taksim Square protests. I visit the site of resistance. I am thrilled and overwhelmed when I enter Gezi Park. I feel I am in a new utopia.