Lyrics

I’ve tried to run, was a hard decision
I’ve tried to hide from ghosts
I couldn’t fight and I had no reasons

To stay and be alone
I don’t even feel like home

I wasn’t wrong
They said I did that crime
But you know it’s not the true

I can’t back home
But I need somehow
Tell my secrets now to you

I can’t back home
But I need somehow
Tell my secrets now to you

I wasn’t wrong
They said I did that crime
But you know it’s not the true

To stay and be alone
I don’t even feel like home

I wasn’t wrong
They said I did that crime
But you know it’s not the true

I can’t back home
But I need somehow
Tell my secrets now to you

I can’t back home
But I need somehow
Tell my secrets now to you

But I need somehow
Tell my secrets now
I can't back home

But I need somehow
Tell my secrets now
I can't back home

I can back home
Cause I need somehow
Tell my secrets now
To you, ohhhhhhh

I can back home
Cause I need somehow
Tell my secrets now to you

Tell my secrets now

I can't back home

The Secret and Inspiration

Rafael tried to run away many times. He ran away from home, from the streets, from people—but above all, he ran away from himself. For years he carried an invisible sentence: that he was guilty. At ten years old, he saw his parents separate, and until then, his life was ordinary—school, television on at night, his father arriving home from work, his mother organizing the house. Nothing extraordinary, but whole. After the divorce, silence took over everything. No one told him he was the reason, no one directly accused him; however, no one hugged him, no one explained what was happening, no one guaranteed that he was not responsible. For a child, absence functions as confirmation. And it was in the empty space between an explanation that didn't come and affection that didn't exist that he planted guilt.

His mother was never affectionate and, after the separation, became even more distant. There were no kisses, hugs, or words of love. His father, once more present, rebuilt his life: new wife, new children, a new story in which Rafael was not a part. He disappeared. Rafael stayed. And in his solitary confinement, he built the belief that he had done something wrong, that he wasn't enough, that somehow he had broken the family. Brasília, with its organized superblocks, straight lines, and symmetrical concrete, contrasted sharply with the internal chaos he carried. On the outside, everything was planned; inside the house, everything was crooked. His mother began a relationship with a younger man who didn't contribute financially. There were three inherited apartments in the family; money wasn't the problem. Indifference was. Between indirect accusations about responsibilities and justifications about who should support whom, Rafael grew up too fast.

There were days when he didn't have money for the bus. He would enter through the back door, running like a criminal, while his stomach ached with hunger and adults discussed duties they never assumed. At thirteen, he started making deliveries for drug dealers in the neighborhood. Grown men recruited him; he accepted. He needed money, he needed to feel useful, he needed to confirm the identity he already believed he possessed. If it was a mistake, it was a complete mistake. Minor offenses followed—nothing to be proud of, nothing that defines him entirely, but enough to reinforce the internal narrative: "you are the problem." Even so, defying invisible statistics that pushed him down, he finished his studies, graduated in industrial design, and got a job. He worked with almost obsessive intensity, as if each promotion were an attempt at absolution.

Twenty years later, Rafael was a manager at the largest company in the country. He had a position, a salary, recognition. But inside, he remained the boy who used to sneak onto buses through the back door. Success didn't erase the hunger, the position didn't erase the abandonment, competence didn't erase the guilt. He wanted to prove to his mother that he had succeeded without her help; he wanted to prove to his father that he wasn't disposable. The congratulations, however, never came. And the silence, in adulthood, hurts more than the misery of adolescence. For decades he repeated to himself that he hadn't been wrong. However, somewhere deep down, he still believed he was. He ran without realizing that the escape wasn't geographical, it was internal.

Until Bali came along. The trip happened almost by chance—work, rest, perhaps another attempt to escape. There he met a Russian psychologist who worked with regression therapy. He didn't quite believe in that kind of approach, but something inside him was tired of running away. In the session, he didn't return to past lives; he returned to a small room in Brasília, where a ten-year-old boy listened to his parents arguing. He saw himself sitting on the bed, huddled up, trying to understand what was crumbling. For the first time, he felt compassion for that boy. He wasn't guilty. He hadn't destroyed any marriage. He wasn't responsible for immature adults. He was just scared. Upon leaving the session, the change wasn't explosive or cinematic. It was silent—and definitive.

Rafael realized he no longer needed to prove anything to be accepted. He didn't need to win to deserve love. He didn't need to carry responsibilities that were never his. He didn't need to save his mother in her old age or compensate for his father's absence. They made choices; he survived the consequences. For years he had told himself he couldn't go home. Then he understood that home was never Brasília, nor the physical structure of the family that had broken apart. Home was him. And he had spent forty-five years running from that place. Reconciliation didn't require explanations from others, it required self-acceptance.

Today, Rafael can return. Not to demand anything, not to seek validation, not to reopen wounds, but to exist without guilt. He committed no crime; he was just a child trying to understand abandonment. By accepting this truth, he freed himself from the invisible sentence he had carried for decades. He can tell his secrets without fear, without shame and without the need for absolution. Childhood was not erased, but it was given new meaning. And, in recognizing that he was never the mistake he imagined himself to be, he finally found rest. Now, when he says he can go home, he's not talking about an address on a map—he's talking about himself, whole, habitable, and at peace.

France - Performance

Each country profile presents the most recent data available on a range of indicators relating to the well-being of women and children. Each country profile page is composed of data from multiple sources, depending on the indicator domain. For example, child mortality rates come from the most recent data produced by the UNICEF-led Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME).

SDG indicators related to children

The 2030 Agenda includes 17 Global Goals addressing the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Attached to the Goals are 169 concrete targets measured by 232 specific indicators.

To map and monitor how ambitious and realistic countries’ targets are, UNICEF has created quantifiable country-level benchmarks for child-related indicators for which data are available to measure and monitor child rights on a common scale.

Below is a snapshot of the country’s performance against the 45 child-related SDG indicators, grouping results into five areas of child well-being to provide an overall assessment of how children are doing. Countries are assessed using global and national targets. The analysis provides valuable insights into both historical progress—recognizing the results delivered by countries in the recent past—and how much additional effort may be needed to achieve the child-related SDG targets. This approach provides a framework for assessing ambition as well as the scale of action needed to achieve it.