Yona Wallach

As she grew older, she began dressing androgynously, wearing her late father’s clothes, and had her first abortion at sixteen.

[3] She was expelled from high school after tenth grade,[4] and then spent a short time at the Avni Institute of Art and Design.

[3][4] Around the age of nineteen, Wallach moved to Jerusalem, where she befriended petty thieves and drug dealers.

[5] Wallach stated that she voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital around the age of twenty to gain insight into the mental struggles her friends were facing.

[5] Her therapist at the institution noted Wallach's complex sexuality, observing that she identified as homosexual while continuing to engage in relationships with men.

[5] Symptoms of a drug-induced psychotic break had been intensifying, leading friends to worry about her potential for self-harm.

Wallach later claimed that she only began to feel safe and secure once her works were published and her reputation established.

[8] During this period, Yona Wallach relied on her financial support from Rachel and did not maintain steady employment.

When she was kicked out of school in the tenth grade, the headmistress cited Wallach as having neglected her studies in preference to doodling and writing poems.

In the following months five more of her poems had been published in various magazines and periodicals, and her name was mentioned in Ha-Boker as an "important young Israeli avant-garde poet.

"[11] She spent the next few years neglecting her writing to experiment with sex and drugs, which decidedly influenced much of her future poetry.

Instead, she surrounded herself with "societal misfits" and spent time exploring her inner self and Kabbalah — the ancient, mystical Jewish tradition of interpreting the Bible.