letmesaythat

[letmesaythat]

There’s something magical up there

Connection. Noun. “A relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked or associated with something else”. A simple word but that holds such a strong power. It means finding, belonging, feeling accepted, understood. It’s a warm, comforting breath in the middle of a chilling moment. Everybody seeks for connection with something, whether concrete or abstract. Connecting with the world, the environment,  with our roots, our people. Connecting to ourselves, what works like an invitation to venture into the depths of reality to chase our truth, our dreams. To me, personally, the times I feel more connected with myself are when I'm connected with nature somehow, and I have always been like this, manifesting it in a few different ways.

The first one I can remember is related to my love for plants, especially flowers. Since I’m a little girl, I have this great passion for those preciousness of nature. I used to take a lot of road-trips with my family in my childhood, and as we would pass the long pathways of forests, I would feel so… comfortable. Alive. Connected. The smell of wood and dew, the singing of cicadas and crickets. To me, this is the meaning of things being in their right places, building perfect harmony. And, of course, the blooming flowers on the trees, creating magical floats of colors as the car would pass by them. My dad says he needed to stop every time, at least for once, to get me some of them, ‘cause I just wouldn’t stop asking for it. I know, what a brat, but at least a flowered brat. 

This habit of “collecting” or kind of “hunting” plants persists in me until this day, even living in the big city. I can’t help doing it basically every time I go out for a walk, for example. And a fun fact: the last walk through my neighborhood I took with my mom, we saw this little girl bicycling with her dad, probably, and in a moment they stopped so she could pick some yellow trumpet flowers fallen on the floor. My mom said that little girl was me. And even I saw myself on her. It was pure nostalgia watching that scene, reliving the inner child inside of me. Hope she never loses this trait of who she is, too.

But there’s this other representation of my inner bond with nature, that sometimes feels even stronger, bolder, and more present than the first one. That’s watching the moon. Or, better, admiring, contemplating her presence. Talking to her, feeling her magic. Yes, to me, the moon is a “she”; the friend you ask for personal advice, the mother you ask for a hug, your fairy-godmother. The piece of the Earth that was taken by the universe so it could grace the sky and remind us of what we are part of. To remind us that we, just like the moon, are earthly objects, earthly creatures. That we are part of this planet as everything else. And, because of such, the moon is a part of us too, and vice-versa. 

It's funny to think about how calmly I fall asleep when I have the moonlight touching my face, ‘cause I generally can’t do that when there is the smallest slit of any other light coming through my curtains, but with hers is different. Maybe ‘cause it is the kind of light that inspires me, brings me hope, joy, the light that makes me invoke my silliest wishes without feeling ashamed for it, like asking to finally overwhelmingly fall in love for someone, or to have a dream about how some specific future situation is going to happen, and even asking to show me somehow how my life would be today if I had just taken the opposite path that I’ve been walking in. It’s like it was a kind of faith figure, but closest to us humans than God, in a manner.

Try to explain this feeling is something quite hard to do, but I guess a lot of other people feel it too. The magic, the mystery, the presence, the mystique, the enchanted aura. And all of these supernatural traits for something so truly natural, a piece of nature itself. Maybe it is mystical indeed, and we’ve been fooled by scientists all this time. Maybe it is so naturally close to us that it represents our most magical part, being displayed on the dark night sky so we can exhale some of that magic. Maybe it is just a vessel so we can, in fact, recover the connection with the Earth we seem to lose a little more every single day in this crazy unnatural world. Maybe it is the bond that keeps us all connected with each other, with nature, and with our inner selves.

[letmesaythat]

Many reasons to go, but a lot more to stay

As I was growing up, I’d always listen, from everyone around me, that the main goal in my young adult life should be moving to another country, to a big city in a totally different place. Maybe that’s just the normality of living in a “periphery country” if you might say so, where there’s this concept of a much better life almost anywhere outside, and we’re taught to believe that from a very early age. Speaking by myself, the wish of moving away has been in my heart for as long as I can remember, and it lingers until this day, but I wonder how much of that actually came from me and how much came from outside, uninvited. Currently, that wish lies in a more peaceful, quiet, and patient bed. Contrary to what I’ve planned for my grown life basically since forever, now I feel like I want to be here in my hometown for a little longer, or much longer. And this is not that simple to understand.

See, I live in Rio de Janeiro. Yeah, that’s right, the warmth, the beaches, the summer, the music, nature… but it doesn’t stop there, where’s all fun and games, rainbows and butterflies. I’m not getting into the details ‘cause this is supposed to be a story about hope, the hoping of change, and of being an active part of this change, ok? But life can be tough around here, and it is for the biggest part of us.

I don’t blame the ones who move away in their first opportunity to do so, I genuinely don’t, and I used to be that person until some very recent times. This city has A LOT of problems, and I by no means intend to romanticize it, or even normalize it when so many people are suffering because of those. My desire used to be exactly to distance from all of that, to move away and never come back. But that desire has changed. It has turned into a wish with action for this place to get better, to get as amazing as it has the potential to be, so that no one else that’s born here thinks leaving is the only option to have a dignified life. Because that’s simply not fair, or even close to being fair. And because I love it here.

Maybe it could be the feeling of belonging, of identification, or at least something more than just love, that makes the idea of leaving this place in a permanent way sound not very appealing to me, even with all of the problems. And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about everything that I’d miss from this place, from my home.

Like almost every day waking up in the morning, opening my curtains, looking at the sky, and seeing what I see. A bright blue canvas, with a few white cotton sprayed spots, and just the most gorgeous sun of them all. A sun that touches my cheeks skin so softly and enlightens it as a kiss directly from spring herself. Well, sometimes it could be the devil himself, to be honest, when we get free samples of hell during our summertimes. Yet, God forgives me, I would miss that Devil’s kiss if I could not get it anymore.

To be honest, I do think I might want to leave here someday, yes... and then come back. And then leave again just to miss it one more time. And come back. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to live abroad if I had the chance to do so, to get in touch with different cultures, different parts of the world; it would certainly be an amazing experience that I would never take for granted. But I think I’ll always want to come back if I leave. I feel like if that ever happens, I’m gonna gradually get into full nostalgia mode as the time passes by.

But how can it be possible that just the envisioning of me moving away makes me feel like that? How can I be homesick when I have never even got the most remote chance to get out of this city? Am I just too dramatic? Or just very, very ridiculous? Or so arrogant that I think I will for sure have what it takes to leave here eventually? Or, maybe... I actually want to leave? Maybe I want to leave here so badly that I am, from this moment, visualizing and projecting my escape, practicing the law of attraction without even realizing it. Right? It could be it… Just the good old mechanism of putting our thoughts into something we truly aspire, probably the biggest cliché of them all. It would make me feel a little more normal, I guess.

But no, it isn’t that. Even with all of the ugly parts of this city, I would never give up on my morning sun kisses that easily. Perhaps, I want to leave so that I can prove my point, that I can live all of the heartaches of missing home, missing my window sights, my beach walks in the middle of the week, the carnival, my warm winter days, the Sunday football matches, the messy farmers markets, the street square parties, my neighborhood walks along the same path every time and even the extra annoying day-to-day traffic jam - ‘cause how else would I have the time to listen to my entire “bus songs” playlist? And, with that, I’d be able to convince everyone around me that leaving is not actually the best idea, and maybe the best life that I could get is right here, in this town. And therefore, I can manage to deal with the bitter and the rotten parts, and engage in helping to make it a better place somehow, a fair place to live in - not only for me, my friends and family, but for everyone, every single person, every single carioca.

I want to see this city thrive, recover from the accumulated damages, turn into a good place to settle down and just… live. I have to see that happening in front of my eyes, to be a part of it, and it would be impossible to do that from afar. Because, God, I love my city. I love my city while I hate my city. I love it while I want to leave it, so that I can come back, then leave again, then come back. Why wouldn’t I love the place that presented and gave to me everything that I know, everything that I have? And I don’t care if it isn’t all that much. Because one thing that I know is that I really, entirely, love my city.

[letmesaythat]

Recalculating the route

Twenty-five. Just a regular number. Sweet, calm, sharp. Two plus five equals seven - my lucky number! Well, a number that I like, at least, can’t really say it brings me any luck, maybe ‘cause I've never really payed much attention to this particular matter. But, wow, twenty-five, as an age... it’s a number that hits me. A quarter of a century. Five years until “thirty, flirty and driving”! Three years before the age I’ve set up, as a kid, for me to become a mom. Jesus Christ, remembering this goal is just such a laugh. And it becomes a nervous and kinda desperate laugh when I think about everything I’ve planned back then to have achieved in life at the point of 25. A good job, maybe a master's, a solid romantic relationship, for sure. Yeah, as you can imagine where this is going, that’s not what I quite have here right now (to be honest, it's not even slightly close), and I know I’m not any special youngster in this situation.

Lately, it looks like we’re living in an era where is the norm to say that going through this "is ok", something like a cool and "woke" trend (maybe the first coaching talk we've seen emerging? Something to investigate). We hear that everybody has its own space, rhythm, and time, and we don’t have to worry so much about it or be too hard on ourselves, correct? Well, that's mostly true, definitely, but it's easy to say, not to play. And, believe me, I’m trying to embrace this idea of "respecting my own journey". Until that fully happens, I’m just pretending that I’m fine with that.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that I still have a whole lot of life to live ahead of me, and I am thankful for everything that I have, especially in these chaotic, uncertain times, and I surely don’t take that and all that I have achieved so far for granted. But, God, I had planned so much more for me to have gotten at this point. I wasn’t raised to be regular, common, and even the ideas that I’ve envisioned for me as a child weren't just ordinary. I wanted to be great, to stand out, to do something good for the world, for the people. I was passionate about so many things that I've later decided to ignore, even if subconsciously. Music, writing, drawing, creating. But I was also very good at math. I’m honestly almost convinced that this one is what brought me to this point, ‘cause it made people treat me as a genius in school, solely because of that. I've been driven to think that I should pursue a career that involved math, because of financial safety and all, and, well, “your just so good at it!”, they'd say. It turns out that I'm not that good, I'm just average. And, more importantly, not very passionate about anything around it. And now I have to overcome the kid who believed she was pretty amazing at something she’s not really that amazing at, having to come to the terms that I was fooled by my grades. Damn you, math! Damn you, chemistry and physics! Damn me, who didn’t realize earlier that I should take another direction to be happy!

Ok, I know I’m being a little bit dramatic, but I’m all about the drama lately, so let me do it! Also, my period is coming in the next few days, so you can’t totally blame me, it’s just pure nature. Yes, “it’s never too late to go after your dreams”, I know all about that. I've been saying it to myself for a while, sometimes non-stop, and I’m really trying to take it as a mantra, but I have to admit it’s just not that easy. If you’ve been or are currently in a situation similar to mine, you know that too. To see your friends, cousins, people who went to school with you traveling, being promoted, getting married, living wild love stories… while nothing of that is happening to you. I mean, good for them, they’ve earned it! But... I don’t know, it’s just like I’m being left behind in life, and wasting my youth because of bad decisions and lack of clarity to know what I genuinely wanted. But we can’t really go back on time, can we? Nor have a guarantee of what the future holds for us according to each decision we make. We just have to look within ourselves and believe our instinct to guide the steps we'll take. Well, mine hasn’t helped a lot until now, thank you very much. Instead, it has brought me to this moment, where I’m rambling about life disappointments in a blog at 01:40 am on a Monday, while watching tarot reading videos on YouTube in the hope to find guidance. Sounds promising.

Fine, maybe it’s really just that time of the month that it’s enhancing this feeling in me. Or, perhaps, it’s the realization that this pandemic it’s actually gonna take a much bigger impact in everybody’s lives than I could have ever anticipated, or that everyone could, and that we’re gonna be forced to recalculate the route of our lives. Speaking of such, how incredibly unlucky it is that the biggest pandemic since, I don't know, the Spanish flu had to happen exactly at the peak of my youth, right? Such a doomed generation, we have to admit, losing our most energetic years locked inside the house. Ok, that’s a little too selfish, but it doesn’t make it a lie.

Well, truth be told (and faced), this is the raw, somewhat bitter reality I have to deal with. At least it's already revealed, at least I’ve found out relatively early that the path I was walking wasn’t quite the right one for me. And, let’s be honest, almost nobody has the life all figured out at 25, that's a lie we're induced to believe based on exceptions and modern young adult novels. At the end of the day, I know I have to stop complaining and start doing what is within my reach to change my current scenario, ‘cause I have a huge role in the transformation of my life's script. Of course, I can’t control every single little aspect of it, and there isn't a infallible way of knowing what’s gonna turn out to be the best choice to make, the best road to drive through. But I can do something, a lot of things, I can take action, and even the smallest acts can have a big impact to change the story sometimes. I have to, as I’ve said earlier, embrace the coaching talk about never being too late to change, about accepting living at my own pace. Let’s do that and see where it takes me, shall we? Press play.

[letmesaythat]

What I would do if I could go back to that day

The most traumatic page of my school years was probably the day when I was elected the ugliest girl in the class. I still remember how I felt at that moment: mortified, not knowing what to do, how to act, if I should say something, if I should take it as a joke, laugh it out, and give an “acceptance speech”. All I felt like doing during that humiliation was crying. But I didn’t, I stayed strong, just facing like a rock the guy who was reading out the list to the entire class. Thinking about it now, I see I was tougher than three years later, when I cried my eyes out in front of my Physics teacher as he was telling me that I’ve just failed that semester - this reaction happened again even later, at college, but this time I was wiser and decided to cry alone in the restroom.

Back then, I thought nothing worse could ever happen to me. I was only a thirteen-year-old girl, desperate to give her first kiss, being claimed as the least good-looking one in front of all the potential boys who could give me that, for crying out loud! Nothing could be more horrible for my innocent teenage head, and heart. And it’s funny how I let that single event have such a big influence on how I would see myself for years after.

For a long time, I thought I was just naturally “ugly”, and that I would have to change a lot about my appearance to “achieve beauty”. How many opportunities to have fun I just turned down ‘cause I thought “I wasn’t pretty enough for them”, and people would think and talk about it when they’d look at me. Party invitations, going on the beach with my friends, taking photos of nice moments with my loved ones, and even dates - yes, even when the guy was basically saying to my face that he thought I was pretty, I’d refuse to believe it, ‘cause I already had an internalized idea that I wasn’t, he just hasn’t realized it yet. I know, these things might look very small when put like that, but they weren’t while life was happening and I was letting those little but important moments go away. Now that I’m 25, I see how much my younger self declined because of something so ridiculously tiny.

It took me quite a while to move on from the cracks that it caused on my young, clueless, romantic soul. Growing up and seeing what actually matters to life, with the help of friends, family and the needed own will, wasn’t exactly breezy, ‘cause the thoughts created by that memory were always there in the background, whispering their presence, not letting me forget them. But maybe I didn’t need to forget them, I needed to digest them, understand that they’ve already had a strong influence in a big part of my life and my self-judgment, but there was no place for them anymore in the next chapters of my story. My creativity is more important than those thoughts. My funniness is more important than those thoughts. My sagacity, my words, my ideas, my dreams, adventures, conversations, sharing, wishing to help to change the world, my career. The people that I love are much more important than that. The people that love me. Everything else.

But I do wish I could recover some of the time that I’ve lost giving my outer appearance an exaggerated importance. I wish I had gone with my friends to a lot of parties that I denied, that I hadn't wasted so much money on bad makeup just because I thought I needed to, that my first time had been with the boy that liked me at high school ‘cause I liked him back, that I hadn't spent years of my life not wearing a bikini and going out in the sun, living in a very sunny city, because I was embarrassed about my body. It would’ve been nice if I could’ve just enjoyed more of my teenage life.

Honestly, I don’t know what I would do if I could go back to that day. Maybe I would indeed give an acceptance speech, to make an empowered statement in front of everyone about how external looks don’t mean ANYTHING AT ALL. And to say straight to those boys’ faces that they were only doing that because of their low self-esteem, poor personalities, fragile and toxic masculinity, and also limited intellect. And when it comes to me, I wish I could realize then how tremendously more than just a face and a body I was. That I was the smartest student of the class, one of the most creative ones, funny, talented in arts, a good singer, loved by a lot of badass amazing people, and that I was too a badass freaking amazing person. AND so damn pretty. I was pretty, and I am pretty. And it’s ok too if I’m not, ‘cause I am many, many other things that really make me an interesting gal. I just should’ve never let anyone else convince me of the opposite.

[letmesaythat]

This is where I introduce myself

All right. I guess this is the post where we met. Well, where you meet me, if there’s even someone reading this, at all. I honestly hope it has, but I don’t think I’d mind that much writing for no one, just for me, like in some kind of open diary. Maybe it gives me the freedom to talk about everything that pleases me at the moment, even when I don’t know what I’m talking about and have no qualifications to do so. Oh, and don’t expect me to keep my opinions the same all the time, okay? I change them as much as I’ve changed my college degree (a wild total of four times, ‘cause it seems like every new year I’ve finally found out what I’m supposed to do when it comes to career, and in the next one I get into a new internal crisis and change it again).

Speaking about career, boy, oh boy, it has been a journey. Why do I have to be so mutable, for crying out loud? Couldn’t I just identify with one, two, or three areas, at most? No, it needed to be 27. I think one of the first things I wanted to be as a child was a teacher; man, I'd love that idea when I was little, to be the one commanding the class, helping the others to learn about the world. I remember how much I used to love playing school with my sister and my cousins, making up topics to “teach”, applying exams, giving them grades (and, when I was playing a student, kissing my fake boyfriend during the break). 

Then, there was the time I wanted to be a journalist, especially in the fashion and beauty world. I have until this day the magazines I’ve made when I was around 11 years old, and it’s crazy to see the effort I’d put into producing those pieces, the care, the work to make it look pretty AND have good content inside. It was one of my favorites hobbies, for sure. And, of course, I wanted to make it a job in the future. But the future wouldn’t want to drive me towards that wish, unfortunately. 

I ended up “deciding” to go with… Biotechnology. Yes. I’m gonna be honest with you, I really like this area; I love Biology in general, especially plant Biology, and, not by accident, it’s the final undergrad degree I’ve chosen (not before taking Chemistry, Pharmacy and Chemistry again - I know, I’m not very good with decisions, right?). I love to study anything related to plants, food plants, biodiversity, ecology, environment, sustainability, agroecology, nature… I think I can say that I’ve finally found myself after wandering for so long through bumpy streets. There were a lot of aspects that helped to delay that path, and maybe I talk about some of them in future posts.

But, certainly, the thing I wanted to be THE MOST since forever was a singer. And a songwriter. I don’t even remember how old I was when I’ve written my first song, but I know that I was very young, like eight or something. And, let me tell you, THAT was where I’d put all my love, my inspiration, my feelings, my thoughts, my soul. If there’s something I can say I’ve loved doing since I’ve started it, it’s writing songs and singing. I’d write about so many things, of course, but the core theme my songs were based on was love, and anything related, especially my crushes. It couldn’t be different, to be honest, I was obsessed with romance, finding the love of my life, and being loved back by him. So I loved to write about love.

This practice of composing songs started me into the writing world, and, eventually, made me love writing in general, outside of the music sphere. I’ve started a couple of blogs when I was a teenager, and even a Tumblr, to write about whatever looked important. Yes, obviously a lot of it used t be around love, dating, delusion, but also about day-to-day issues, family moments, friends, and personal stories. I was just an inventive, creative, and excited about the world girl, who wanted to write and to be read. 

Over time, that will slowly faded away. I stopped composing, writing, and telling my stories. A lot because of outside perspectives of what I should be doing with my time, what I should be invested in, like studying to pursue an Engineering career or something like that, so I could “make money”, naturally the most important thing in life, they'd say. I don’t blame them, really; they’ve had the best intentions when suggesting those paths, I guess, but that went, little by little, consuming my inspiration to do anything art-related, the things I’ve always liked to dedicate my time to and used to make me feel alive. Don’t you think It’s such a crime to basically take that away of someone?

So this is the main reason why I decided to create this blog, to recover some of that inspired young me that I believe still lives here inside, bring her to the surface again, let her breathe, see the world, play. It’s been a while since she’s been kept in a very deep and uncomfy place. It’s about time to come back, now for good. I hope you like what you’ll find here, my weird thoughts on random subjects, my ramblings about life moments, my tips for things you probably don’t have to spend time on, my recipes (yes, I’m gonna post recipes here, because why not? I’m a good cook! Oh, yeah, I forgot about the time I wanted to be a professional baker, too… well, you see what I was talking about). Anything that comes to my mind when I open up my computer and feel like writing. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it!

Oh, God, I’ve just realized I haven’t told you my name yet: I’m Gabriella. Hi, hello! Who are you there?