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#foggyou OR #fixyou ? (Part 2)

Well, as you could see, why that weird title? #foggyou or #fixyou? What’s that? Well, that’s something that you have to find out for yourself! I can’t make everything easy for you, you have to search for it, search for the hashtags and try to follow my day by day experience here in tumblr, in my facebook and in my Instagram (do you forget my username, don’t bother, it is @sofiavandamme ! ). I’ll try to update it, I promise, and you’ll find many clues and news about those strange hashtags! All I can say is that they’re related with my family problem and that I’ve to find, in person, a guy named João Pereira de Mello, follow my journey and try to find him too, because I’m also searching for him too!

The final day is near, so don’t forget, let’s spread the hashtags and make it a trend so we can both face this challenge together!

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#foggyou OR #fixyou ?

And here I am today, telling you here my story! All by background is here and you can know my real story and what I lived and faced!

Nowadays, as I said before, I’m leaving all my myself in Porto, downtown Porto. I had to leave home because I was sick of doing all the same things, sick and tired of trying to please, I needed to escape, breaking free! I kept my friends and the relationship with my mother and yes, you can relax, Gonçalo is out of the Institute and he is by my side! He had to move to Lisbon to study Photography and Cinema but he will be back soon and then we will have a couple life and live together!

All my life has been an experience and life should be like that! Why prefer it to my easy and calm? A bittersweet life is awesome and makes everything more pleasant and meaningful! If I was success with mine why can’t you? Think out of the box, make it different! But, before that I’ll present you a challenge, stay tuned…

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The [R]encounter with my Mom (Part 2)

My mother, after the I returned from the Institute, started to be closer to me, serving to me as both models of mother and father, because Paule, my father, was not into the father role. He was always out because of the wine business and he was a little negligent regarding the father duties.

My mom introduced me to the Fogg’s Journey telling me my father left the family to travel around, after reading a mysterious diary belonging to the Fix family, her English ancestors. I thought that was sort of a weird thing, but I had to play the game, even if I wasn’t truly into it, I was just pleasing my mother! I just wanted to end it all and live it in the softer way.

After reading all the entries of the diary, I tried to catch my father at home to ask him some questions, and that would’ve turned out to be a huge accomplishment, since he was away most of the time! But, in a Sunday, at lunch before going to golf, I had a conversation with him and he revealed to me that was all true what was written in the diary and that amazed me. But, unlike my mother, he told me to leave everything as it was, as it was an ancient quarrel, almost 120 years ago, which was a waste of time.

The conversation just made me a little bit curious, because it reminded me of Mr. Campos challenges and I wanted to be involved in it, even if I was, again, faking my purpose, because I just was in the mood to shut up my mother and end up all this family mess. Then, my mother presented me several documents that my father kept in a coffer in the attic, like the notes from Detective Fix when he was chasing Phileas Fogg and other photographs from my father, never seen before by me. With those documents and the entries from the diary, my mother illustrated the magnitude of the Fix family’s humiliation (but it was so many decades ago, why do my family not bury this issue?).

In addition, my mom also revealed to me that sometimes there is a need to step forward and take hard decisions that are the right ones. She also told me that “the honour means nothing when the matter is protecting the loved ones or taking important steps like taking incompetent people out of the way” (that made me think about being sent to the Institute, but that story you already know). I understood what my mother was meaning with that and I tried to show to her that I was convinced that clearing the Fix name was worthy and a noble cause and she kept reminding me that family is what matters most.

“Sometimes the ends justify the means” she told me, I would try to live with that sentence on my mind.

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The [R]encounter with my Mom

The day has come… I had to face my mom after everything she has done, after she sent her own daughter to an institute, away from everybody and everything I loved and cared about… I didn’t think she could understand that, a parent should never do that to a son, why would her do that to me?

She apologized… “I am so sorry for what I’ve done Sofia, you didn’t deserve to be sent to an isolated place… I thought it would be the best for you but then I regretted… But since I kept in touch with the Institute and they told me you were doing fine I preferred to keep you there instead of bringing you home angry with me and Mr. Campos told me that you were evolving positively in the process so I thought it was the best!”.

I listened to everything she had to tell me and lastly I told her “I could be doing fine but that wasn’t fair for me, that wasn’t my real life! I never expected you would have the courage to send your daughter way from you! You were my mother for god sake! I could be used to the fact of having my father always away from me and showing me that he didn’t care but you demonstrated love for me, a peculiar kind of love, but you tried… It broke me apart to see what you have done to me! I hope you are happy with your decision! But, after all, the Institute was good for me and I’m a different girl, ready for problems and challenges! The daughter you always wanted me to be!”

Then Maria said “I’m so sorry again… It seems that now you are really ready for the family challenge! Let’s start from the beginning, I’ll help you in everything I can!”

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Come Back, Be Here (Part 2)

The Douro landscape is marvelous… This was one of the few reasons I thought it would be better to leave the institute! Nothing is more worthy than this nature and this freedom! So much fields and trees and I can’t wait to walk through our property and get lost again!

Besides that, I would be back to my own bedroom and I would have my friends back because I know I can always count on them! And maybe it’s time to get a pet, I never had the opportunity to have one but now I’ll work it out and I’ll go to adopt one! They are as lonely as me and they deserve to be loved and to be cherished by someone, so why it could not be me?

I started to recognize my surroundings and I knew I was near my property, would be someone waiting for me? Or would I be treated, again, like I didn’t exist? I didn’t know what to expect!

The gate opened, he made the avenue and there we go until the big house… The only one waiting for me was the housemaid, always loyal and ready to help me. They both picked up all my luggage and carried them inside. And there was my mom… Waiting for me in the office… Lourdes, our housemaid, told me to go there because she wanted to talk with me as soon as I arrived… I gulped, I entered the office and I closed the doors!

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Come Back, Be Here

There I was, coming back home with my mind splitted in two locations: The Institute and my Home. I even asked myself the reason why I called my “home” for the world “home” … It was supposed to be the place where I feel safe, where I feel protected, where I feel loved and everybody should care about me… But I never felt like that at home! And that was the reason I was also thinking about the Institute! I knew it was a distorted reality but at least, some part of me, felt good there! Gonçalo was also there and he was special to me, at that point he was part of my life because we made a promise to wait for each other and I was going to make it!

I was away of home a long time and I didn’t know if something changed there or if my family was closer or apart but I knew my mother would put me updated about everything! And… What about my dad?! It seems like he was comfortable with my mom’s decision on putting me in the institute… Otherwise he would take me out of there or tried to contact me but no… He never sent an e-mail or even a letter so I didn’t understand what kind of family I had…

Out of the blue I found myself thinking again about Mr. Campos plan… How could he know that I was faking it? I was always so careful and tried my best to not show it but he still found a way of knowing the true and that was impressive, but at the same time, at the end, I felt like he was playing with me and with my feelings since he made me feel like that just because he knew I would do what he wanted even if I was fooling him…

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Ultimate Defiance (Part 2)

The day as come and there was I and Mr. Campos, just the two of us in the same room, and same room that received the other challenges I faced. There wasn’t anyone beside us, no Regina and her friends, no other person, no other exam with questions to test my psychological side, I was confused for sure…

Suddenly Mr. Campos asked me if I wasn’t suspicious about the way he treated me and about the way he tried to protect me… I blushed briefly and then I said that I thought he liked me as a student, a student that always did what he offered, that answered everything and that was able to solve every problem that could showed up! If it wasn’t because of that I wouldn’t know why he would be so nice for me!

He laughed between his lips and then he said that he was also faking it! And something caught my attention! He said “also”! He continued to talk saying “I always knew you were faking in every challenge I prepared for you, maybe with one exception, with the Regina’s one, but that wasn’t a problem, since you find the solution for everything I think you have something to work with, even if you faked it! You weren’t the first one to try that and you won’t be the last so I can see the kind of girls like you who think that can twist my mind, but that’s impossible!”

I was perplexed… I didn’t know what to say or do! It was just like someone froze me… To make the moment even harder he adds “And I wouldn’t have any kind of relationship with a student or even anyone else since I signed a paper to not have any time of relation with anyone, so sorry hon if I disappointed you” … My anger and hate reached a level that I thought I wasn’t able! I never anticipated that someone like Mr. Campos would do that to me, I always thought that he was genuinely being sincere and honest but at the end it was all fake… What started to be fake from me just turned out to be fake to all the sides! At that moment I was just relieved to have chosen Gonçalo to be with me because if I turned him down I wouldn’t have anyone by now and I would leave the institute empty handed!

But at that moment I couldn’t show him that I was sort of ruined so I preferred to face it with class! I told him: “Don’t you think that it’s boring how people talk? Making smart with their words again, well, I’m bored! I came here just because of my mom and her family’s problems but now, because of you, I’m prepared to face the world, to use my mind and head carefully and now I can face every trouble in my life experience!

He smiled and said his last words: “It seems that you weren’t a waste of time, as I and you said before, you could be faking it but you solved all the problems and that’s honourable! Congratulations, your training is complete and you’re able to leave the Institute!”

I gave him a handshake and I left the room smiling because it’s a new art form showing people how little we care, I pretended to be happy even when I were smiling out of fear because the real life was coming and I had to face my mom and all the problems…

With all my bags and stuffs packed from my institute’s bedroom, all prepared by the orders of Miss Magda Vilar, I was ready to come back home! I gave my first and last kiss (until we meet again) to Gonçalo and we both cried because it would take three more years to see each other but we promised to wait, we could make it!

My family’s driver put everything in the car trunk and I left the Institute… Goodbye Institute, goodbye Regina, Carla and Gisela, goodbye Mr. Campos and, with much pain, goodbye Gonçalo, see you soon!

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Cutting people out of my life does not mean I hate them, it simply mean i respect them

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Ultimate Defiance

I knew the final challenge was coming so I had to put my mind together! I had to decide what to do after it and what would that bring to me in the near future!  So, what did I decide? I decided to tell Gonçalo how I felt, it was the most authentic way and I was realistic at that time and I knew that I wouldn’t have a positive answer from Mr. Campos, that was just a platonic love and I wouldn’t turn out into something real and meaningful. I had the luck to hear a positive answer from the other side too, Gonçalo was also into me and he approached me earlier because of that. I was the kind of girl that he loved, a girl prepared for challenges but that at the same time with the head in the right place, a girl that he thought that could stay at his side and that we were both prepared to protect each other from everything and everybody!

So he told me to leave the Institute, because that wasn’t the right place for me, the Institute was a paralleled world where everything was organized and controlled and real life wasn’t like that, everybody there was leaving like a hamster in a cage and that wasn’t a future for anyone, at least for a person like me, he said that I deserved better. But there was one problem, Gonçalo would only leave the Institute when a boy he met was able to leave it too, because he wasn’t able to face the Institute by himself and Gonçalo was the only friend of him. That boy, named Diogo, would be able to leave the Institute as soon as he reached the eighteen years old, and since he was my age, fifteen, he had to wait for three more years. I accepted the situation and I would probably do the same if I was in the place of that boy, because I already was that boy, friendless and all by myself, and I would love to have someone like Gonçalo to take care of me.

I started to prepare myself for the last task but I didn’t know what to expect, Mr. Campos was always so ingenious that I wasn’t able to predict the challenge so everything could happen… I preferred to go to the nature and take a little bit of rest while that were my last days in the Institute, since the Institute already told my mom to pick me up right after the challenge.

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Should I Stay or Should I Go? (Part 2)

However, there were other issues… They were named Mr. Campos and Gonçalo…

I knew I had feelings for both of them, I just didn’t know what was right! Gonçalo was 17 years old, near my age and most reliable and possible to happen. But Mr. Campos was so mature and stable in life that could protect me from everything and everybody and I knew that if I had him by my side I would be always safe that no one would reach me, plus he was the man of every girl dreams!

But then there were the problems: Mr. Campos was teacher at the institute and he couldn’t leave it because he was permanent there and Gonçalo already thought that the best for him was staying in the Institute for some years until he controls himself and until he makes himself the man that he wanted to be… So I was left with that…

If I leave the Institute who would be there to protect me? To give me that kind of confidence that they only knew… That was driving me crazy!

 What was the best for me? Should I tell them about how I feel? Should I just tell one of them? HELP ME!

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Should I Stay or Should I Go?

All my family problems came to my thoughts and made me think about all my life until that point. What was I doing in the Institute? Can I leave the Institute and have my ordinary life back? Would that be the way? I couldn’t sleep with all that running through my mind!

Once Mr. Campos told me that some of the students preferred to stay at the Institute instead of leaving it and that would be possible if your parents signed some papers (if you were under eighteen) or if you reach the eighteen years old there and then it was up to you to decide. There they were protected and had so many places where they could work and be paid and they could decide if they want to leave it at any time and go back to the “real world”. I started to think about that and If I wanted to stay there and avoid my lonely (real) life and start a new chapter and stay there, for as long as I wanted! Maybe start a career there and then go to another similar, out of there, at any other place.

The possibilities were so many and so much better if they were compared to the real world that I was sort of lost… But at the same time I thought about what I was losing from the real world, the love of my friends Margarida and Joana, my adventures through the vineyards, the Douro River, my own bedroom and all the stuff I left behind, all of that was part of me… Would be fair to leave it all behind?

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Super/Ordinary Girl (Part 2)

But Gonçalo wasn’t the only one made me feel safe and secure at the institute, Mr Campos produced the same effects on my and I started to feel like I was in a rollercoaster, overwhelmed with feeling and without knowing what to feel…

I faced all the challenges that he brought to me and at each day he was even more confident about me and about my evolution, when I knew that some of them was just me getting into the theatre and knowing that was something that he arranged.

I knew I was getting to an end with the Institute and that sooner or later I would have my final challenge and I had to come back home… That made me think about everything… Everything that happened me before the Institute, what happened during the time I spent there and then what could the future bring to me…

You never know what can happen to you but at least I knew I could have allies with me, with Gonçalo or Mr. Campos taking care of me and giving me advices, I would be able to accomplish everything! And I was happy to say that I could control my both sides, the good one and the bad one!

Would I be able to face, again, my family problems and make everything right for them?

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Super/Ordinary Girl

After the fight with Regina, Carla & Gisela, other boys and girls started to talk with me and I didn’t feel alone like I felt before, even at my normal life. Outside the institute I was the freak, the girl who just had to friends and that nobody liked. At the institute I was seen as the hero, the girl of faced the mean girls and stayed “alive”!

I started to feel that maybe the Institute was the place where I belonged, where people could understand me and see the truth behind me! It’s true that there were people with many problems and they would be restricted to that environment and their personality would be different from their original one, but that was the reality for me because it was the one that I was living! Everything seemed so cohesive to me that I wish I could stay there longer, away of my problems and family’s issues!

Besides all the heroism part, I met a guy named Gonçalo who started to be by my side everyday, every time, making sure that I wouldn’t be hurt again and that no one would mess up with me! It was the first time that a boy acted with me like that and I started to have a mix of emotions and I didn’t know what to do so I preferred to live the moment without thinking about the next day, because you never know what can happen in the future…

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Fight Back (Part 2)

Out of nowhere, my first challenge appears and my hate and anger had to be tested!

In one of his classes, an outdoor one, a group of three girls started to tease me, they were Regina, Carla and Gisela, the mean girls of the class I was in. I was just focused on my book and they surrounded me and started to call me mean names and saying bad stuff. I tried to not pay them attention but they never stopped and they reached my boiling point! I closed the book very quickly and I got up off the floor and started to give them some answers. Regina listened to all of it (looking at her nails like nothing was happening) and then asked me if I was done, I said no but she said that was over for her and she threw me to the ground and the other two started to laugh about me and saying “oh poor girl”. Immediately I got up again and I called her and in the minute she turned her face to me I punched her in the face! She passed out and Carla and Gisela were in shock! They just stayed there giving her little slaps in the face and pinching her seeing if she could wake up. Mr. Campos saw everything and didn’t told me nothing, he just saw what I did and he didn’t interfere. Finally, my anger was set free and I felt relieved, I turned back smiling and went to my bedroom.

I felt that I shouldn’t have done that but they were really testing my nerves and I started to see the other side of me, that I couldn’t be always passive and the “poor girl”, like they said, I had to defend myself, even knowing that fighting wasn’t the right answer, but at that moment it felt the right solution, and I shut up Regina’s mouth!

Mr. Campos came to me the next day, after my practicing at the tennis court, and congratulated me. He said that sooner or later I had to defend myself and conversations won’t always be the solution, even if I tried so, and he was happy that I could see that, because after talking to Regina everything remained the same so I had to fight back, literally. Besides that, he also mentioned that he arranged all that theatre, talking before with Regina, Carla and Gisela if they would be available to do such job, and they accepted it, so I wouldn’t be in trouble because of what I’ve done. And now everything matches since they didn’t have reasons to bully me…

I was smarter than that and I knew better than that but there was something about him that was tough to resist, the way he teached me was so hard that I couldn’t desist! Day-by-day, Mr. Campos showed me different challenges and problems so I could find solutions for them so I could build up my dark side!

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Fight Back

Mr. Campos intrigued me like no one before and it may be wrong to get to know him more and I was certainly unsure on what to do but for now I had to get into this game and face all the things we would bring me.

I’d like to know him a little bit more so I could play with his mind, making him think that I was into those classes and into everything he could possibly teach me. So how could I do that? I didn’t have internet to search information about him and I couldn’t go to the places where they kept all the people’s information. But I had to find a solution! He belonged to my darker side, he was supposed to bring the bad girl in me, I could see myself falling in line, like the other girls over time and I wanted more and I was so sure! I had to go right to the point!

He started to get into me and in the one-to-one classes he was cool with me, he teached me how could I be bad but at the same time how to be bad because I had to, we can’t be nice in all of kind of situations. I was always so passive that I didn’t fight back, just like what happened with my mother, she just slapped me and I didn’t say a thing, I just ran to my bedroom… I couldn’t be like that! At least I could have responded to her and say my opinion! And that was just the beginning because at each lesson he was becoming harder with me, teaching different levels of hate and anger.

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The Institute (Part 2)

It’s the first day of classes, I didn’t know what to expect, my professor was named Alberto Campos and I didn’t know how he looked like. But I went early to the classroom because I didn’t want to arrive late so I had to find it first and, because of that I arrived early and I had to wait there. But, at 9am, a man, in the 30’s, very tall and strong, arrived, it was him. I saw that I was the only one there waiting for him, we both entered the classroom and then he started the class.

At first he started to talk with me, regular conversation, asking me where I was from, what did I do for leaving, what did I like and similar questions, maybe to get to know me better so he could work me better. Suddenly he started to ask me what could make me anger, what kind of stuff I hated and another negative related questions and I didn’t understand, at first, the reason of those question but later I found out, those question where intended to built up my negative side, so I could work with my family on their problem…

I took that as a challenge, a game, so I would play with fairness and engaging it however faking it (I was sort of a pro on that). He never saw that and we started to work with each other, I always did what he told me to do so I could leave that institute faster and come back to my real life.

After all this wouldn’t be a bad experience at all, at least I could avoid my life and my problems for a little bit and I could learn a little bit more, even if it was about all the issues, problems and bad related with life, but since I had a lonely and sad life I could embrace that and build me up so I could face life in the future, because life ain’t a sea of roses!

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The Institute

At the Institute, I met a woman, Magda Vilar, who knew all my story and background, what I thought strange but then she said she knew my mom and she told her everything about me so now I understand how she could know me.

She showed me all the principal places of the institute and guide me to my own bedroom where I left my bags and stuff and then she told me that I would start my lessons in the next day with Professor Alberto Campos and that I would have classes with him, for five hours, each day, and some extra activities. The bedroom, again, was all covered on white: white bed, white closet, white desk and chair, white window… At that moment I understood why people were acting like that, or at most a little bit, that was too much white at the same place! Even I was a bit overwhelmed by that bedroom!

So, after putting everything in the right place at my bedroom, I decided to see a little bit more of the institute. It had the auditorium and the garden, as I said before but, besides that, it had three floors, one of them being underground just having classrooms, and the two others having classrooms and bedrooms; a court where you could play games like basketball, volleyball, badminton and soccer; a gymnasium with some machines and that kind of stuff; and, finally, a little forest with pine trees and corks, where you could walk and get a little bit of freedom, a little bit because all the institute was surrounded by electric fences so no one could get away.

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Do We Even Matter (Part 2)

How it will be there? It’s certainly a place to make up my mind so why would my mom sent me there? They had to have some mind blowing person or place to change all my thoughts and the person that I am. That would be a difficult task but I was up to challenges. I always was. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t survive by myself in the real world?! I was used to go to school alone, to play alone at home, to spend the holidays locked at home, walking through the vineyards of my parents, looking up for some small animals, to play with them. Eventually I could go round and round and get myself lost (not truly lost but you know what I mean) and then I would find the Douro River, so big and so beautiful and that made me calm, relaxed and peaceful, it was just about me and the nature.

Finally, I arrived to the destination, I just knew that I was in Amarante, I didn’t know anything else. We were in the front of a small house, an ordinary house and it didn’t seem to be anything different until I got inside! It had some kind of appearance of psychiatric hospital, all the walls were white and it was full of rooms, besides that it had a huge square garden in the inside and a huge auditorium. Some people were walking around and some of them were just sheltered with straightjacket and that scared me! What was I doing there?!

So, I had the opportunity to begin something from the start: new place, new people, let’s face the adventure!