He did not know what he was looking for, but it seemed as if he was always searching. As if he would at some point find anything. An answer. While he didn't even know what question was being asked.
As his feet hit the gravel in the path, he wondered mildly what it would be like to simply start running. But he didn't have the disposition to.
He would walk until he was on the riverside and for a while there was concrete and block pathway, until it gave into to a trail among grass and weed made up of an ever humid earth and sometimes even gravel.
And he had always walked that path. Ever the same. Concrete blocks, giving away to nature. The perfect clash between urban and nature.
He went back and forth.
Until today. When he finally found somehting.
He had never noticed that by the riverside there was a gate.
It was a very solid iron gate, the white paint covering old and marred by time.
Said gate was covered in menacing barbed wires and along with the sign that covered it, it sent the message that it was forbidden to walk through it.
Beyond the gate there was a walkway, made out of concrete, which gave out to a footbridge made out of wood with handles on the side.
It was strange because even though he had been up and down this path a million times, he had never crossed upon that gate. He'd never encountered said bridge. It was like those elements had been conjured out of sheer will.
And it couldn't have been built from one day to the other. The thing looked old and weathered and certainly abandoned and poorly kept. As if it had been built, used for the longest time and now it was just abandoned.
His eyes could not muster where that footbridge led. It went farther and farther into the river until he could not see where it lead. It seemed to lead into the other margin. What a bridge is supposed to do. Connect the two ends.
But that day he thought nothing of it. He continued on his usual walk and bit bothered because he had never noticed that gate and that pathway.
Going back home he had already put the gate and the walkway out of his mind. After all any adult person had other things on their mind.
The next day, waking up early he dressed for his walk and as he was quickly going down the stairs he sprained his ankle, and so for a week he could not go for his usual walk.
Dreams of the gate opening and him walking the footbridge during the night plagued him. He did not understand why he was dreaming of such things. He hadn't even noticed the thing was there before, he had only seen it once and not even considered it again. Nevertheless, as his limb decreased the swelling, his will to go there and look at the goddamned gate and put it out of his mind loomed over him.
As soon as he got better, because until getting to the riverside it was long walk, he put on his sneakers and walked the same concrete blocked ground, that then gave into nature and gravel. As he went up and down the path he was shocked and bothered because there wasn't any gate, nor a footbridge. No walkway. He felt simply insane that something he had seen and then constantly dreamt about just wasn't there.
Had it all been a dream? Had he not seen the gate? Was it all just a figment of his imaginaton?
Finishing his usual walk he tried to put the gate out of his mind as best as he could.
But the thought of seeing something that he had never noticed before, and then dreaming about it and going to it and never seeing again was just tormenting.
Some would say it was just the january winter weather, but she knew why she felt colder in this particular day. It wasn't because she was only wearing pants, a not so warm sweater and a skimpy coat, it was because abandonment had it's cold grip on her. She looked down at the color of her clothes, thinking the red sweater might thaw out the frigidness in the center of her chest. The cheap fabric of the scarf she wore, that usually chafed around her neck, wasn't even a bother anymore, because she couldn't feel it properly.
She was numb.
Here she was, sitting at the bus stop. And it still felt like she was waiting, ever waiting. The sleeping bag sitting on her lap felt like a dead weight. As her hands clutched on it, she was trying to feel something - anything - rather than the pull. The pull towards that bottomless pit.
She knew moments like this always led somewhere. And they were definetly here. They washed over you like waves. They brought you down - crashing! - making you tumble on the seabed, until you were just a pile of limbs, seawater, salt and sand. And then they dragged you, suffocating you, and making you dizzy and panic, because you think, you have the complete belief, that this is it! You're going to die. Or, you'd rather die. But then, there was a moment of peace, utter bliss. When for a moment, the movement of the waves, the limbs, the pull and the swallowing of the sea and the breathing - it all stopped. When you stopped thrashing and waves brought your body back up ashore.
You feel tired, beaten down and battered. You can breathe but each time your chest hurts unimaginably. Nevertheless it was safe again. Firmly laid down on the land. It was just a matter of mustering up the courage to get up and walk on trembling limbs that would rather give up and surrender.
But alas, as she waited, for no one in particular, feeling the cold of the metal bench, she was tired. Tired of getting herself thrown at the sea and getting back up, just to be thrown and dive dangerously yet again. She wanted to wave a white flag. She was tired of the swallowing down and spitting you up routine.
It was cold, but this time the cold resolved her. This time, she wouldn't sit around just waiting for the next crushing impact. She had to search for self solace. She had to stare at what brought her down.
So she waited. Until the bus to her destination got there. It was hard waiting, it required patience. Funny how waiting for someone or something was easy. But waiting for herself, and for what she wanted and needed, was always hard. It was easier letting the cold slip in, easier to let the numbness take over.
The bus was finally there. Her destination was certain. She got up, left the bag at the bench at the bus stop and embarked on the journey. She looked at the sleeping bag packed tightly on it's case. Just there, left, abandoned, with no purpose. Maybe it would do someone else good, maybe it would just go to the trash. So she tried leaving those feelings behind, leaving in that cotton and polyester dead-weight. As the bus started moving and she sat at her seat near the window, she felt the coldness thawing out and staying behind.
And so, she headed to the beach. To stare at the waves.
Today at the hospital is very quiet. Even though we have only a few staff members, here or there there's always a bustling sound of people going from one room to the other, going up and down the elevators. The construction workers doing a lot of noise.
But today the tone is different, more somber. Looking around, there's only two people I can see. Two female guards watching videos on their phones, making a lot of noise the eletronic sound coming out. But I know in other room's there are more people. The doctors and the social workers. So I can hear pens being picked up and laid back down, typing on keybords, doors opening and closing.
I commented earlier with another employee that the hospital was very quiet today. Turns out, a lot of people in the infirmary are not saturating very well. And the ICU is full. So the tone is somber because people are on the verge. So it's full hands on deck.
The perks of working in a COVID hospital.
No smells today though. But usually I do notice them. I think that is what I noticed the most. And I think, despite wearing a mask I can still smell this.
Sometimes it's perfume, or alcohol. It's either the cleaning producs they use at the hospital. Sometimes the smell of blood is so strong that I fear I may partly be a vampire because I can always smell it and taste it very dinstinguishedly. Sometimes is urine and you can always smell the pungent smell of sickness. Some patients here smell awful. They are bathed in bed, so they're not bathed properly.
Swimming was fun, but she had this inkling in the back of her mind that she was not that good at it. Maybe it was the fact that she got a terrible grade at swimming lessons, or all the people making fun or her for it. As she swam, it wasn't just her and the water, and the wetness and the technique, it was what all of those people said. Before jumping into the pool, she shook her head trying to wipe these thoughts away. When she was about to jump, she heard the warning.
-You either get to the other side fast or they'll get you. - Confusion hit her, until she saw the teenage aligator's cage. Her trainer was realising them after her. She knew they'd get to her if she wasn't fast. Jumping, she did indeed wipe away the critic's thoughts, and so she focused on the movement, on the strenght and eloquency of the syncrony of her limbs. And she cut through the pool's water in such swiftness. You'd never think of her as anything else than the very best. That was until, something struck her on the shoulder.
I canceled my plane ticket to the UK, which means I canceled my trip to Portugal. Well, because of COVID it was already canceled, but I decided if I wanted to reschedule or if I wanted to keep it there so I could in the future, until december 31st, schedule a new trip.
Now it's a matter of wait and see. I am finally coming to terms that for a while, maybe 4 to 6 months, I'm still gonna be here. The latest date might be the correct one.
I try not to think about all the things I'm gonna miss with her, like valentine's day, my birthday (27 years old, damn). But sometimes, before I fall into slumber, that's all I can think about.
After therapy I guess it got into my thick skull that I do have to make a movement. Think about what am I gonna do now that I do have to stay more time?
The tickets are bought.
The money is saved.
Now is just a matter of moving out of this COVID hospital life and finding a new job. Adapting to a new place and a new neighborhood.
I was already embracing a change like that. But I thought it was gonna be home. Turns out not yet.
So... I have to be patient, and keep on doing whatever I can. Stop rushing and having time for myself. Making sure I have money to save and to pay the bills. I'll be fine, I'll go eventually, I just have to be patient.
"The universe is unraveling. It still is. We won the day. We won the battle. We won whatever unit of measurement you care to say that we won [...]. But, of course, we did not stop the unraveling of the universe. The universe is not a thing that is, it is not a thing at all. It is the very action of it's going [...].
So look at the fleeting starts with fleeting eyes, and feel how the earth beneath you gives. It is all a temporary manifestation of particles, and it is all unraveling back to particulate silence. The bustle of the human day will come and will go. An then, there will be night.
But how beautiful these moments within the dissolve! What a temporary perfection we can find within this passing world! Everything good ever done! Everything good that was done today, and all the good people doing it, and back and back and forward and forward, all of that beauty within a universe unraveling.
Todo texto que se inicia assim já sabem que vai ser um desabafo.
Tenho que me conformar e me contentar? Sim. São coisas que me fogem do controle? Óbvio. Mas não significa que meus sentimentos em relação a isso vão sumir só por que eu me conformo e me contento. E acho que a era da conformidade ainda não chegou, pois me sinto inconformada.
Sinto que as coisas estão sem sentido. Esse é o problema de colocar todas as suas expectativas em uma coisa só. Principalmente se essa coisa seria se mudar para outro país no meio (e eu já nem sei se é o meio, pois parece não ter fim), de uma pandemia mundial. É muito ruim você mentalmente se planejar para algo e o único fator que te impede é: COVID-19...
Me sinto inconsolável. Até o presente momento não consigo me conectar com coisas que possivelmente possam me fazer sentir melhor. Sei que focar no agora, não deixar para fazer as coisas SÓ quando viajar ou SÓ quando eu souber a data da viagem, vai me fazer bem. E vai me resgatar do limbo. Mas eu não consigo me conectar com isso. Não sei se por as coisas estarem ainda frescas. Mas todo esforço que eu faço parece... inútil. Que mesmo que seja um excelente esforço e merecedor de orgulho não me vai levar a lado nenhum.
Escrever está sendo bom para mim. Mas a angustia que fica de não poder fazer o que quero há muito tempo dói. Fico me culpando o tempo todo, com frases como: "Porque que não acordei mais cedo pro meu sonho?", "Porque que não fui antes?", "Porque que não fiquei?", e eu só consigo me culpar por ter deixado passar as oportunidades quando elas existiam. E agora me sinto presa, sem oportunidades.
Eu, conscientemente, com toda a lógica, sei que vai chegar um dia em que eu vou poder viajar, esse ano ainda. Mas não consigo deixar de desacreditar nas coisas. Não querer nem sequer me deixar aproximar desse pedaço de esperança.
Talvez, o que eu possa fazer é deixar algumas perguntas para eu de daqui um ano. Saber se ela vai responder do jeito que eu espero. A eu de daqui um ano, supostamente vai estar em Portugal.
1) Você está em Portugal?
2) Como é estar com ela?
3) Foi difícil encontrar trabalho?
4) Já está perto da sua documentação sair?
5) Já está perto de comprar a casa ou estão pelo menos a meio do caminho?
6) Diga cinco das suas memorias favoritas com a Mariana e se puder poste fotos.
7) Seus irmãos estão todos com você? Onde eles estão? Conseguiram ser um pouco mais felizes do que estão neste momento?
8) Quanto tempo demorou até você conseguir viajar? Foi difícil o tempo que você ainda teve que esperar?
9) Como foi a viagem?
10) Para que outros lugares vocês viajaram?
11) O que você já sabe e vai fazer para atuar na sua área?
12) Como é ter uma família perto de você de novo?
Espero que em 1 ano, eu consiga responder as perguntas e que eu esteja onde eu sonho em estar.
Now. That is such an impactful word. It can mean urgency, and exclamation ‼️ can just be you naming the time perceived as the present.
But what is the now? Are you talking about your entire day that has passed? Or is it about this moment right now that I'm here writing this and you are here reading it? Or is it the tomorrow, when you're gonna start putting all of your plans you planned the day before into motion?
What can be considered living here, in the now?
Then I guess I'm gonna be here, on my now, writing a story.
There they were, once again, looking out into the sky and wondering. Pondering. That's what the sky and the horizon always made them feel. Like there was a sea full of possibilities. And where possibilities lie, there is wondering, pondering. Today they looked at the sky and it seemed to bring a warning. The air smelled like wet earth, just how it does when rain starts to fall, but it was not yet raining. But just like your body can antecipate digestion, by making you salivate as soon as you see food, the earth begins to flare up it's scent as soon as the sky gives a hint it's going to pour down the earth and quench it's thirst.
That same smell ways brought them back feelings of renewal, as if the rain to come was going to wash the earth and the world anew. And so their feelings would be poured down and dragged down by the water, cleansed. A thirst that they always felt for new beginnings quenched.
And so the sky was full of possibilities.
And among them was the sense of peace, that the sky, everyday, is beautiful in different ways.
The clouds can behave in it in different shapes, and sizes and forms. And they can present themselves in different colours and that does not make them less beautiful.
The clouds could just stay there looking pretty, or they could rage and rebel and bring up a great amount of damage. It was up to nature really. All these factors that can make something inside the cloud shift and make it pour out.
But just like every cloud has the potential to become a devastating storm, a cloud can also be a gentle shade in a very sunny day. They can even politely bow down in a cold winter day part and let the sun thaw the freezing tendrils out.
What are we but clouds in a beautiful tormented sky. One day, everyday, our sky might be different, we can come shaped differently, or have diverging colours, but we're all clouds. We make part of a beautiful sky.
The sky reminds me of... Me. Gives me peace because it reminds me of it's ever changing nature and so it reminds me of me. And how it's okay if someday it's sunny and others it's pouring rain.
I've been wanting to get back to writing, but much like everything else inspiration to do so feels like a chore. I keep waiting for this big idea to come up and hit me just like when I was 17, but of course it won't. There's a lot of grown up stuff here clawing it's way and wrestling with inspiration, motivation.
I know I shouldn't see it as a battle and actually make room for each of the feelings, thoughts, ideas and responsibilities. But unfortunately I am still at a state that they are bickering with each other. But I think I'll get there.
I think I'll get to the place where there's this big house and even though stuff in my head may not have their separate room, within the house there's little things in the decoration and in the feel of it, that is just each and everyone of them. The thoughts, the ideas, the feelings, the responsabilities. It looks and smells like them, because it's their space and their home.
So, to get back to writting I was suggested to do some prompts and I thought before I was ready but maybe not. But now I think I am. And it's finally time to stop waiting for the everything feel right, for the stars to align, the sun hit your face for the perfect picture... I need to stop wanting for things to be perfect to start doing things I enjoy and things that are pleasurable.
I just grabbed the first prompt I saw and it talked about body image and the relationship you have with you're body.
And the prompt was:
Think about the time that you experienced a shift in your relationship with your ody. What caused this shift? Did it last?
I think this one went right in the feels.
Lately in therapy I have been focusing a lot in my eating disorder. On how the eating disorder is nothing but a symptom about the way I feel towards my body and how I see myself. I have mistreated it a lot. I have constatly looked at myself in mirror and blacked out glasses enough times to judge me as "big". As "ugly". I have always physically put myself down and that always translated to my intelligence. I always felt like this person who was just avarage at everything that they did. And that as much I would like to think of myself as smart, intelligent, hardworking and caring, none of that would amount to anything. Long story short, that meant my self estem was rubish.
I have mistreated my body for SO long. It all goes back to when I was 15-17 and I was bullimic, I'd drink tea, sometimes I'd starve. I'd binge and purge. I thought I had gotten better when I found out I had a thyroid issue and lost a lot of weight. But I still could not see myself as small, just big. My waist straight and not curvy. My back still too large and unlike the other girls. Every clothes I tried on, even being skinny felt wrong.
And so I found another way to mistreat my body, coupled with starvatin, because I was past the bing and purge phase, I was abusing stuff, namedly alcohol and sex. I was using it as a coping mechanism. Much like people cut themselves so they don't kill themselves. Yet again harming my body. In a way that looking back, as a lesbian, and forcing myself to be in these straight relationships was just unforgivable in some aspects.
So going in and out of abusive relationships, that I was treated as less then, I gained weight, a LOT, I lost weight, and gained again and lost and gained until - I was at my limit. 107 kg was just too much. I couldn't even bare to look at myself. That was the result of an extremely abusive straight relationship, mentally, physically and sexually. I was deep down in a depression so bad I was wishing I was just dead and did not exist. I believed myself a waste of space. The guy was extremelly homophobic on top of that, even though at the time, since the beginning of the relaitonship I had disclosed I was Bi.
After I broke up and moved back home, I was in a terrible state, dangerously overweight and with high blood pressure, depressed and experimenting a tremenduous case of body dysmorphia. That had been there with me for the longest time, I just had never given much thought to it.
Now in a safe place I started therapy, I realized cycles had to be broken and I finally came to terms with something that was very evident. I am a lesbian. It felt both rejoycing and sad to say it out loud and disclose to the closest people to me. Because, it felt to me like I knew it all along and still... I let myself be abused over and over again, raped out of my body, in straight relationships.
After this realization, and coming to terms with who I've always been, it felt freeing, and I felt like myself. I would look at myself in the mirror and star to recognize me. I saw a glimmer in my eyes and I thought it was just hapinnes, but turns out it was a glimmer of recognition. No longer seeing myself in the mirror was about ackowladging if I was "hot or not", "skinny or not", "good looking or not". It was about, am I seeing me, or am I seeing someone else I don't know? And yes I was finally seing me.
It always takes me back to when I was in straight relationships and after sex or after waking up, or after those quiet times that I was laying next to them with my thought and I would look at my hand, for minutes... and the seemed completely foreign. I did not know who's hand it was. I just felt like of course it was my hand because I was using it, but I had no idea was the person inside who was operation on it. I felt like I was a shell, or just a carcass and there was some tiny person taking over and taking control and doing all the things that had to be done for me.
(Listen to this while reading the text)
That was why I looked at my body and completely despised it. Because that was what I had reduced myself to. Just the shell, the exoskeleton that need to be shed. Skin, bones, veins, blood, cells and nerve endings. Just an object. Even in the days I would look at myself in the mirror it would be as if I was looking at some girl and I found her extremely attractive, perfect make up and features, but I could never make the connection as her being me.
And a few months back, June 2020, I was feeling like I belonged in my body. That my arm was my arm, that my hand was my hand! And it was all beautiful. I had started to love the skin and body I lived in. But that did not last for long, the rush of self descovery soon dwindled, because it's not just about realizing who you are. The trauma is still there. The lingering tendrils of abuse and hurt are there. And so, always, in the back of my mind, my eating desorder was there, bubbling. The binging waiting for an stressful event to happen, so it could rear it's ugly head.
So I accepted that I'd have to talk about it in therapy. I was starting to feel terrible with my own body again. Because now, I was struggling with figuring out what my style was, who I was truly and the things I liked and dislike. And much like a the trend that has been going on during quarentine came the gender identity crisis. This one day I had to finally dress up and go out. And I had just cut my hair, I cut it all off, a buzz cut really. And I loved it, it felt like me and I felt beautiful. But when I went to wear my clothes, my feminine clothes, I was suddenly suffocating; I did not fit, I looked terrible and when I looked at myself in the mirror all I could see was someone ugly and big and terrible.
That day was numbing. Suddenly I felt like I did not know who I was anymore AGAIN. And why bother trying to figure things out if it was just gonna lead me back here. And on top of it all, what if everything I was thinking, the thought I was having, meant that was wanting to be a men. That I fel like a men. So I was just so blocked, I could not let myself go there. And also, I am in a lesbian relationship with a cis woman, and I thought how is that gonna go if I decide to become a man. I didn't want to ever let go of that because for the first time I'm in a heathy, healing, supportive relationship. Where I'm able to grow immensely. I was not ready to go there and give that up.
Finally, before my major freak out I told her that maybe I did not see myself as a woman, but it was hard for me to express myself when all I had was this repertoire of binary defining words. I also told her that I did not see myself as a men either, but that I liked "man stuff". And finally I was able to express myself and allow myself to go there. And she helped me figure out, with researched she had done (how can anyone instantly not fall in love with this woman). And she proposed things to me and asked me if I identified or felt comfortable with things. Helped me navigate things and express my feelings. When finally we went there and achieved what it was I was looking for. Non-binary. I did not identify with being feminine, but did feel a strong pulls toward being a woman, but didn't exactly feel like one. And I did identify with masculinity, but also did not feel a pull towards being a man or didn't feel like one. And that answer appeased me.
We spent the whole night on a video call talking about it. And talking about pronouns and what I thought I was comfortable with. And from then on she has been nothing but supportive and respectful.
For the first time I went shopping for clothes, clothes that mainstream cis people would deem masculine clothes and felt like myself again. Did not feel big, or ugly. Did not feel inadequate. Or like I did not fit and suffocated. I loved going out, seeing things I like and trying them on. Worried if I liked the style or not. And not worrying if it was I'll fitted or not. If this fat pad was showing, if my thighs looked terrible and if my belly was too big. For the first time I felt like I was being myself not just in the way that I felt alone with myself , but now I could express to others the me that has always been there.
Without pretense. Just me, taking control over my own mind.
