twenty-third of december evening - someone smokes a cigarette and cries their eyes out on the balcony of the house they grew up in. the town looks almost the same, so little has changed. new houses, big houses, were built, with big backyards. in the old houses, only the dogs are new. they bark and bark and won't shut up every time someone walks by. it is unbearable. the sun sets over the hills. silence.

they think "I should have not bought a flight this year. should have stayed home. went travelling. meet some new places. take a couple photographs. what am I doing here in this forsaken corner of the world?".

a few houses up the street, someone is changing a flat car tire. they think, okay. life could be worse. they go back inside. someone is fighting, again. the dogs are barking. Christmas sucks. 

but it could be worse. of course it could be worse.

 

today I must write, cause my blood is boiling. I am again in that state of mind like when I used to hear melancholic songs at my rented house balcony and drink random supermarket tea in an ikea coffee cup. I am again in that state of mind where I found those songs so deeply calming, yet so deeply disturbing, because a void inside was born, out of listening to those melodies: I knew there were perhaps thousands of people feeling exactly like me, and yet it felt impossible that they could feel exactly the same. maybe because it is so hard to put into words, so very hard to turn into something explainable, therefore easy to imagine in someone else.

i am in that state of mind where I question the vast majority of life decisions and try to really understand why, without lying to myself in the face with the conniving confidence of being truthful. you can't be truthful if you can't find the truth. 

today I think about all the possibilities and opportunities I left behind for reasons I can't quite understand. I was never clear about it, not even to myself, and it took a long time to recognize it. maybe feeling like this is a crucial part in, at least, coming to terms with myself. I have lived alongside fragile, makeshift theories for far too long. I can romanticize my permanent existential crisis only up to a certain point. at a certain stage it's impossible to ignore the frustration and the confusion. I can fit in so many places, yet I can't fully fit in any. some parts of me are always off. can't help but feel I'm missing out on all these parts if I just ignore their existence. I'm a collection of pieces without a definitive form. 

made for everything; and made for nothing.

I just want to look another person in the eyes without paralyzing fear. 

When I joined Erasmus I knew - I knew there were going to be irreversible changes inside myself, yet I didn't know their grandeur. I came hoping I'd find more people like me, hoping the horizon would open into dozens of layers so I could see a different sunset than the one I've been seeing for the last years. I came wondering if this fitted me - if I was the right kind of person to do this. 

The other day someone said "Erasmus improved my self esteem" and without even thinking I nodded. Because it did. Physically, yes, maybe because people here look more natural, because I've slept on the same bed with pratically 4 strangers, because I've sweated on the mountains and my perfectly straigthened hair got wet too quick on rainy days: basically, you develop a familiarity with these people that you don't really get to have with most everyone back home, unless they're relatively close friends. 

But there's more than that: somehow, it also improved the way I see myself, or made me hate myself less sometimes. I can't say I hate myself now, cause I know what that truly means and it certainly isn't this. But this didn't make me "like" it either. It's a bit less, or a bit more, I'm not sure, than that, it's a step towards a strange direction, one of a kind of peace you estabilish within yourself that doesn't exactly mean you improved but it also means you are closer to it in a very natural, strange way.

I also discovered that I didn't find people like me. For sure I found people with similar interests, similar travel bucket lists, similar adventurous and random spirit, but this experience so far made me realize I have some kind of an incomparable wanderlust to the people I have really met so far in my life. From frustation, to my ocd kicking in when trying to organize a trip to finally sort of making peace with it all and truly going with the flow, I understood that there is something inside me that I suspected was there; and now I am sure. And it is both good and bad, because I gradually feel like I know a little more of myself, and I can freely express it because I feel it so strongly but it also is such a lonely journey that only distances myself further from everyone else. 

When I go back, I won't be the same person. I would have found things and grown out things inside during this time. And now they are there, and I'm not sure what to do with them, but it's such a big world of possibilities. 

There are still two months and a half ahead. My anxiety needs to calm down. I must breathe. I can't wait to find out more, and have more adventures. 

Photo credits to Tommaso and his digital camera, because the analog's pics weren't developed yet.

“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth - you were not brought into this world covered in blood to become a gentle, tamed thing.”

anxiety is the fucking worst.

Vejo isto como uma fraqueza, isto de escrever para "desabafar". E também vejo como uma fraqueza a minha aparente incapacidade de simplesmente parar de estar triste em relação a um determinado assunto que me assombra há anos, em labirintos de imprevisibilidade, com flores pintadas de acessos repentinos de uma esperança tola e desânimo constante nos caminhos sem saída. 

E ainda tenho a audácia de afirmar que não crio expectativas. Crio, sim, em relação a tudo e mais alguma coisa, mesmo que não queira admitir que o faço. O que começou com um "se assim fosse, seria ótimo" e alguns "quem me dera" misturados com descrença tornou-se num quase objetivo que só não o era mais porque permanecia uma certa nuvem negra sobre a minha cabeça (que eu decidi , no entanto, maioritariamente ignorar).

Ora, já lá vão uns anos e agora começo a perceber a minha avó quando afirma repetidamente que queria ter sido médica. E eu dantes, porque nunca nenhum sonho me tinha saído pela culatra, revirava espiritualmente os olhos porque na minha cabeça não havia qualquer tipo de sentido em ruminar o passado e as possibilidades que ficaram por terra. 

Continua a não fazer sentido, mas poucas coisas na vida o fazem. Por vezes, oiço uma voz dentro de mim uivar pelo que queria e não tem. Valorizo todo o resto que correu bem, mas a voz parece não se calar. Agora a descrença tornou-se uma presença evidente que não se deve sequer ignorar. No fundo, há outra voz que me alerta para os perigos de me continuar a agarrar a isto, tal semente morta de árvore que tenta florir. 

Chega. As ilusões sabem bem por um curto período de tempo. Tudo o que é demais apenas dói. 

E dentro de mim continuo a achar que não devo simplesmente deixar andar e ver se acontece, mas aliar essa inércia a algum tipo de ação, se é que isso é sequer possível e psicologicamente viável. Mas dentro de mim também já não sei o que fazer e só resta uma certa revolta e outra coisa qualquer que também dói.

-. s