I’m going to write something every day.

January 1

Sometimes it is hard to realize how simple events can change us. After ten years I was about to meet my swimming mates again. After ten years. A movie starts going throw my mind, so much had happened, I had moved cities, graduated from college, started working, changed jobs (a lot), dated different guys. A sudden rush of adrenaline fills up my body and a thought comes to my mind: I wasn´t anything I knew people expected me to be, I hadn’t accomplished anything I knew everybody expected of me.

I was supposed to be this great Olympic swimmer, make history or something like that. Instead I decided to go to start working after college and forget all about that athlete’s life. After all, athletes have a short career, especially in Brazil. A third world country doesn’t have any support for athletes; going through college was already a living hell, trying to manage studying, working and practicing.

I couldn’t stop wondering what they were going to think about me. Those people had a great hole in my life, especially my coach; he was practically a father to me. He was there in the saddest, the happiest, the scariest moments of my life. Had I disappointed them somehow?

Coming back to my hometown was already torture itself. All the families demands to come back home, to find a steady job, to get a boyfriend, get married, have kids and all that future they had designed for me and I hadn’t fulfilled. Having to face that every year and stand my ground was already hard enough.

While I looked myself in the mirror and tried to take these ideas out of my mind, I realized how fragile and unsheltered we all were to other people’s opinions. At least I tend to think that thoughts similar to mine go on in everybody’s head.

When I got there and started talking to everybody, hearing their life stories and telling them mine, listening really careful to those things that are never said (smiles, looks, body language), paying attention on how comfortable I felt around those people and how open our conversation was. I got to the conclusion that, no matter what people expected from you in the past, no matter how many years you have not seeing each other, if people really care about you and you have a genuine friendship, the only thing they’ll be worried about is how realized and happy you are about your life.

January 2: My morning

I just love vacation time. I have the best mornings. Instead of waking up with the damn alarm clock even before the sun is up, I can simply sleep until I wake up on my own. And that’s exactly what I did today. I opened up my eyes with no rush at all, I could hear some noises coming from the kitchen.

I looked at the clock: eight o’clock. It was about time to get up and go out for a morning jog. I love jogging, after swimming is one of my favorites, yoga is pretty tied with running.

The noises coming from the kitchen were my grandmother. Christmas and New Year’s is one of those social conventions where everybody tells you that you have to be with your family and you fell guilt if you are not there, but it is also a living hell being there. So, there I was, all awaken, dressed and in the mood to go running, feeling excited about it (as I had managed, at least until today, to stay fit during the holidays).

My grandmother is that traditional Italian Mamma, so, by the time I got to the kitchen to have a quick light meal before going out, she had already prepared a feast. After controlling myself to eat just what I needed I finally got to go for my run.

For me practicing sports is an entertaining time. I get to be there, usually by myself, with my own thoughts. I get to think about my life, to think about the things that are bothering me. Like my constant will to go back to the big metropolis where I am living and get away from my hometown. After a ten kilometer thinking I was ready to go back home and eat something again.

I wanted to go swimming after my second breakfast, but in order to do that I needed my mom to come with me. As I’m not associated to the club here, my mom needs to go with me so I can go in as a visitor. But, unfortunately she had other commitments and couldn’t go with me.

Then, instead of swimming, I had to find something else to do (I get bored pretty easily if I have nothing to focus on). What I thought to be my only alternative was to read a book and wait for my next meal.

January 3

She had left home more than ten years ago, but somehow she couldn’t get rid of that weird feeling every time she came back. It was like she had never left. Everybody in her family treated her like she was this little girl that couldn’t handle life itself, so they were always overprotective of her.

The next day she was going back to the place she felt safe, not her hometown, but the city she chose. Where nobody knew who she was and she could just be herself. Little did she know that things were about to change.

But first, let’s just explain some things about her.

Her parents had gotten a divorce when she was around three. She never knew why, but she was raised by her maternal grandparents. She always wondered why. After all, her father and her mother were alive and well.

When she was a kid she found it quite strange that her grandma once asked her not to tell anyone that her parents were divorced. When she asked why was that, the answer couldn’t be worst: people frown on divorced parents’ children. That day she knew things weren’t going to be easy for her, especially because she completely disagreed. She was around five when that event happened.

From this day forward she had what we can call a normal life. She went to school, she practiced sports, she had friends and liked playing a lot with her cousins. Apart from the constant arguments she had with her grandmother and a weird feeling every now and then, everything was “normal”. Growing up and becoming a teenager wasn’t easy. By the time she was fourteen she started having a little more contact with her mom.

After her parents got divorced, her mom went to live all by herself, and her father went back to his parents house. She just grew up feeling abandoned, being abandoned, but didn’t even know how to name that thing she had that made her feel different. Sort of wishing she belonged somewhere else.

January 4

All I wanted was to be me
All I wanted was for you to like me
All I wanted was to be perfect
All I wanted was to be noticed

But you saw something different
You noticed something that wasn’t there
You saw something you wanted
But not what was really there

You tried to make me
When I dind’t know who I was
So you faked me
And I bought what you saw

For a long time I wasn’t there
My soul was lost
You didn’t seem to care
I couldn’t bare

I had to find me
And so I did
I was nothing like you thought
So I had to give you a kiss

I had to fight
I had to see
I had to find
What was in me

January 6

I keep thinking to myself, I have to write, I have to write. And still I keep running away from it. I know I have a lot of things to say, but Gosh, how hard it is. I don’t know what it is that pushes us away from what we wnat the most in life.

It is always like this, and I know that doesn’t happen only with me. My friends keep doing the same. So, what is it that keep us away from what we want? Is it self sabotage?

I’ve always studied about this, but I never thought that would happen to me. It’s like an internal force that won’t let me be the best I can, that won’t let me do what I’m good at and what I want.

So, I decided I’ll do what I always tell my patients to do in this situations: just start, just take small step, even if it is one line a day, and try to think about the feeling of accomplishment you get after you do it.

January 7

It was a sunny summer day, upm in the sky she could see the sun with no clouds around what so ever. But something just wasn’t right. She was feeling so anguished, her heart was heavy in her chest. In her mind she kept thinking she wanted to go home, she didn’t know why, she just wanted to be there.
The day wasn’t over yet, there was a lot of work to do, so, with her sense of obligation ahead of her desire, she went on working.
After a meeting she looked at her cell phone and she had thirty two missed calls.
“Uh Oh, something was up”.
Before she could return the calls her boss asked her to go into his office.
“Gosh, could there be anymore problems”.
After all, every time he wanted to have a private conversation something pretty messed up had happened with her work.
He asked her to sit, offered some water and asked her how her father was.
Her father had been sick with leukemia for the last four years and the past two weeks he had gone to the hospital.
“He is getting better” she said. “I went to the hospital yesterday and he got out of bed and walked around with me, the doctors said that was a great improvement.”
He was silent. It probably lasted a few seconds, but in that situation seemed like centuries.
“I’m sorry but I have no other way to say this. Your mom called while you were in the meeting with the client, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re father past away.”
All of a sudden she became deaf, she couldn’t hear anything he was talking, she saw his lips move, and that image just looked like a distant picture. She had butterflies in her stomach, but the butterflies were eating her alive inside, her legs couldn’t stand her own weight and her mouth was twaddling unrecognisable syllables.
Her world had fallen apart.

January 8

I don’t belong here
I don’t belong there
I don’t belong anywhere

Anywhere, maybe is there
Anywhere maybe is the where
Anywhere in between

Oh, I just want to scream
I don’t wanna be here
I don’t wanna be there
I wanna be everywhere.

January 9-11

Something in your presence makes me not be me.
I’m a dumb girl who can’t speak. Words try to get out of my mouth, but it’s stupid even to try. You send me back in time and I feel llike I can be surprised with the world again. My eyes are seeing the world for the first time, amazed. I pay close attetin to everything that comes out of your mouth, as a way of trying to be the same as you, as we were one.
And now, what should I do with it? What should I do with this feeling?

You’ve asked me why. There aren’t enough reasons to tell you. Why this moment? Why here? Why with you? I could tell you a lot of things. I could say I admire you as a human being. I admire the way you go after your goals with such a strenght that I have rarely seen. I could tell you that it’s because I like your company and the way you make things sound so simple. I culd tell you I like the way you look at me, and I like the fact that sometimes it seems like there is no other person in the world for you. I could tell you that is because I admire the way can talk to everyone at the same time, give everybody the attention they need and not get bored or tired of people.

But all of those would be only exuses. The truth is: I have no idea why. The only thing I know is that I like me when I’m around you. You make me a better person. Once I heard that we fall in love with a person’s qualities, but we love a person despite his/hers flaws.

I didn’t mean to hurt you, but what am I supposed to do?
You disappeared out of the blue
What did you think?
That I was going to sit here waiting for you?
Moaning about life?

Well, I’m fine indeed
Here I am you see?
living my life
the way you thought I wouldn’t
the way you thought I couldn’t
cause you were not here with me
I’m sorry now
But it’s my time to disappear