I want to know all the bad things that happened to you... and then I'd like to know how is it that you manage to keep smiling every day...

I had a panic attack yesterday and I think I'm still recovering from it.

Quote

“O que tem de ser, tem muita força. Ninguém precisa se assustar com a distância, os afastamentos que acontecem. Tudo volta! E voltam mais bonitas, mais maduras, voltam quando tem de voltar, voltam quando é pra ser. Acontece que entre o ainda-não-é-hora e nossa-hora-chegou, muita gente se perde. Não se perca, viu?”

Moments of certainty and moments of doubt.

Are they really this close? 

What we know and what we choose to believe in.

Are they really this misleading?

_______'s story

Have you ever had the impression that life's got so uninteresting?

Music is the same everywhere. People are trying to be the same, or to be different, or to act normal, or to pretend they are.

It's just as if people were just too serious to be able to enjoy life. All of them working, being someone in life, believing they are what they do. Entertaining themselves without getting close to each other, always keeping a safe distance from everything. Acting surprised when they hear about a new virus, just as if people hadn't been messing around with the world. People acting surprised with new diseases, people trying to live longer and better. People that want too much. Just for the sake of wanting.

Why would you want to fly? Why would you want to build a plane? If it isn't for something more than just making money for yourself, well, how important is money for you? Oh, right... money is happiness nowadays... and fuck the purists or optmistic bastards that try to deny such a fact whilst their pockets are full. But even in this madness it is possible to be happy and whole, and fuck the pessimists that just want to brag about how the human being is or isn't.

Who's having fun tonight? Who's raising a glass with friends laughing the fucking life away? Who's at home with their family playing with the kids, cooking dinner, watching a great movie together? Who's actually feeling alive right now? As if, if they died at that moment, they would say that life was totally worth it?

I write for you. I applaud you for you are the ones that understood that nothing is needed, everything is chosen. You chose to get married, you chose to be single, you chose to live with friends. You chose to buy a house, you chose to live in a small apartment, you chose to travel your life away.

All because that was what you makes you happy enough. Not more, not less. All because you wanted to see yourself in those shoes, because it would be fun - with all the sadness and all the joy. Because that was your story and it was worthy to be told your own way. Because when people connected all over the world they realized that they weren't as different and unique as they thought they were and then everything seemed to be the same. But you know what makes it new? It's your own version of it.

And who do you want to be in it with you? And what are the places that you wanna see? Where do you wanna live? What is it that is going to make you feel alive, make you laugh, cry, feel?

My final question after this absurd cry is: How come that humans got so scared of pain? Of sadness? Why is it that we need to feel so protected? Why do we want to live so long? The world is not getting any better, life is not getting any easier so, if you are here, you better have a good reason for it. And living life is risky, but it has to be done by heart. Growing up, loving, building a family is just as beautiful and hard as traveling, fucking and drinking... and they even match... the point is, will it make sense to you? Will it be the story you've always wanted to tell?

Hope

It feels like life is so big right now.

I'm 7 weeks away from my departure back to Brazil and today I felt as if it was wrong, that I'm supposed to stay. I remembered the days I felt like I wasn't home in Brazil and that, independently from all of the things I've been through in Canada, I never had a day like that. It has always felt like home in here.

My room looks like my first room. I took a moment and photographed it because I thought about how I would remeber it in 15 years. 

And then I saw a picture of my friends and one of my family. I thought about all I'd been through since this moment, all that was going on in my head, things that could happen... and something came to me... such a simple sentence that had such an impact on me: My life is so big right now.

There was a lot ahead, a lot behind, a lot now. And in order to appreciate this moment fully I just had to be strong, because it was a lot. It is the top of the first fall in life's rollercoaster.

Some part of me felt messy. I could feel it and it was bad, but I also know it's changing. All I have to do is be patient and open, so I can make wise decisions.

It time to step up my game, be more of a serious man, take the responsibilities that my wishes carry along with them. Time to build that self-confidence that wouldn't allow anything to make me weaker. It would be possible to see me beaten, but never defeated. That was my definition of a man, a brave man. Someone that would take whatever life gave him and he would make the best out of it because he knew that if he wasn't living with love in his heart, then he was as good as dead. A man had to understand that life was hard, sometimes unfair, and overall overwhelming and in order for it to be worth it, a man should be wise. Because anyone can easily get blinded by all that life became about. They can get drained into realities they were put into, they could forget or even never have the knowledge of what it means to be free, which we all are.

I could feel this calm, peaceful and mature side of me but I also knew it wasn't part of the whole me. I didn't know if it was suppose to take over who I am, or if it would be just a part of me. Either way, it is good to know I have this inside of me. It is good to feel peaceful sometimes. 

I am happy with who I am becoming, I don't how much more I will change, but I do know the parts of me I want to be bigger parts of me. This free guy... if you listen to "Shake it out" and you will understand. It's the feeling you have with this song.

Life starts to feel vibrating for the first time, but I don't know if this is the beginning, if this is it or the ending. I guess it depends on how I feed my hope, control my actions and feel the happiness that I've been entitled to feel - all the grace in the world.

Devotion

1.
Insensatez was playing on that bar that night. He looked at her laughing and wished he could see that smile for the rest of his life. The way she shook her hips to the sound of the music - he wanted to see that shaking by the beach, while they drank their caipirinhas and talked about life and made love to each other.
She looked at him and saw nothing: just another city worker, unimportant, a guy. He didn't look like he had a good job, he didn't seem to be there for anything else but to have fun and be in the middle of that energy. She saw the way he looked at her when she danced and she liked it. She wasn't an object of desire, but reason for devotion. There was desire, passion, compassion, sympathy, friendship. She wondered how it was even possible to see through a person with such ease. As if he had nothing to hide and a beautiful smile to show that she got aware of once she realized she was starring and he was smiling, walking towards her.

2.
She looked dead. Her eyes just starred at the other side of the seat, while she was just laying down. He looked at her and didn't know what to do.
She just felt electricity running through her body and she knew it was pain. She didn't know how much longer she could take it, how much longer he would stick around watching her die slowly.Nevertheless, she felt happy she wasn't diyng alone.
A tear run down her face, and he couldn't bare the thought that she was in so much pain and there was nothing he could do to make it go away. He tried to aim lower, now he just wanted to make her smile.
- A insensatez, que voce fez, coracao mais sem cuidado...
He started to sing. Her eyes moved. He didn't stop.

3.
- What the fuck is wrong with you?!
- Go fuck yourself, just get out of the house!
- I'm not going anywhere! What's going on?
- My mom is moving in.
- Your mom? What the hell?
- You can just go.
- Why would I go?
- Because there might be no trips to Europe, I might not be able to be jealous of you, I might not be able to go through crisis, because I won't bother to. I will not care about it!
- So?
- I have multiple sclerosis.
- You what?

4.
When he finished singing the song for the first time, they had only been driving for 10 minutes and there were at least 20 more until they got to the hospital so he kept on singing songs that reminded them of the good days. All of the songs they sang when life was so complicated with rent, transportation, groceries, bills, goals, achievements, dreams.
He remembered the time when they were at the peak of life - they would go as high as they thought they should or could, and then there was just a fall towards death. Everything was at stake in those years of their lives, they had to make money, buy houses, get married, everything was in a rush. Oh, those ridiculous times.

5.
No one really understood what was going to happen, how it would happen, how fast, how painfull. There was only the certainty that they knew what life was. The sense of hope vanished, they were sure life was hard.
He didn't know what to care about. If it was money for the treatment, time to keep her company. Nothing made sense at that point. The thought of walking away just made him mad. He wondered what was his career worth, the TV they got together, the furniture. Everything just seemed so small and all of the sudden there was just him in the world. And he questioned who was it that he had become, because he felt he didn't know him anymore.
She gave up. Not on life itself, but the obligations from it. There would be no more obligations for her but to be happy. She would find a way to get that house, to live that life she pictured herself living when she was 5 years old. She felt as if she wasn't even part of this world anymore. People's problems seemed nothing, people meant nothing... not all people. There was him. She felt like she could stay living that weekend at the beach forever. The drinks, the talks, the sex. Life was so perfect when there was only the two of them. She knew she couldn't be away from him anymore, and yet she couldn't ask because it would be unfair.
And in all of his thoughts trying to find the slight sense of himself, all he thought about was her. Paying the rent wouldn't be worth it without her under his roof, sex wouldn't be exciting without her body, her moaning and her adventurous spirit that made them have sex under the waterfall. He didn't know if there would be anyone that could make him sleep so peacefully at night if not her. He didn't want to try. And yet, she was slipping away from him, she was leaving... and she could just decide to go whenever she wanted.
That night they didn't make love because both of them had nothing to rely on but their trust in each other and it was scary, and they knew. So they just held each other as hard as they could.

6.
They arrived at the hospital and he turned the car off calmly.
He got off the car, opened the back seat and put her on his arms. He knew she felt incredible pain with every single move he made and once again he felt there was nothing he could do.
- Se voce disser que eu desafino amor...
He started dancing, slowly, carefully, gently, singing without missing a note, a word. He moved his feet softly, and whispered the song in her ears. He danced their way throughout the Hospital's lobby until someone got her a bed and people just took her away.
She felt painfully happy. Her body wasn't responding, but her mind was filled with joy. She felt his arms and could almost touch his devotion. He was there, she was there and that was their life. Pain could come along, there would always be a song to be sung.

Free Spirit

I don't know how common this will be for humanity, but this is what happened to me. When I grew up, all was done. I don't know if you ever faced that feeling that no matter what you did, your life was going to be unoriginal.  If you wanted to get drunk in Las Vegas someone had already done it, if you wanted to drink a cosmopolitan in NYC it had already been done, if you wanted to go against all society's values and live in the wild, it had been done... most of them even put in films, so we could be constantly reminded that there was no space for new things. And then, the biggest problem of them all I suppose, was the fact that our parents knew a lot of olds and projected a perfect path for us to follow.
Let me tell you about me: school told me how I was supposed to act as a student, my first job taught me how to be more and more responsible, University taught me how to be corporate, my other jobs taught me how to care about careers and employment. All my life I've been taught how to act, how to procede, how to live. I had to fill these little boxes of achievements to prove I was someone. But what are achievements with no identity to them? What meant a job in a great company if you didn't want to have started that career in the first place?
I wasn't taught on life, I was taught on how to live - job, career, apartment or house, beach club... that was life. And now, later in life I wonder: but what it is for after all? It was so true that I had no identity that I knew I could easily be the teacher, the public relations, the great student but I could never be myself socially. I have no idea of who I am, for I have never been who I am in my core. I've always been a better version, an adaptation of me. A likeable me. And when adult life hits you, the reality of it comes like a tsunami. It washes away everything you ever believed in. When you feel the weight of the responsibilities and the amount of time you consume concerning about them and you have to stop everything. Because it is not fun making money for your rent, transportation, food. I can say it is anything but I'm damn sure it isn't fun.
It isn't fun to think about the necessity to care about where I'm going to live, when I'm going to buy a house, whom I am going to get married to, how am I going to be able to support myself? All of those are obligations that were right here before we came, we had no choice. So we followed them. I don't know, there must be so many people happy with this path, but not me. Me, I'm starting to get scared of myself. Who I am becoming. I feel myself as a spirit that has been being set free. A wild one. I don't think I'll be able to just sit around and see myself live as the worst version of myself for my soul and the best for my pocket.
Just today I read a text about how loneliness can be bad for your health, and how a bad matress jeopardizes your back and your sleep, and how a bad nice of sleep can cause a lot of stress, and the stress of the so-called Quarterlife crysis... and then I thought about people that have been dying of cancer, and all other kinds of stuff. I read about people worrying about death and making life enjoyably safe. I see people filling their times with useless concerns, refusing the experimental pleasure, accepting conditions and problems... I daily watch people drag their bodies to places to do things someone told them they should be doing in order to make their lives worth living. I see no heart, no passion, no authenticity. All I see are repetitions of a lost species that ended up taking itself too seriously.