Why am I not starting with the usual "Now"?
In case you are still reading...
I know that I always start with NOW. I always talk about what is going to happen in the next month around Lisbon's great area. But sorry, that is not happening today. Not because August is not a good month to be around here, but because I noticed that this attitude reminded me of how time is passing by really fast.
Time is not here to meet our expectations, you know that, and you live with it also, but even so, all we do is count days, weeks, months, and years. We complain about being too young and too old; we complain about the troublemiddleagebetweeneverything, where we work so we can have a life and don't have a life because all we do is work.
Well, hold your time for five minutes for me. I hope you like what I have to say.
P L A C E S
I erased this first paragraph 10 times. Literally.
I have so much to say about places, but at the end, I don't feel comfortable saying anything at all. So let me tell you a quick story:
I lived in Niterói, my hometown, and with almost 11 years, I started to study at the school where I spent the next 7 years. My first day at a class, I was nervous. Something in my life at that time really made me believe that I was dumb, kind of boring, and ugly. The year 2000 had just begun, and the last thing I had was self-esteem.
I went to my first class, sat in the back of the classroom, and while I was shaking my legs nonstop in the chair in front of me, a blond kid with pink streaks in her hair looked back and asked "Could you just stop doing that in my chair, please?". I stopped, not sure if I said "sorry", but this girl became my best friend.
It has been 24 years of friendship, and until now, she has been one of the friends I love the most. Well, unfortunately, we don't live nearby anymore, not because I live in Lisbon but because she has lived in New York for the past 10 years.
Places. Bring people closer or tear them apart.
This week, my blond friend, who used to have pink streaks in her hair, just had her first baby. A beautiful and healthy baby boy, who has melted my heart since the day I found out that he would come to this world, was born thousands of kilometers away in NY.
B O O K S
In July, I finished reading ‘A Psalm for the Wild-Built’ and ‘Britt-Marie Was Here’, Both books were heartwarming, and that was exactly what I needed. When ‘A Psalm for the Wild-Built’ ended, I felt so peaceful that I instantly wanted to read it again, and that had never happened before, at least not right away. I felt like someone was hugging me.
But with Britt-Marie, all I kept thinking while reading was that I wanted to hug her. The thing is, at some points, Britt-Marie looked very similar to me. She had a very low self-esteem and she ran away from lots of problems, but guess what? She couldn't escape herself.
And that is the deal about me: wherever I go, there I am.
W R I T I N G
I finished writing my book. It is my first fiction book, a whole story that has lived in my head for the last few years.
It is scary to give this story away. It is not that I don't want you to know it, but letting it go means releasing it to all possible judgments. I know that there are no perfect stories, but I accept my characters imperfections; they are real characters with all their faults. Will you accept them as I do?
By now, I've just sent it to the reviewers. They are the first judges of it, but in a technical way, of course. Once ready, they will send back a very complete analysis with everything that works well in it and, more importantly, all that doesn't work. Then, I will have time to make the adjustments I believe are fair.
My book cover was also commissioned and will probably be ready in September. Yes, dear readers, it is getting real!
I should start talking more about this story, but the thing is, I can have hours of conversations about the giant list of books I have already read, but I totally freeze when I talk about my own book.
It is hard to talk about something that, even in a fiction story, has so much of me. Even in books, there I am.
M E
Think of it as gossip, not a 30-year-old lady opening up about her life.
So I was 10 years old and had very low self-esteem.
Then I was 17, and I entered a very good college, but that didn't make me escape comments such as "What a surprise!". Well, "maybe I am not that dumb", I thought at the time. Surprisingly, I was one of the best, but I needed time to see it and ignore all the bad things I heard about myself during my childhood.
At 18 years old, I already had my first internship, and since then, I have only stopped working in my career once, 10 years later, when I was 28 years old. I decided to do international volunteer work, so I traveled to New Zealand and Cambodia and had the most wonderful experiences of my life. Why did I decide to do it? Well, my life in between was basically determined by everyone around me; that was one of the first times I didn't let fate guide me. I broke the bubble; I just wanted to do something for the world for a moment.
After that, I came back to Brazil, worked for another 5 years, and then, finally, here I am in Lisbon.
Why am I telling you this?
I could travel all around the globe, but I could never escape myself. And that is the thing—that was never actually my intention. To be honest, all I did was find out more about me, and give me what I wanted. Peace. Freddom. Experience. Future.
I wanted to hug Britt-Marie because I wanted to be hugged when I understood that I needed to change and that I needed to do something for myself. That I needed more. Time has passed for Britt-Marie, and it is passing for me.
T I M E
One of my best friends just had her baby, and that is one of the reasons why I don't want to talk about NOW.
I don't want to talk about what opportunities you have in August.
I don't want to think about how far away people I love are from me.
I don't want to count months. I don't want to count kilometers.
Time is not here to meet our expectations; it has its own, and it will never walk right by our side. We want to keep straight, but time is like a wave, a bridge, a mountain, and a valley. Some people think they control it, but sometimes a pandemie comes and teaches them a lesson.
Last newsletter I said we have to make it count (I am not using the titatic meme again), so forget about how long it will take to make something happen.
Thinking only about what remains to be achieved only increases the anxiety crisis that plagues our generation. The now I want is: Read your books, hold your friends, drink and laugh with them, watch your series, buy your ticket, write your book, walk outside, go to the beach, to your parents house, to watch Barbie in the movies (do watch Barbie!), go to work and leave at a reasonable hour, fight for your values and your goals. Today, not just when you “find” time.
One day you are just a scary little girl being what the world says you have to be, but if you listen to your inner voice and use time in your favor, you can grow old to be anything you want. Your faults can only make you stronger if you understand them well.
And hey, if you know about low flights to NYC and Brazil, forward them to me; I am seeking them starting right now!
with love,
Livia