July 31st was the last day on the job. I resigned a few days earlier, believing that I was preparing to move to Canada. I would only have a month to organize myself and restart the projects, set aside in recent months due to lack of time.
The first days of vacation came as a relief. I was really very tired and aware that for some time the job in the market did not meet my expectations. But as the free hours passed, my dear old friend anxiety nudged me paralyzingly.
While waiting for a positive response from Canadian immigration saying that I was good to go, I couldn\’t concentrate to write or put into practice all the ideas I had to do one of the things I love most, talk about being a woman.
In those few days of waiting, unconscious questions bombarded me almost audibly: do you really want to have that life of studying and working again? When are you going to rest or have fun? What will become of your quality of life? And most importantly, how would you continue what you really want to do with your life?
I could see Cecilinha pointing the finger at me, pissed off because I would fall back into a hectic, exhausting and very adult routine, annulling it, as I did for most of my life.
Next to that was my process of rethinking family structures and references. Old memories and feelings of inadequacy from childhood were latent, making me question the needs of family and social belonging.
Amid this miscellany of thoughts and emotions, previously ignored and now disorganized and disconnected, I was in painful stagnation.
After two weeks of waiting, I finally received a response from the student visa application, which was negative. Another flood of emotions washed over me. A divergent mix of frustration and relief.
I was terribly frustrated by the momentary impossibility of seeing my nephew born, of getting closer to the life I once had and the place where my soul was reborn. But at the same time I was overcome with relief, as if the answer to all my questions had been given. Just like that, as if in a fatal blow, the Universe seemed to say to me take back your projects, your present, your life!.
And from inside my deep hiding place, the place where I buried all my dreams as a girl, that voice raised the tone, challenging me: you were born for this! Have the courage to be who you are, now is the time!
I knew she was right. That although the desire to live abroad still existed, it was past time to face what was preventing me from starting over and living here, now.
Immediately other voices began to echo in my mind. They were real and they came from that moment when I started to feel inadequate. Injured, stupid, dumb, slow… that\’s what they called me. There was yet another voice, silent, responsible for all those and it told me not to express myself, not to attract attention, that taking a stand was wrong, that it made me boring.
The voices that limited me weren\’t just familiar faces, they were from society, which expects and demands that we fit a pattern, to serve its purpose, to be functional, controllable.
And now with your visa denied? What are you going to do? What are your plans? Why don\’t you go to Portugal? You\’ll have to get another job!\”
I had just had the plan I had attached myself to destroyed and I already had to have another one. I already had to know what to do. I couldn\’t just say that I would resume my projects, give myself some time, be the least bit happy.
The fact is that people don\’t believe us. In this capitalist and patriarchal world, dreaming is a luxury and, like everyone else, I was indoctrinated not to believe in myself. And this belief is one of the hardest to see and break.
You are responsible for everything that happens to you, you make your choices, they say. This is not true. You can only be fully responsible for your choices if you are aware of the ideological constructions and social structures that limit you.
The heart of the matter is that it is much more difficult to evolve individually in a society that restricts your potential, saying that we cannot be like this or like that, that we must be this or that. So we continue, in the dome of our blindness, facing selfishness, extremism, hypocritically moralistic conservatism, sinking into a meaningless existence, feeding on other people\’s unhappiness to be happy.
For women, limitation begins with the requirement to fulfill the role of saints, perfect, understanding and forgiving of all human defects. We must be nice, behave in a way that pleases everyone. Nevertheless, we have to be smart but caring. Use light words, better not to argue. Repress your emotions, silence your opinions, be silent!
How to change, evolve, if my unconsciousness is permeated with concepts and beliefs that are not mine? How can I believe in myself when my insecurities are necessary for the survival of machismo, servitude, submission, compulsive consumerism in an attempt to fill the existential voids created by the obligation to be perfect?
Here there is a paradigm that is at least interesting in which happiness is synonymous with perfection. To be perfect we have to follow a pattern, but as complex and different individuals from each other, what is the possibility of being happy trying to be like everyone else, doing what everyone else does?
Therefore, it is essential that personal and social development go hand in hand, if we really want to evolve as humanity, understanding and respecting the need for diversity, ensuring that each being can express and serve it in a unique way.
Unfortunately, people cannot be expected to understand this. The subjectivity of understanding lives in confronting the limiting beliefs that exist in each one of us, planted and socially stimulated, passed down from generation to generation, almost like a family tradition, since the world began (or would it be since the world has been theirs?).
It\’s up to me to continue listening to all the voices of the unconscious, discovering which ones are truly mine, questioning what doesn\’t seem right to me, recognizing and accepting my demons, denouncing social injustices, ideas contrary to the sense of equity and respect for freedom, provoking reflections as a contrarian woman (as they say out there), making my existence meaningful.
A good friend always describes me as a person of the world. So, it\’s time to take ownership of that title, leave behind everything I\’ve been led to believe in and put faith in myself. Because, in real, my world was never the same as everyone else\’s!