As soon as I became the perfect, nerdy, boring teenager, I decided that I would go to one of the best universities in the country. I\’m not sure if it was a decision stimulated by teachers, if stimulated by my low self-esteem, which always needed to prove something to others, or a little bit of both. All I know is that because of that decision I slaved and held myself accountable for three years after graduating from high school.
I put the goal of studying at a public college, preferably the best in the country, as such a great need that I stopped living in the present and noticing the gifts that life presented to me at that time.
The year I graduated, I took the entrance exam to a private college where normal people, not narrow-minded like me, studied, but I didn\’t want to enroll, because, obviously, I was special and would have to face all the witches and dragons to get to so desired USP.
With my parents always working and my mother fresh minded, I did nothing that year after I graduated, literally nothing. Today I think about where my anxiety was at that time, seriously! Who can do nothing for so long?
Well, towards the end of the year, my mother finally proposed that I go with her to visit my older brother in California and stay there for the duration of the visa. I was seriously dating the first boy in my life, but spending time in the United States was a dream that I had been cultivating for a few years. Without even stopping to think, I said of course!. I said goodbye to the boy, left him crying at the airport and left with my mother for the promised land.
I started to fall in love with this country as soon as I got on the plane. The flight attendants speaking live and in color the language that I watched so much on cable TV programs and the films all in English, without subtitles, on the screen positioned on the back of the seat in front of me, they saw my dream coming true.
It didn\’t take me many days when I arrived to think that the life my brother led was wonderful. He lived near the beach in a condo that looked like a club. My eyes lit up when he took us to a high school football game. I was really inside a Hollywood movie.
In a few days I had already arranged a job as a nanny. It was only for a few days, but even so my brother said it was okay, that I shouldn\’t worry, he would help me while I was there with him.
But, as the days went by and the day of my mother\’s return and mine officially arrived, a fear of the unexpected and an attachment to what I had left behind in Brazil the idea of USP and the boy made me pack my bags and leave another boy crying at the airport, this time my brother.
I went back, broke up with the boy, studied for three years to get into the blessed college and dropped out after two and a half years, after realizing that the course wasn\’t for me. And so my life continued, between fixed ideas and some changes, without realizing that I was really trying to find myself. I got married, enrolled in two other colleges. I finally graduated. I passed a contest and started teaching another idea that I put in my head, that of being a teacher.
At the end of it all, I wasn\’t happy. But it took me a while to realize that and also to let go of it. I managed to let go of my marriage, my stable and crazy job as a teacher, and life ended up bringing me back to live in this country. And despite the cold weather in Boston and all the hardships we face living here, I fell in love with America all over again at second sight. In fact, I think she and I have a history of other lives lol.
However, about three months ago I started to feel that something was missing in our relationship. I couldn\’t say what, because I always felt happy here. The very teeth-chattering (and bone-breaking ice lol) winter that I grew to like and appreciate already seemed much longer and depressing to me. The trip to Florida in the middle of it maybe made the difference and stirred my inner buttons that wanted to truly believe that I, a summer girl, could be happy in a place with seven cold months a year, with colder people, well I a person of people. I suddenly realized that I wasn\’t so happy anymore. It was something inside out, an inexplicable feeling and a voice telling me what are you doing, girl? There\’s a whole world out there, you are from the world forgot? There\’s still a lot to see and people to meet, are you crazy?!.
The fact is that I was getting attached again to an idea, like the perfect marriage to Prince Charming, like studying at the best University in the Country, no matter how good it may seem and even be very good in many moments, it just doesn\’t matter. It is for me.
I believe that learning to let go is one of the lessons I have learned the most in my life in America and for her, and many other things, I am extremely grateful. And it\’s also because of her that I\’m saying goodbye little by little, living what I still have to live here and preparing myself for the next phase of my life\’s adventure, after all it\’s short and I don\’t have time for fixed ideas anymore.
By the way, it\’s been a while since I only have time to be happy and when you decide to be truly happy there\’s no turning back, it\’s liberating! So let go!