The masks that we hide behind

I have put this mask to protect from constant attacks. I have put this mask to try to be part of the group. I have put this mask to try to pretend something I am not. And now the mask deceives everyone. More people than I expected and that I wanted. How hard is to see behind the mask? I wish I could take it out, but it is so tightly sticked in me that I don't have the strength to take it out. I am still a shy little girl trying to learn how to socialize and all people see is this almost confident person. I wish I was able to show my real self to a few more people. I wish I could be true to myself and survive with little harm. I wish I am not causing anyone to put on a mask. I wish life was less unjust. I keep the mask and just hope to meet someone that can see through it.

No land being

TO hide from my fears and anxieties, I close myself in this hard shell almost confident. I try to pretend and deceive people to see if I can avoid the attacks that in my country are a constant. I feel so home sick this last days, but I don't really want to go back there else to see my family and friends. I can't remember something I really miss from there expect the people I connected and maybe the way the people are passionate in concerts, but nothing else. I don't want to have to pretend being something else and not showing my true nature just to protect myself. I don't want to attack people in the same way they do with me just to try to take the attention somewhere else. All I can do is imagine how it would be if I was born in another culture. It wouldn't be me, but it would be so much easier. Now I don't fit anywhere anymore. If before I felt like I was born in the wrong place, now more then ever I am certain. However, I will never truly fit in a new culture I wasn't born in. I will always have a different perspective from the people that live this culture as if it was unique. Home, that something with no meaning for me anymore.

No butterflies, agony instead...

I might be in love. I might have made myself in love. It hurts badly. Specially because I don't know the feelings of the one I am in love with. 'Sweet is to dream', 'But the illusion when it breaks', 'Hurts in the heart of those who dreamed, who dreamed too much'. I have to try to avoid getting hurt. I might look strong, but I am just a fragile little girl with too many scars Instead of butterflies, I have these agony. An agony that fills me and tries to tell me I am doing something wrong. That it won't work out…

Let's go out dancing, this is all that's left...

To dance is to let the music possess your entire soul and conduct your body with all the energy and feeling coming from the sound.

just an ear to listen

Sometime ago I realize how people somehow feel confortable to talk to me about anything. It is not like I am already intimate to them and they already start talking about intimate things. A friend of mine mentioned that he likes me because he feels confortable talking to me. So I started wandering what is so special about the way I am or behave that end up making people confortable. All I could conclude is that I listen and agree and needed, nothing else. I am just an ear to listen to wherever people has to say. It is not easy being that. I never know what can I say to help. Maybe here is another thing, I care. I have a very expressive face and one can see easily what I am feeling. Perhaps the way I look showing care is what makes people feel confortable. Here is one advantage to people that don't know how to continue a conversation like me, one just need to listen and show care and that's enough.

Lonelyness

How do I explain to someone that being lonely and feeling lonely are not the same thing. One can be lonely and not feel lonely. I get the loneliest when I am surround by a group of friends and I just don't know what it is happening, what are they talking about. It is like I am an outsider that doesn't belong. That's feeling lonely and not being lonely. I went to a small concert this week to see Making Marks, another norwegian band. I went completely alone as the person I call my best friend didn't bother to join me. Anyway, I was feeling ok, I don't mind going alone to a concert or being alone. I learned a long time ago not to fear being lonely. The only problem was that I was the first to arrive and one of the very few to watch the concert that was postponed in a few minutes to see if more people would come. I enjoyed my time reading the news on my smartphone. If I only had the courage and the words to go and talk to people, to the band. Anyway, I talked with no one, but at the same time I wasn't feeling lonely. I felt more pity on the band that didn't have much of an audience. Well, that's how I can explain this two different things.

Another piece, just another piece

It is always the feeling of being part of something that drives us to big crowds, to like certain things just because others likes, to dance in a certain way,... To watch a game in a stadion is fun because of the other people around reacting together to the same events. The duo BOY has a song about loners and how they try to feel less lonely by being surrounded by an immense number of people. It made me remember all the times I felt like this and how being in a crowd just made me feel more lonely. I can't talk easily with people, it doesn't matter if people think I am sociable, I know I am not. I tried to find someone to go to a concert with me and only on the last minute a couple of friends decided to go with me because they felt pity. I don't want to have people feeling pity. I enjoyed and thanked that they went with me, so I didn't have to be alone, but all I really wanted was someone that would go because they have the same taste in music as me. I love the friends I have and they help me keep being alive. However I still couldn't find the friend I always wanted when I was a child. A friend so similar to me that would go anywhere with me and not on pity. Someone that would really want my company and that I know what to talk always. Few times in my life I felt this connection and only for a limited time. I try as hard as I can to not fear being alone, but the shadow just don't leave my head. I write to take things out of my head. That's why I only feel like writing when I am depressed. We are all one of a kind and all the same. We are all just another piece in the crowd.

Small Bands

Once I wrote how I missed the experience of a 'real' rock concerts and how the big bands have such perfect concerts. Well, fortunate I opened my musical spectrum and started to listen to some small bands that hardly no one knows. One of them is Moddi. Compared to many bands I am obsessed at the moment, he kinds of have a lot of followers. Anyway, after 3 months listening to his song non-stop, I went to his concert last Friday. It was great. I was so afraid the live version might not sound like in the album, but it sounded just like it. It was great to hear him explaining when/how/why he wrote a certain song and the fact that I could easily get an autograph. In my opinion, being a small band is much better. One can really connect with ones audience, with the people that really enjoy ones music for how it sounds like and not for being trendy or something else. A friend recommended me this TED talk that translate this whole idea I am trying to expose. http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking.html

I am obsessed! Obsessed in many things. It varies a lot in what. At the moment, I am obsessed with Norway. It is my way of dealing with the shitty reality. I get obsessed with things that makes me feel good or with the idea of a wonderful future. I get obsessed with sportsman or musicians. It is my way of living someone else's life...

A place to call home

How to define what home is? Is it where you are from originally? Is it where you live at the moment? Is it something fixed? Or can it change accordingly with one state of mind? That has always been a hard question for me. Home as a word has always been just where I am from or the place I live. However how can one feel uncomfortable at home? That is the way I have always felt in the country I was born. It has been like I was born in the wrong place. Is it just me, or many people feel this way? I dreamed and still dream about Pasárgada, a place that magic happens and I maybe feel at home as I define it. Incredible that I feel more at home in a country, in a city that I can hardly speak the language and only spent 2 weeks at most than in the city I grew up and know every inch. I will never be completely at home in this sense. In another country, I will always be the outsider, the one that came from another place, that don't speak the language. Nevertheless, it can still be more like home than any other place and I think that might be enough for me, to asymptotically find home.

Keep Moving

It has been two months that I felt in love with Moddi's music. Every song is beautiful and able to touch so deep that I could never imagine. Today his new album arrived and already his beautiful words are inspiring me. This part reminds me of the cruel world of Physics and the Institute I work: "this place is built to make you smaller to keep your face out of the light around the city’s growing taller through the night and then a symphony of laughter cuts though the air of foreign tongues and you are back at where you started: all alone" Pål Moddi Knutsen It is so incredible how you can be in a place following your dreams and be crushed so hard. I know life is not easy anywhere, but the reward a scientist gets is just his own satisfaction and if not even this is coming out, there is nothing to save them. I am struggling to keep moving forward but the pressure is getting greater and I have to become stronger. Today I made another step forward. Even if it took more time than it should, it was still forward and I keep moving.

Melancholia

The melancholia comes back and stays as my oldest friend. 'Happy days will come soon!', it says, but soon never arrives. Seems like all is going wrong for quite some time and the hole is just getting deeper and deeper. I am afraid I won't be able to come out. It is getting hard to breath every second and the agony is getting greater and greater. The agony, another old friend. Considered my favorite word and my worst fear. The world just seem different and I feel the same. Random words comes out. My worst ability is craving to expand and my talents (if they can be considered a talent) is just fading away. It is as if I can break with the weakest touch. All I have is the music I listen to and the hope for better days to come.

Happier times! Are they going to last? Are they going to get only better?

It has been some time that I don't write. It can only mean that my sadness improved and some happier times took over me. I am still a bit numb. And also with the feelings quite intense. Contradictory states to add up my strangeness. It has been long that I embraced it and am not afraid of showing it. I am that and there is no way to change. Being different is part of me since ever. At first, I didn't like it and always tried to hide. Now I just follows it deeply and deeply. I don't want, I don't need to be just another human being. I want to be me, the only one I ever got to know. The strange, dork me. With bright colors, a wide range of clothes styles, a strange sense of fashionable, a constant changing hair, a passionate amateur dancer and singer and much more. It is not always easy to accept this. One has to deal with a lot. It doesn't make me stronger as some might think, but for now I am surviving. Let's see how for how long. Happier times have come. Are they going to last? I hope so. I hope also that it only improves. I am tired of feeling sad...

Feeling Numb

I think I've never got to this state before. Feeling Numb. Deprived of any feeling, indifferent to all. People ask me how I feel about many things and the answer I give is 'I don't know'. How can I just not know? It is like I lost interest in everything. Anything that happen will cause me no harm, but it will cause me no happiness also. I am just neutral.

A flor da pele

Last time I wrote because I was in a state that I couldn't feel anything. Now, I am the oposite. Looks like the smallest things can make me sad, happy, angry, in agony. I was in an exhibition of Munch's paintings and drawings yesterday. The name of the exhibition was anxiety and that was a constante in his work. The anxiety of death that surrounded him and his family. I don't fear death. Sometimes I wish strongly for it to come soon, but I could feel all the anxiety in his paintings. I was the one almost crying looking at it. The melancholy, the loneliness, all the sentiments I have been experiencing for a long time without being able to express like he did. Oh, I envy so much people that can easily say what they are feeling. I can hardly understand what I feel, imagine being able to express it. It is my artistic side that never flourished. If it had, I would probably be doing something else. I have a heart broken that was never really loved. It was more like some a platonic passion. And I am back to the routine... "Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life." "I see all the people - Behind their masks - smiling, soundless faces - Pale corpses - who timelessly scurry along their twisting path, a path that leads them only to their graves." Munch

Like pulses

Lately my mood varies like pulses. Pulses of melancholy takes over me and makes me feel like crying. This pulses are almost unbearable. Yesterday I had to come home earlier and hold tight not to start crying on the way. I don't want to call attention. I just want to keep myself alone in this sea of sadness. It is like I am afraid of being contagious. Or I just don't want anyone to see me crying, my weak side. When one grow up without real friends, one tough it up and hides inside a thick shell to make it harder for others to cause pain. However this thick shell also makes it harder to feel anything, even a sweet touch. And I am getting closer and closer to someone I just cannot get that close, but he is the one that seems to get me. No, I have to thicken my shell and hide inside. I know how my end will be, just don't when it will happen. I know I have at least up to April or even end of June. Last see if I manage to recover my happy self before I make something stupid.

The fire that woke up a city and afterwards a country

I just heard about the deaths in Santa Maria (RS). More than 200 people lost their life in a night that was suppose to be remembered as fun. Mostly, if not all, still learning who they were and the way they were going to follow. University students having fun while they still can. In this scene appears an irresponsible musician that decides to fire a firework or something similar indoors and the lack of preparation for emergencies. Did this club have a license? How come a place that apparently can take ~1000 people has only one small door? This was a tragedy that shocked the world. This is just an unfortunate tragedy that may have to happen sometimes to make things change. I hope they do. I hope many other things change. Justice has to come back to Brazil and make living there more safe. Since I am living in Europe, people ask me if I plan to go back. All I can say is that I hope to stay here. Life is so much easier when one don't have to worry about safety. This brings me really unhappy. Brazil is not even the worst case scenario in the world. Things need to change and I hope to be of any help.

Snow

I can say now that I kind of saw snow quite a lot in my life. However, when the flakes are falling in the beautiful and peaceful white background, I cannot help myself and not to stop to see they falling. It is like there is magic in the air and everything can happen. The white makes it all so bright and somehow happy. The way the snow covers the plants it is like a blanket putting nature to sleep through the cold days. Yesterday I saw frozen fog on trees for the first time. It was also magical. It is incredibly beautiful. It is like being inside a snow globe. I am still waiting for my white Christmas, but at least I already have snow in kind of a regular basis...

Amizade

Quando eu tinha doze anos e vi que meus supostos "amigos" não eram aquilo que eu realmente achava que um amigo deveria ser, pensei que amizade era apenas um mito da vida adulta e que as pessoas viviam nessa mentira por alguma razão que eu não entendia. Hoje, 11 anos depois, tendo mudado 3 vezes de cidade e conhecido diversas pessoas, eu posso dizer que amizade realmente existe. A mudança chega mais uma vez na minha vida, mas tenho certeza que essas amizades irão permanecer. Desde meus primeiros verdadeiros amigos que conquistei no 2° Grau, que mesmo sem nos vermos por anos, quando nos encontramos, parece que o tempo não passou. Alguns vieram durante a minha graduação, embora posso dizer que uma barreira sempre continuou existindo e não sei exatamente se eles se encaixam na minha definição de amigos de verdade, definição de uma menina aos 12 anos. Agora, os amigos mais recentes, que conquistei durante meu mestrado, esses me fizeram sentir parte de grupo desde o ínicio. Mesmo quando me sentia intimidade por estar no meio de tanta gente, eles continuavam a tentar me fazer sentir confortável. Finalmente encontrei pessoas que posso chamar de amigos no sentido que eu sempre achei que deveria ser. Eles me incentivam, me ajudam, me escutam quando eu preciso. Tem alguns que já estão até planejando me visitar no meu novo destino, mesmo com orçamentos apertados. Gostaria de agradecer a todos meus amigos. Vou sentir muita falta de vocês. Vocês me fizeram perceber o que amizade realmente representa e que esta realmente existe.

And here I am...

And here I am... waiting for the snow to return, listening to Moddi and crying... I can't help myself. His music just turn me upside down, makes all my feelings emerge, makes me feel alive and somehow lonely. I am listening to such beautiful songs that can touch my soul and I am crying. Quite pathetic... What is wrong with me? I can't say if this is completely normal, and even if it is, but I am going through a time in my PhD that I wonder if I am doing the right thing with my life. Well, I like what I do. I like studying stars and its pulsations. I like unravelling the universe... However, sometimes I think I just followed the current and ended up here where I stand, for now. Should I have been a designer? I am so keen on details of graphic arts that I sometimes wonder if I should have followed this path, but then again I think I am not creative, I can only deal with what is already there. I don't know. I simply don't know. That is really hard to take in. That one doesn't really know oneself. I have no plan B for now and plan A is getting blurred and blurred. I wish I could express myself better...