A Long Letter to a Lousy Father

Hi.

     When I was a kid I used to adore you. You bouncy belly was the best pillow. You built the best and most amazing sand castles. But thats not enough, is it?

     I'm sorry that you couldn't understand that what makes a good father isn't how many presents he puts under the Christmas tree. To be honest, I've recently started to question if you always were a lousy father and I just never noticed or if you actually were a good dad at some point and something just went terribly wrong along the way. Whatever happened, you are not a good father. You will never understand, because you're one of those people that will just never admit to themselves that they are wrong. You just can't bring yourself to think that what went wrong in your life might be your fault. Or maybe you don't even think something went wrong. I don't really care anymore. 

     I couldn't have written this letter two years ago. I was too angry and too confused as to why someone who should be loving me and taking care of me would say such mean things. But you know what? I'm not really angry anymore. And I'm not scared like I was before that. However, I don't think I've forgiven you either. Oh no, I think that what I feel is much sadder: indifference. My friends sometimes ask me things about you, especially new friends, like why we don't talk anymore. And then they suddenly look really worried and they add "Do you mind me asking?". I've always said no, but when I look back I'm not sure how much of that was true. But nowadays it certainly doesn't make a difference. You certainly don't make a difference. 

     Before starting to write this, I had decided that I would not tell you what you've done wrong, because I've told you countless times and I'm sure you can't recall any of them. If you still don't want to see it, I don't think you ever will. However, it doesn't seem fair that I don't tell you (once more) when I stand behind this letter saying what some people might say are terrible things to say to a "father" (if you still call yourself that). Not that you can complain about anything being unfair, when you live alone in the house I grew up in when you never even helped to clean or cook. But still, I'm gonna tell you for the last time. So pay attention.
     You are a bad person. I don't give a shit about how crappy your childhood was, I was your fucking daughter, just like my mom was your wife before that, and you still treated both of us like a piece of garbage. When you talked to me, I could see you calculating everything you were gonna say, trying to  find that comment that would destroy me on the inside. And sometimes you hit right where there was a crack and everything shattered - don't think I couldn't see you smile when you saw that my eyes started to shine when I tried not to cry. I saw.
     All the things you said about my mom, all the comments you casually made, as if it was normal for you to talk badly about someone I loved - those I excused. I was scared and wanted so badly to be okay with you, so I stayed silent. But I never agreed with you either, and you saw that as you see everything in life: if I wasn't with you, I was against you. So you attacked me, you pushed me more and more against the wall with your nasty comments until I couldn't breathe, and instead of pushing you back, I shrank, to make more space for you. Oh, you took so much space and I was just a tiny little kid. For a while I thought it was normal for you to treat me like that. I thought I deserved it - after all, as you had reminded me countless times with you nasty subtle little comments, I was fat, stupid and a bitch. At one point you even told me that people just pretended to like me. If no one else liked me, why would i, right?
     Do you wanna know how I knew you didn't give a shit? You stopped bothering to have dinner with me and my sister. You didn't give a shit and you probably never knew that most nights I threw my food down the toilet or through the window because that day you said I was fat. Shit, I would go days without eating. You never knew why I spent all my time out of school sleeping, why my grades went to shit or why I would spend recess alone because I didn't want the few friends I had finally made to see me cry.  
     How do you think I felt when after practically a year in therapy insisting that everything was okay, something suddenly clicked and I realised the problem was you? You had been screaming at me for panicking about going in by myself - you probably don't even remember that, do you? That day probably didn't mean anything to you, because it was so common for you to scream at me when I panicked. Anyway, the psychologist saw and started asking me questions about you and suddenly I lost control and everything came out: tears, relief and the truth I didn't know I knew. I was trying to clean up a giant mess without knowing why it was there or why it kept coming back, but when I found out I could finally clean it. And I knew for sure you didn't give a shit about me when you tried to take me out of therapy because "I didn't need it" - I'm not stupid. I knew you were fucking pissed off because you realised I was getting better and that meant I was conquering the space you had stolen from me. 

     All of this, all of it, is a shame, because you have influenced me in more ways than I would like to admit. Not just the good stuff, like your love for music - I have some of the messed up parts of you in me too, which is something that I'm trying to workout.

     Towards the end, things got a bit bitter, I admit, and I didn't behave as I would like to have when I look back, but then again, how could it have been any other way? I excused you a thousand times and it was never enough.
     Mark my words: never have I ever thought that what happened was my fault. And sometimes this made me wonder if I wasn't just like you, incapable of admitting that I can be wrong. But that couldn't be true either, because I've apologised for being wrong a lot in my life, even when I wasn't, but I can't recall a single moment when you said to me "I'm sorry, I was wrong". The idiotic half-excuses you make up when you feel lonely or when you need to show off your "perfect family" somewhere don't fucking count, because those only last until I remind you that I have not forgotten what you've done. And then we go back to the start again, in an endless loop. Well, fuck that. 

See you around, I guess. 

Books that come from where I do

     Hello guys. You probably don't know this, because I don't think I've ever told you (ups): I come from this little country right at the edge of Europe: Portugal. 

     As many tourists have told me, it is a lovely land, with amazing landscapes and places to visit, but it's more than that: it's an incredible country with a fascinating history. All kinds of people have walked through the places I grew up in, bringing new products and traditions from everywhere around the world for centuries. 

     Portugal has existed independently since 1143, which means its history is much longer that some other country's. Today, it still has its problems, like every country does, but - as always - it's also the homeland of great artists, including writers. I decided to share with you today three amazing books that come from the same place I was born in. 
     Two of them are books I read when I was younger, and that I still reread and recommend to people my age because they're so good; the last one is a bit more complex, and it relates more closely to Portugal.
   

The Tree 
by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen

     The Tree is a wonderful book that I used to read all the time when I was younger, and that still impresses me when I read it today. It tells two different stories, both set in Japan. The first one (that shares its title with the book itself) is about a village that grew around a tree and what the people in the village did with the wood when the tree started to rot and die. The second one, my favourite, is called "The mirror or the living portrait". This absolutely beautiful story full of emotion tells us about a girl that looked so much like her mother, she believed the mirror her mom gave her before she died was a living portrait of her, with which she spent entire days.

The White Planet

by Miguel Sousa Tavares 

     The White Planet is also a book I read many times when I was younger (but not too much because it used to give me chills), although I haven't read it in years. Just like The Tree, it's a book for kids as much as it is for adults. It tells the story of a group of astronauts that are lost in space and being pulled faster and faster by a mysterious force; when they've lost all hope of returning home, they take pills that will allow them to sleep and have a painless death... but they don't die. Instead, they discover something else. 

Message
by Fernando Pessoa

     This is a less childish book from a more international author (I even found an English Version here). Fernando Pessoa is considered one of the best portuguese poets and he wrote both in English and Portuguese, so you should have no problem finding some of his work. This is the one I recommend. Message was published for the first time in 1934, when Portugal faced a period of oppression, so Pessoa wrote this anthology, where every poem (or practically) is dedicated to an important figure of Portuguese History, mostly people that still symbolise our spirit nowadays. This book takes a bit of knowledge about portuguese history, as there are many references to events and people I didn't know about myself, but you don't have to worry about that, as many editions of the book come with little explanations on the side. Besides, these are still wonderful poems when read by themselves, so you can just read one at a time and enjoy them, without putting too much thought into it. I'll leave one here:

ULYSSES
Myth – nothing, everything. Brute 
Sun throwing skies wide
Is a myth, brilliant, mute –
The dead body of God
Living and nude.

This man who here came ashore 
Was by way of not being. 
Came? Was here before.
Did us proud by not being. 
Made us, what’s more.

So legend trickles, tries 
To seep into real life. 
And runs, can fertilise. 
Down below, life – half 
Nothing – dies. 

The purge of self-hate

   I like to think that I’ve come a long way when it comes to loving myself and my body, but sometimes something pops up and I get scared that insecurities just never really go away. 

     Sometimes I tell my friends things I hate about myself. They slip out because I feel the need to say what they’re thinking. They always deny it, and I get embarrassed because I don’t want them to feel like I’m fishing for compliments. Most times I’m not even expecting a reaction. I’m just letting it out. 

     The thing is, they shouldn’t even be denying anything - it reinforces the idea that any of the things I'm about to say are bad. I hate them because that’s what I was told to do by others who were told the same. I hate them because at one point my self-esteem was so low I decided everything about me was gross and now I can’t get it out of my head. My friends shouldn’t try to convince me that what I think isn't true, they should try to convince me that it’s okay not to look like a supermodel. Not that I don't know that, I do, but I, like many others, have been so conditioned to chase after a perfect body that when people say something like "oh, you look so thin!" I can't help but smile, even if I think that shouldn't be neither a good or a bad thing. 

     So, that's what you need to know to understand where this is coming from. This post is a purge: I’m letting everything I hate out, so I can let everything I love in. This is not gonna be very positive, so you might want to skip to the end.

The official list of reasons why I hate my body:

I’m not pretty

I’ve got chubby cheeks and they’re always red

My boobs are small and look like teabags

I have stretch marks all over and they’re not even the pretty ones

I’m more cellulite than human

 My hips are huge and my thunder tighs make me feel like an elephant walking

I’m not tall, which makes me seem rounder

Not matter how much I exercise or how little I eat, I always look disgusting.

My butt is squishy and shaky and so big it keeps knocking things over

I’m so pale I look sick but when I do tan I look dirty

My nails are ugly

My hair is always gross

My arms are so fat they never look good in t-shirts just like my legs don’t look good in shorts

My face, fingers, neck, stomach and back are fat

My shoulders are wide as fuck

You can’t really see my knees when I’m standing because of all the fat.

     It’s a bit hard to preach body positivity when inside you still think about yourself everything you say others must not. But this was my purge. I will try to keep these thoughts out of my mind, and hopefully I can look back at this in a few years and be happy about how I feel about myself then. I advise you to do the same. You can do it right down there in the comments, in a notebook, in your blog, whatever. Just do it. Purge. Let it out so you can move on to being better.

On getting your hopes high

     Things really have been shitty lately. The old feelings are coming back. I feel sad, and stressed, and disconnected, but mostly I feel like my head is just filled with white noise. And that's how I realized how high my hopes were. I wanted so much to be done with this feeling. I thought I was. I was really fucking dumb.

     I don't like to admit it, but goddamn, am I good at repressing my feelings. Well, until a certain point. If you interact with me on a daily basis, you won't have a clue that something might not be ok. Until I start crying uncontrollably during gym class that is. Because I can't even throw a fucking ball. So... that happened. 

     I work so fucking hard to not let my hopes get too high, because I know they'll be crushed. But then this kind of stuff happens and I realize how high my hopes where. 

     I realized how much I wanted to finally be happy when I was suddenly smashed by these fucking feelings again. I realized how much I wanted to have a normal family life when it seemed like it was going to happen and then my shitty father just went back to being his disgusting version of a father like I keep being reminded he is. Over and over again I realize how much I'm into this guy, every time he unknowingly stabs me in the heart. I realize how high my hopes where when I get a lower grade than I was expecting. I realize it when I look in the mirror and I'm reminded of how I actually look. I realize it when an oral presentation I really felt prepared for goes to shit because I just couldn't breathe. All the time, everywhere. 

     How do I stop this? It's like I'm set for disappointment. By now I should know that my life isn't a movie and that high expectations only lead to broken hearts.

When anxiety holds you back

     I think that I’m a relatively positive person, but I’m also a very anxious person. Some people seem to think that I can’t be both of those things, as if one takes away from the other, which is not true.

     When things were a bit rough, practically everything made me anxious, especifically situations where I had to interact with other people. I was afraid to look stupid, or that people wouldn’t like me or that somehow something would go wrong. And I’ve been told many times that “Oh, but that’s normal, everyone gets a bit nervous sometimes!”. But it was not normal.

     Yes, everyone gets nervous, but they still go out and do what they need to do. When it got really bad, I would panic and cry for almost an hour if my parents told me to go up to a coffee shop worker and order something. Most times I would just stay hungry. The few times I would actually do it, I’d spend the next few hours if not more being mad at myself for how stupid I’d looked.  And I did this with every single interation I had with anyone else outside my family and very small group of friends, and sometimes even with them.

     I knew it wasn't racional. I just couldn’t help it. Everything seemed like such a big deal in my head.

     Of course eventually my mom realised this wasn’t normal, along with other things I had going on, and she sent me to a therapist. Even that made me anxious but I still went and together we explored some of the things I had on my mind (but I didn’t tell her all of it, so some things never really got any closure). A few months ago she got pregnant and decided I was in a good place at the moment and it was a good opportunity to see how I would do by myself (instead of sending me to a coleague, which is what is usually done, even though that means building up the confidence to open up to a stranger all over again). I’ve been handling things on my own for a few months now and more or less, I’ve been doing fine.

     However, I’ve noticed that I still get anxious sometimes, and lately it has happened more than it should: I’ve missed two birthday parties of really close friends because of how many people they invited and I panicked and cried because I wanted to see my sister’s play so badly but I didn’t want to take the bus alone to a place I didn’t know. Hearing how disappointed she was on the phone was heartbreaking. 

     It makes me mad that people don’t understand, and it makes me feel awful when they say things like the one my friend said to me: “You should at least make an effort”. I am making an effort. Does she have any idea how hard it is to even tell her why I don’t wanna go, instead of making up excuses? I thought she would understand, but she just made me feel bad about something I can’t control.

     I could hear my sister being disappointed on the phone, and I didn’t know how to explain to her I really wanted to go because I knew she would say something like “then come.”

     It’s a terrible feeling when being anxious holds you back from living your life and you can’t really do anything. I'm trying very hard to beat this shit, I swear, but it's hard. 
     There's no positive conclusion or advice I can give you, because I don't know what I'm doing either. Fuck.

How I realised life is worth living

Where did he go by Edward Honaker

      What I'm going to tell you is something I don't think I've actually ever told anyone (or at least not the most part). Right after my parent's divorce, I went through a rough time. Let's say two or three years (which is nothing compared to other people who have it so much worse for so much longer). I'm not gonna get into details about why this happened, because it's not easy to point out just one reason.

     My grades dropped dramatically - I went from top grade in every class to fighting desperately to even pass some classes. I didn't see any purpose in life. I spent every time I could alone in my room and most of that time I just stayed in my bed, doing nothing, with the lights off. I thought I was worthless, stupid, ugly and fat and that I wasn't deserving of love - maybe because I was lacking some. 

     I hurt myself. I pulled my own hair, I often bang my head against walls repeatedly, I bit my own lip until it started bleeding just to see how much it took, I even cut myself a few times - I was mad at myself because I was ruining my own life and I thought I deserved it; I couldn't understand what was wrong inside my mind, so I turned the pain into something physical, something I could understand; I was desperate because I felt numb both mentally and physically and i just wanted to feel something. 

     I was so ashamed of being who I was that I started to hate everyone else's presence and I panicked just thinking that I had to ask for food at a cafe - I couldn't breathe and I started to cry and one time I had to sit for around half an hour after because my legs had just went numb and I fell when I tried to walk. 

     It was also around that time that I stopped eating on purpose, and throwing up what I ate every time I felt bad about the folds in my stomach. It never got too serious (which is something I'm very thankful for). Still, it was enough to make me have headaches all the time and a constant pain in my stomach - I thought that pain was at the same time my punishment and my reward. I would spend my lunch time alone in the park practically everyday, reading books I wasn't really paying attention to. Still today I feel guilty when I eat too much and in my head I feel my belly bloating with every bite, but I fight that feeling. 

     Teaching kids about how dangerous it is to deprive our body of the necessary nutrients can only do half the work. I knew all that - I remember when my friend confronted me about it one time and I said "At least I'll die skinny". 

     That was also the day I realised why I wasn't scared of getting sick. I went home and I asked myself if I would be satisfied if I actually ever got skinny "enough". I wouldn't. I didn't just want to be thin. I was too scared to do anything too extreme, so I had found a way of slowly killing myself with all the pain I deserved for being such a despicable human being. 

     Now I was fully conscious of what I was doing. So I started seeing a quicker way out everywhere. I looked outside my bedroom window on the fifth floor and I pictured my body smashed against the sidewalk and tried to imagine how long the fall would be. I often researched what pills would kill me if I took too many, because it made me feel better to just know. I saw cars speeding through the street and I couldn't help but think how easy it would be to throw myself in front of one. 

     And now I look back and I can't believe how ridiculous those thoughts seem to me today. Sure, it would have been easy to put an end to things. But here I am today: I have kept the friends who tried to help me at the time and I've made new ones; I got rid of the toxic people in my life and I'm closer to my family; I've found things I'm passionate about and I fight for them; I want to travel and write and meet new people and do different things when all I wanted to do at that time was vanish into the air. 

     If my stupid plan had worked or if I had jumped in front of a car, I wouldn't be here today and I wouldn't have been able to experience all the wonderful things that have happened to me since then. If I could say this to the person I was at that time, she probably wouldn't have given a shit. I used to think we all die anyway and life was a terrible thing, so I could just be done with it earlier - but I was wrong. 

     None of us choose to be born and it's not my place to tell anyone when to die, but it's up to us how much of a good time we have. Here's something I've learned: life is a coincidence. Look at the odds. What were the odds of your parents meeting? Of them making a baby? Of that baby being you? The odds of exactly you being born were very little - but it happened. I'm not saying you must be thankful that you were given a life and all those things I've been told too. I'm just saying don't throw this amazing coincidence away.
    Life is full of possibilities, and you get to explore them to the maximum. But if you give up because things are rough right now, you don't get to do anything. When we get the help we need and learn how to manage our "demons", it becomes clear that we can still do so much and be so much in life, that those problems we fight with don't control us if we don't let them. These ghosts in my past still haunt me when I provoke them, but they're ghosts, they're dead: they can't harm me if I don't let them.
     There's only one thing I want you to take from this very long post: our problems aren't permanent but death is. Make a smart decision.

Hello

Improvisation 28 by Kandinsky
(because I'm improvising a bit myself)

Hello. I'm Carol and I'm here for three reasons.

Reason number one: 

     As most of us do, I like to think of myself as not only something, but something else. I'm probably wrong. But then again, most of us are. But that doesn't stop us from creating amazing art, and books, and music, and movies; it doesn't stop us from being great at our jobs, great parents or great friends; it doesn't stop us from living the lives we want to. What does stop us is when we start thinking of ourselves as only something. So, bearing this in mind, I'm starting this blog as a way to constantly remind myself of things I believe are important, weather they make me laugh or cry or they make me think and be angry or they make me feel warm and happy. Because the things I believe are most important and that are close to my heart and mind are the things that make me something else, even if at first sight I don't seem like it. 

Reason number two: 

     It's always weird when we look at others and realize they live a complex life much like our own, that they don't just exist as outside stimulus to our own existence; maybe that's why it's so fascinating when we get to peak into their thoughts. So what I'm presenting here is an opportunity to travel through my own complex mind. Have a wonderful ride. Or don't. Totally up to you. 

Reason number three: 

     I dream of writing for a living and - as I'm constantly haunted by the terrifying idea that every minute I spend on a TV show binge is being wasted - I decided to do something about it.

     I want to share my experience as a human, and I want to share all of it, the things I love and the things I hate. I would like to think that there's someone out there reading what I write, but I understand that might not always be the case, and I accept that. It's okay either way, because ultimately I write for myself.