I thought people were joking when they said they couldnât get the person they loved out of their head. Now I know they were not. Not at all. No matter where I am and what I am doing, I attribute all and everything to him, no matter how unrelated it may seem. He haunts me everywhere so I scan the room for him if I know he might be there and it is so hard not to stare at him all the time. It feels as if I just woke up one day and decided that he would be constantly occupying my mind from now on. There is a corner of my mind, reserved just for him, that I like to visit at those times that others would check their phone or chat with someone they barely know, simply to pass time. At the beginning, it did not get in the way of school. On the contrary, I was more motivated than ever to participate in class and spoke my mind. Only when the insecurities started to set in, when doubt disturbed me in my waking hours, pushing my sleeping hours behind, only then did it start to bother me. It had been so easy before, I didnât think it would be too bad to think about him whenever I got the chance to. It felt natural and it felt right. And all of a sudden it had become a living nightmare, thinking about him all hours of the day, postponing sleep and work and hardly talking to friends. I went from an active student to someone who slacked off and showed little interest doing whatever the teachers asked me to do. It felt like I was going through hell. Each day I forced myself through to the other day and not even laying in bed helped. Nothing helped. Nothing excited me and all I could do was to think about him, anyway. What should I have done? I could only watch the shell left of me wander through the monotonous daily life as all my mind could pay attention to were my oh so grand movements. My weird gestures. My fluctuating tone of voice. What stupid things I said. And how dumb he must have thought I was. And really nothing could stop me from eating myself from the inside, just because I needed to understand, what it was that I was being and what it was that I needed to become. Who I needed to be to appease him and everybody I admired. To meet the expectations thrown at me whenever someone pointed out that I could use brain cells. Who are humans? What are they, really? Who did I need to be, in order to be a human? Are there wrong ways to be human? Is there a defect human? Was I doing it all wrong? Was I destined to be a defect, forever? Who are the defect people? We have to change them, donât we? We have to show them the way to trully be human! They just donât know it yet, but they are wrong. They were born defect.
I couldnât stop thinking those thoughts. It is not that they wouldnât let me alone. At some point, it was all in my control. It was me who couldnât let go of this image of the bright kid who got excellent grades in elementary school without trying. I had somehow got lost in my path and I had to become that bright kid again, so that I could be someone. Someone who could stand in a room with extraordinary people feeling the urge to evaporate into thin air. If I could not be someone, what even was the point of being? My entire existence felt like a tragedy. I couldnât grasp the fact that I still existed, within all these contradictions my mind had imprisoned me, I just couldnât find a reason to be. So, I just survived day after day and hoped that someday I would figure it out. I had to believe that! There was no other way out of those contradictions. I had to become familiar with them, look at them from every angle possible and understand them. To know how they existed and what they meant. And it took a lot of observing and more patience than I had left to finally come to understand them. And by doing so, also understanding that I existed and that I had every right to do so. Really, it was the most liberated I felt after a long time. I was me again. I wasnât that bright kid I remembered others had called me, but I was me, the kid who others did not see, who wasnât âbrightâ, but was just curious about it all. Who loved. Loved books and their home, library (which also became my second home), the beach, brazilian sweets, momâs cooking, writing, singing, and coincidentally also loved to learn about every subject they encountered in- and outside of school. That was me. Not shy but also not looking for much attention, just living in their own world, which is really the best world there is. Sometimes very bubbly, sometimes very cold. Scared a lot, but not afraid to speak their mind. I was me, existing in contradictions I didnât see, which I didnât need to understand. The important part was that I existed within them. I didnât try to fit an ideal and be someone who I wasnât. And I wasnât ashamed of that. I simply accepted the reality I was in, and thereby accepted the contradictions others may have been confused by. And though many people find contradictions irritating, I think they are what makes the world such a strange and exciting and terrifying and monstrous place. It is the best place there is and I am the best me I could ever be.