Looking sideways

I remember a long time ago that I read a text from a famous Brazilian columnist, which I tried multiple times to find again but with no success, where she talked about the freedom of being married. But it was not the freedom from her partner she was referring to. No, she was talking about the pressure society puts on women to meet prince charming, fall in love, get married, have and raise kids. She was arguing that, now that she has done everything society expected from her, she was free to do whatever she wanted with her life. This idea came back to me recently, when I was reading about some comedian who discussed leaving a TV show after a long tenure. He said something very interesting, which I haven't really considered so far: it was his lifelong dream to work in this particular TV show, and when he was about to leave, he was scared for the future, but he knew he's done it. He achieved his childhood dream, so even if everything from now on would not work out entirely how he ...

 There are many reasons I left my previous job, and I don't know if I could rank these reasons in order of importance. There was also great things about that job, and I thought long and hard before I made the decision to go. Ultimately, my mental health was the biggest deciding factor. I was not happy there, and it was time to change. Change is good, exciting, but it can also be scary. So I weighed my options, researched, thought long and hard about it. I'm not a gambler, and when I gamble, I tend to be very conservative with my bets. I am fully aware that the payout will be much lower when the risk is lower, and I'm ok with that. I tend to think long term, and the long term gains are better suited for me. So I bet on something that was a sure win, even if it meant taking a step down in my career. I thought I knew what I was doing, and I thought it would be ok. I knew I would come across some difficult times, but ultimately the excitement of something new won. I was wrong. ...

I have discussed your absence multiple times, in different spaces, and I did not have any intention to reopen this can of worms again. Especially as I talked about this right here, a few posts back. But then I saw you. It was not a surprise, really. I knew you'd probably be there. But seeing you in person for the first time in almost a year affected me more than I thought it would. And I was way less prepared than I hoped to be. The truth is, I really wish I stopped for longer, had a proper chat and a tighter hug. But I also know how much that would have hurt me, and how that short encounter was the right decision for me. It was probably less than 30 seconds, and that was already enough to completely wrack me for the rest of the day. It also reminded me that the wound is still very much open. At this point, I'm not even sure anymore that I can be healed.  You look like you've been through a lot. I could see it in your eyes. They looked tired, they looked like life has been ...

It was another horrible day at work. These have been very common lately, although I'm not sure if this has always been the case and I'm only seeing it nowadays. At some point I will talk about this in depth, but for today, I'll have to ask you to take my word for it. Because today I wanna keep things in the family. To be more specific, my chosen family. One of the best things about growing up is being able to choose your own family, and that resonates a lot with a lot of queer people. I have been very lucky with my biological family - we are chaotic and dramatic, but we love each other in our own way, and we accept each other's choices, even when those are not the choices we would ourselves make. But my chosen family is where I struck gold. Without them, I'm not sure I'd even be alive today. Real alive, not metaphorical one. These people saved me many many times, and it was so effortless - they were just there when I needed, no questions asked, no demands, no co...

I don't remember 1994. I was 11 years old, probably old enough to remember something. But my memory has never been super reliable, even to this day, with recent facts - my mom says I never ate enough fish when I was a kid, and fish is supposedly good for the memory. I trust this, cause you know... Mothers know stuff. I don't remember many specific time periods of my childhood, or even teen years. It is all a blob that includes many different factors, things, events and emotions, but I find it really hard to place things in specific times. I definitely don't remember 1984. I was 1 then. Probably I could get something out of it with some kind of regression therapy, but it would be a true marvel if I could remember it on my own. But we are sold out of marvels at the moment. I had a nice childhood until the late years, early teens, when I became old enough to realise I was living in a horrible town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by people with sexist, homophobic, racist a...

It took me some time to comprehend, to be able to put it in words. I finally do, and I can finally say it: I am not well. Physical health is probably ok, although I am due a general check up. Money could always be better. No, I am talking about my mental health. Things are not ok with my mental health at the moment. And I think it's fair to share this with those around me. Awareness is important. And it's also important that my friends understand what I am going through, even though I am not sure I do. I have been posting less, taking longer to answer messages and sharing less stories. Things don't give me much pleasure right now, and a lot of times I just want to stay home quiet, watching The Nanny. In that world, I don't need to think about mine. It's comforting, even though I know I am running away. I also know it will catch up to me, and I am ok with this. At least for now. I have started writing again. Writing is my own way of therapy, it's how I organise m...

I thought about two ways of starting this, but none of them start from the beginning. So I will start from the beginning, and I will wedge the two other ways somewhere in the middle. The beginning is simply a simple question: how did I get here? The answer is a lot more complex than "by public transport", because first I need to understand the question. And the question is just the beginning. Bear with me, I'll explain. Imagine one of those software gone bad situations, where everything was working fine until it stopped. It's a bit like that, but not really. Because I truly believe that this was not something sudden, something that happened in one blow. This was a downhill slope, with an downwards incline angle so discreet that I didn't really notice I was heading this way until I was here. Looking back, I can see how far down I've come. But throughout the way it didn't really feel like it. Ultimately, the question is to try and find the point where the sl...

Fun fact: I never died before. So I don't know if this is just me, if it happens to everyone who dies: I cannot remember how it happened. I cannot remember what killed me, and I definitely cannot identify the moment everything went from being alive and well to being in this afterlife state. I have a feeling it was gradual, like something that was destroying me slowly, and not a single fatal (and surprising blow). But this is just a guess at the moment. I want to look into that with more depth and detail, and I will. But before I do, I think some disclaimers are needed. A few points that I need to say, to have peace with myself. I can't predict how this message will come across, and how people will receive it, but I can try my best to get it out in the way I intend it to. Firstly, this is not truth. I mean, things I express here are not necessarily the truth. They are simply the way I feel. This is my view, the way I see/saw, perceive/perceived facts that happened in my life. It...

I finally get it. It took me a long time to get here, and nothing made sense along the way. Something was missing, something wasn't right. Something didn't fit. A piece of the puzzle, something that could show me the full picture. And I think I found it, eureka! It's so simple. Yet, it makes so much sense, and explains so much. It's just obvious: I'm dead. Ok, I don't believe I actually died, or this is a post mortem simulation kind of reality. Although, probability speaking, there is an actual chance that I really died, and this is what afterlife is. But that chance is probably small - and truly I don't think this is the case here. I also don't believe in life after death - so far I've never seen anything that convinced me it exists. No, no.  The death I'm talking about here is a  metaphorical one.  The truth is that something died in me, and this happened in the last year or so. I will, at some point,  get into the some deep analysis on whethe...