(image by Avalon620)
Vivi muitos tipos diferentes de solidão ao longo da vida: ser a única pessoa da minha família a falar uma língua estrangeira (na verdade, duas); ter odiado maquiagem por muitos anos, e ainda odiar a cor rosa, e saias e vestidos, e salto alto, e dressing codes e garotas cujo assunto circule em torno de produtos de beleza, tendências de moda e cabelo, entre outras futilidades; ter desfrutado de certos prazeres mais do que outras meninas, como sentar no chão, caminhar gado e brincar na lama; passar mais tempo entre livros do que entre pessoas; conseguir que as pessoas me amem exatamente como sou e ainda assim ser incapaz de fazê-las permanecerem em minha vida; ter medo de monstros debaixo da minha cama (sério, até hoje); chegar ao fim de um livro ou filme com um entendimento transcendental de mim mesma ou do mundo em que vivo; sentir muita pena dos cães abandonados (mais até do que dos moradores de rua muitas vezes), acreditar no amor e na bondade; chorar no chuveiro, na cama, no ônibus indo a qualquer lugar sem me preocupar com o que as pessoas podem pensar; gostar de música Indie, não chorar em filmes tristes, nunca ter assistido Titanic, questionar finais felizes.
Eu sei que cada um de nós vem ao mundo sozinho.
Mas me sinto muito desconectada. Sinto que não pertenço a nada. Mesmo cercada de pessoas que me amam e pelas quais sou imensamente grata. Me pergunto se há alguém que me conheça verdadeiramente. Provavelmente não. E eu não deixo muita gente se aproximar de mim, quero dizer, a ponto de tocar minha abstração, a essência do meu ser. Eu afasto as pessoas quando se aproximam demais. Tenho medo de me machucar, então eu as machuco primeiro, para evitar que elas o façam. Paro de procurá-las. Paro de falar com elas. Paro de pensar nelas. Quem ainda poderia me amar depois desse ciclo?
Eu sou completamente responsável pela minha solidão. Não me incomoda, a maior parte do tempo. É a liberdade de que alguns falam.
É só às vezes que penso se não deveria ter sido mais como as garotas comuns que eu conheço. Deveria ter 'sossegado o facho', ter me casado com um dos meus namoradinhos e ter tido os filhos que tanto quero. Então me pergunto se teria sido feliz. Duvido. Essa inconstância. Por isso eu não faço planos. Nunca. E não tento ver longe no futuro. Mas tenho na cabeça essa imagem de uma mulher que vi num documentário uma vez, sobre o número crescente de idosos na população da Itália. Era velhinha e fraca, de lencinho na cabeça, o rosto enrugado, cansado, chorava copiosamente enquanto contava sua história para o repórter. Contava a ele que era filha única e que não havia se casada nem gerado filhos. Contava do pesar de pensar que se aproximava dela a morte, e quando esta chegasse, sua família deixaria de existir. Todos estavam mortos, ela, o último membro vivo de uma linhagem, caminhando sobre a Terra. Chorava. Nunca me esqueci disso. Penso que agora talvez esteja morta.
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I have experienced many different kinds of loneliness throughout my life: Being the only person in my family who can speak a foreign language (actually two), being a girl who hated make up for years, and the color pink, and skirts and dresses, and high heels, and dressing codes, someone who still hates girls who can only get into conversations about skin care, hair trends, fashion fads and such silly stuff, enjoying small 'dirty' pleasures like, sitting on the ground, playing in the mud more than other girls; spending more time around books than people, having people love me exactly for who I am and still being unable to make them stay, being afraid of monsters under my bed (still today), getting to the end of a movie or a book with a transcendental discovery about myself or the world I live in, feeling awfully sorry for dogs abandoned on the streets (more than for homeless people), always believing in love and kindness, crying in the shower, in bed, in the bus on my way somewhere caring nothing about people's thoughts, enjoying music and singers not many people know of, not crying in weepy movies, never watching Titanic, questioning happy endings.
I know we come to this world alone.
I feel terribly disconnected. I feel I don't belong. I'm surrounded by people who love me and I'm thankful for each of them. But I don't think they know me. I don't let many people get close to me, I mean, to the point of touching the abstract me, the essence of who I am. I pull people away when they get too close. I'm afraid of getting hurt, so I hurt people before they hurt me. I stop looking for them. I stop talking to them. I stop thinking about them. Who could love me after all that?
I actually understand why I'm alone. I'm totally responsible for it and it doesn't bother me most of the time. It is the freedom some people talk about.
Sometimes I think I should have acted like the regular girls I know. I should have settled down with a sweetheart of mine and had the babies I so want to. But then I wonder if would have been happy. I doubt it. I'm so inconstant. Because of the mess I am, I never make plans. Never. I don't even try to see far in the future. But I have this image of a woman I saw in a documentary once, about Italy and the increasing number of elderly people there. This woman was old and weak, she had a wrinkled, tired face, and she cried her eyes out while talking to the reporter. She was telling him she never got married or had children, and she was an only child herself. She said she was really sad to imagine that she was getting close to death and after she died, her family would no longer exist. All the people in her family were dead, she was the last living member in a lineage. She sat there and cried her heart out. I never forgot that scene, it was so long ago. She might have passed away already.
(This is from an e-mail exchange with a friend. I share it in the loving memory of Lonesome George. Each of us is one of a kind.)
Há certas bandeiras que sempre levantaremos sozinhos. Mas a nossa solidão é escolha por algo melhor.
ReplyDeleteI read your heartfelt words and see so much of myself in them, in earlier years, when I so badly wanted love, yet feared the pain, the time when no one stayed. Keep believing - and knowing - that you are worthy of being loved, and love will find you. A friend once told me, when I wanted someone to love me: "Just love people." It is true, when we love the whole world, love comes back to us, in waves. I am still alone, and yet I love and am loved. Believe, fellow pilgrim! You are walking in a world of enchantment.
ReplyDeletekenia))) odd is wonderful, desirous, perfect but to fear what we will one day lose and therefore not take chances. oh dear, fear not allowing yourself the devastation that will surely follow instead. this is life. this is love. real love will destroy us. but to be destroyed for such wealth - i have no choice but to go willingly.
ReplyDeletebe brave, my dear friend. be reckless. be wonderful you. allow yourself the heat of the fire and then the burn and then the ashes.
xo
erin
i just happened to come across this. i think this is essential to exorcising all fear (not that exorcising all fear drives loneliness out but it is essential to good and right living, i think):
ReplyDeleteDo you know what it means to come into contact with death, to die without argument? Because death, when it comes, does not argue with you. To meet it, you have to die every day to everything: to your agony, to your loneliness, to the relationship you cling to; you have to die to your thought, to die to your habit, to die to your wife so that you can look at your wife anew; you have to die to your society so that you, as a human being, are new, fresh, young, and you can look at it. But you cannot meet death if you don't die every day. It is only when you die that there is love. A mind that is frightened has no love, it has habits, it has sympathy, it can force itself to be kind and superficially considerate. But fear breeds sorrow, and sorrow is time as thought.
So to end sorrow is to come into contact with death while living, by dying to your name, to your house, to your property, to your cause, so that you are fresh, young, clear, and you can see things as they are without any distortion. That is what is going to take place when you die. But we have a limited death to the physical. We know very well logically, sanely, that the organism is going to come to an end. So we invent a life which we have lived of daily agony, daily insensitivity, the increase of problems, and its stupidity; that life we want to carry over, which we call the "soul", which we say is the most sacred thing, a part of the divine, but it is still part of your thought and therefore it has nothing to do with divinity. It is your life!
So one has to live every day dying, dying because you are then in contact with life.
~ J. Krishnamurti
from The Book of Life
xo
erin
Olá, Kenia.
ReplyDeleteMuito interessante seu post. Aliás, fez-me lembrar de um poema que já algum tempo escrevi, e que trata, via verso, das mesmas questões que você desenvolveu via prosa.
Aceita, deste mundo, a solidão
A que todo ser está destinado.
Que importa a alguém o que há em teu coração?
Teus anseios... quem os terá escutado?
Estarás sempre só na multidão
Carregando em ti teu EU ignorado
(Só Deus entende tua imensidão
Mas dele, em teu andar, tens te afastado).
Fecha teus olhos (podes fazê-lo ainda)
E então, explorador, mergulhe fundo
No obscuro mar, onde nada se linda.
Súb'to verás, no pélago profundo,
De cristais mil uma Atlântida infinda,
Teu refúgio excelso contra o opróbrio do mundo.
Mais do que qualquer palavra, esses versos podem resumir todo o meu pensamento...
Abraços.
Daniel