I don’t believe I fully appreciated the difficulty of leaving one life and trying to build another one elsewhere. I would love to start exploring Brazil and share all my findings here, but the first month has, unfortunately, been mostly an internal exploration. I have completely left my comfort zone and I’m trying to find out who I am in this new adventure. Please know that everything written below has been written with a big smile, so no worries about my well-being!
I wrote last time that who you are is very much defined by what you do, but actually, what you do is defined by who you are. People, therefore, have a constant need to identify themselves and then, in fact, what you do becomes an essential part of who you are again. At the moment I have no identity except being Florentine, from Holland. In my life in Holland, I was someone’s old friend, someone’s sister, someone’s colleague, classmate and I was approached accordingly. By my way of dressing, speaking and by reputation, perhaps, people knew who I was and there was no need to proof anything to them or myself.
Here it’s very different; first of all I can’t talk to anyone! Most of the time I feel quite invisible when people speak in Portuguese around me. I feel guilty and frustrated that I can’t talk to them, can’t express myself and loose a big part of being able to…well…be myself! For the rest there is only one person here who has known me for more than a month. To the rest I’m just the new Dutch girl – no idea of what I can do, what I like, what makes me happy or who I am really.
This lack of identity forces me to trust myself to be me without any reassurance of who that is. At home people could say: ‘O, that’s typically you!’, ‘That’s really something you’d love to do!’ or ‘I’m sure you can do that, seeing your past achievements!’ Here everything I do is new to everyone around me and this makes me doubtful sometimes.
When I was told yesterday to: Get a life! It was the best advice I’ve gotten so far. That’s all I need to do – get a life, create a ‘new’ identity and start doing what I want to do!
This new life starts today in Sao Paulo. After leaving Rio for Sao Paulo I ended up staying here until now. I’ve just moved to my own room in a very nice house, with a cat, a garden and two nice roommates. For the first time in more than a month I have unpacked my stuff and I own a key!! I spent a great weekend in Paraty – a beautiful paradise place and now I’m ready to get a life; really start learning this stupid language (as I have lovingly started to refer to Portuguese) and make a plan! I’ll be here for at least a month, but I’ll keep you all posted of my findings!
I’m on Skype a lot if people feel like talking and catching up…maybe adding a phrase or two about how this is typically me or how this is something I’d love to do.. :D!