Self-portrait at nineteen

Naquela noite conhecia esse grande susto de estar viva, tendo como único amparo apenas o desamparo de estar viva. *

Uma aprendizagem ou o livro dos prazeres by Clarice Lispector

santa cruz, august 2023

I am nineteen years old and I might as well vanish when August comes.

The feeling of wasting time has always lived in me, soon to be twenty and I have spent my whole life passing by.

I am nineteen and I am on fire*, I am nineteen and why does it feel like I will die tomorrow?

Just the other day I could not look away from the girl reflecting on my bedroom mirror and I could not believe that She was me. I could´ve swear the reflection moved slower than I did. And I felt sorry for that girl, and her crooked teeth and the face she swears to be unsymmetrical. The mirrors have always deceived me, not the way it happened to Narcissus, doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in the water, I was also cursed, not to fall in love with it, but to hate it.

I have had this idea for months, to immortalize who I am at nineteen years old within a frame of words, to write about myself is what I´m attempting and I fear I will give up. I don’t think this meditation will come near a self-portrait, more like a patchwork of myself. I don’t promise to be concise, but I do promise to be honest.

I was born to one of the hottest Sundays of August, I didn´t cry when I came out the womb, as purple as a newborn can be, my grandmother thought I was born dead, yet I was full of life and contradiction from my very first breath.

Fast-forward to when I learned how to read, ever since then, I look for the horoscope on the magazines last pages. I was born on the 3rd, a Leo and I was maybe 7 years old when I read that my zodiac sign loved being in the spotlight. That statement upset me, I was just a little girl who never had one friend, but sure had an anxiety that made her throw up in the middle of class.

There is duality in everything I do, with a sun tattooed in my body, though it is often that I feel like the moon, not always full, constantly floating through phases. I walk a fine line of either loving eagerly or despising with my whole ego, it will always be either 8 or 80 for me. I never found balance, though I have been obsessively stepping on the scale since I can remember.

Now I know I´m a Libra moon and it does make sense after all.

Well, enough with the astrological talk, I believe in a lot of other things, but not in god. I wear red lipstick on days I need luck and I refuse to walk under arches because my father always avoided doing so, “it brings hardships into your life” he told me. But dad, I never walked under an arch and everything has been nothing but a battle. Maybe it´s because I have no faith and I write god without the capital letter.

Being nineteen is doing my eyeliner every day and cursing public transportation. Being called “Sol” by my best friend. Running to the beach the first day I see 20º degrees on the weather app. Having coffee every opportunity I get, no sugar please. Wearing my grandma´s clothes and thinking of that Harry Styles song*. It´s looking forward for Summer. And passion fruit caipirinhas. It´s seasonal depression. Perhaps it´s the love for those existentialist books that make me underline its passages until the paper rips apart. I think being nineteen is also crying during driving lessons. And biting my inner cheek to avoid it. It´s a desire to be heard while fighting a war to make any sound leave my throat. Always finding a way to turn my college essays into feminist manifestos. It´s wanting so eagerly to make big things while being so scared to leave. It´s an ongoing journey of finding myself, soon to be twenty years old and I think I haven´t met her.

Or maybe I have.

I´ve met her in my dreams, I´ve seen her in so many places and I´ve admired her reflection on other people´s faces, yet I haven´t found her. No one ever will.

I self-sabotage and I have been doing that all throughout my life, I swear I wasn´t lying in these paragraphs, but the truth is that I have run out of words and by the time I wrote this last line: I am twenty years old, it´s September.

And I haven´t vanished.

* “At that hour of the night she was experiencing that fear of being alive, having as her only help the helplessness of being alive.” English translation of the passage from An apprenticeship or the book of pleasures by Clarice Lispector

* Reference to Lorde´s song Perfect Places

* “There´s a piece of you in how I dress. Take it as a compliment.” Cherry by Harry Styles