… okay, there are still 7 days till the end of the year, but for me it is more than over. It is over because this year mainly signified work and this is the last work day in the year. In this year I discovered many failures in me, at my professional side. I discovered that I have a great fear of writing. I discovered that I procrastinate too much and I need more discipline. I discovered that my creativity is not exactly my feature. My boss said that if I do not do something to speed up my work, I should quit. And I almost quit this year. I discovered that the life of a grad student can be very hard and frustrating.

I will not say that life sucks because it is not my life’s fault. Maybe I can blame myself for making bad choices in this life. But the thing is: when you are already in the boat, and the boat is clearly sinking, there is no time to feel sorry for yourself for getting into the boat, or to feel bad for yourself for being so stupid to get into the boat. You have to act. And quickly. You have to see which resources you still have in the boat: energy to survive and strength to deal with the big waves and storms. More than that you will not get. Sometimes you will think to jump off the boat and leave everything there, but the truth is: if you jump out the boat, the ocean is still there, with its big waves waiting to make you drown.

So, Santa, what I am asking for this Christmas is: more energy and strength. Energy to be more responsible, to be more organized, to be more “energetic” and to accomplish my tasks in a successful way. And strength to keep my head up. To survive the storms and the big waves. I know I have not been very good this year, but I am trying to do some good. I may not have hit the bullseye (sometimes I have hit very far from it) this year, but I am training to improve my targeting. So, please, Santa, help me to grow up. This is all I ask for Christmas this year. And, of course, peace for my family. They deserve it.

And of course I am grateful for making my last Christmas’ wishes come true, Santa. Thank you for helping me and my family to heal our wounds. I think the wounds are still there, but they hurt less. Thank you for that.

Sincerely yours,

Carolina

I know how much I have neglected the Christmas spirit on the past years. But I hope you can understand me. Many things were happening and most of them took the time together with Christmas. I am sorry.

I hope it is not too late to write you this letter. I think I have been a good girl this year. I didn’t lie – maybe tiny little ones, not to hurt anybody, but not big ones – I didn’t cheat. I tried to love this year, Santa. And I loved my family. And I noticed how important it is, to be together with them.

For this Christmas, Santa, I wish those things:

… patience. To let the time do its “thing” and heal my wounds. This year was really tough for me. I lost people I loved, people lied to me. Please give me patience to wait for the wounds to heal.

… peace and health to my family and me. I think we have suffered enough and it cuts my heart to see how my family is suffering with the losses. Please give them peace for Christmas.

… and at last, but not least, but only if it’s possible, Santa, a love. A true one. A one that I can love and love me with the same intensity back. Santa, please, give me a true man, not a boy. He can have the heart of a boy, pure and loving, but the head and courage of a man. He doesn’t have to be stunning, but he has to be charming before my eyes. Speaking of eyes, he has to have beautiful eyes, that shine when they see me and smile when he smiles. And a smile that is so beautiful that make me smile too. He has to have strong and big arms, so he can embrace me and protect me from my fears. He has to have strong shoulders, to bare the weight of the world and to let my head rest there and have the sweetest of my dreams. He has to have a wit so quick as mine, so we can have the most stupid but funniest jokes. He has to have big and strong hands, to build with me fortresses. But at the same time, they have to be soft when they touch me, so goosebumps come to my stomach. He doesn’t have to be afraid of feelings, even being those good or bad.

I am a warrior, Santa, not a princess, so I cannot have princes. They turn out to be frogs in the end. Please, Santa, give me a knight. I don’t want Arthurs anymore. I want my Lancelot.

I know this is a lot, Santa, but if you give me the two first items, I am really happy already. But the third one would make me very very very happy.

Thank you for reading this late letter, Santa. And if you can make my wishes come true, I will be thankful for the rest of my life.

Sincerely yours,

Carolina.

How hard it is to realize that it's only you. Credits: confusedvision

How hard it is to look at yourself in the mirror and do not like what you see? How hard it is to realize that no one will be there to rescue you if you fall? How hard it is to see that it is no one else’s fault, that it is only yours? How hard it is to realize that everybody else is busy confronting their own problems and that you also have to do it by yourself? How hard it is to get up from bed everyday and try to shut all the voices that start talking at the same time in your head? How hard it is to think that many people were able to be a winner and you are there feeling sorry for yourself for being a loser? How hard it is to see that you are just this tiny little self-centered ego who cannot look at bigger problems because you are so lost looking at yourself and being pitiful about yourself?

How hard it is to be alone? How hard it is to look yourself at the mirror and feel like you will not be able to get up from this fall? That you are ready to give up? That the only way to shut up those voices in your head is to shut yourself down?

Cracked this morning worst and weak
Tears roll down from inside my cheek
Strange timing
Oppurtunity knocks
Sun comes up, paradox
Take the whole part out this wine
Take a rope and tie these thoughts of mine down
Until I'm fine

Don't ask me if I'm hungry
I'm not sick
Somethings tearing me apart
Brick by brick

And I feel guilty as I sigh
I'm feeling guilty
Why do I?

Take your hands out of mine
Take a rope and tie these thoughts of mine down
Until I'm fine

Cracked this morning worse and sad
Or have I already told you that
Forget my plans to grow a vine
You wern't dressed to burn these thoughts of mine
Until I'm fine
Until I'm fine

(Original version from K’s Choice)

Today, after 15 years, I had my first swimming class. And was catastrophic. First because I discovered that I am so fit as a 90-year-old man with asthma. And second because I definitely cannot swim. I feel already the pain and I have a slight idea that tomorrow is getting even worse.

But I did it, after swallowing some liters of pool water (and who knows what else), I feel good. I feel I can go further and I feel that I don’t have always to let the projects unfinished.

–

And a bit about Germany: I feel that people here are really interested on learning stuff, they are more objective like in Brazil. I don’t know if I was always unlucky in Brazil, but there is always a guy or a girl who is the whole time chatting (or flirting) with the teacher and doesn’t do anything what he/she is supposed to do. And this kind of people totally makes me nervous, because I am exactly the one who’s there to learn and this kind of person kinda distract the other people too.

Oh, and I love the changing rooms here. So clean and organized. And they always have a hair drier for long-haired girls who don’t want to freeze their brains outside at winter.

–

And tomorrow, pilates, day II.

As some of you know, my mother has cancer. She won’t last too long, say the doctors. And what I feel is that I am losing one of my best friends, and I cannot do anything to stop it. And it is hard to say goodbye. But it is a subject for another post.

Here I want to talk about the classic question I hear everyday: “How is she doing?” – Yes, I know there are people concerned about that, or there are people that are doing that just do be polite. The problem stays in what should I answer. If I answer that she is good, I feel like I am saying a big fat lie. Of course, she’s not good. If she were good, she would be there running around the house and having arguments with me. But no, she is there, almost not moving, almost not talking, depressive. But if I say she is bad, people will start thinking that she is dying, which is also not (so) true.

Every time someone asks me this question, I want to vanish before I can answer it. I hate lying, and everytime I answer this question, I feel like I am lying.

But this fish, besides living among the humans, was special, unique. He was also a brother, a leader, a son and a father. A very special one. A brother who would guide me and comfort me in the  hard times, a leader who would guide a hundred people to something bigger, a son who would guide his parents to a place that they could finally rest, a father who would guide and teach one of the most amazing kids I have ever known.

But as a fish, he needed gills, I think he was not used to have lungs to breath. With gills he could go back to the sea, and breath under the water, and be happy again. With gills he could be free. With gills he could still be with us.

Brother, I know I cannot write even a small part of what you meant for me and for our family. But I want you to know, that wherever you are, you are in my heart, forever. I don’t know if I was able to say to you how much I love you. But I hope you know it. I hope you can understand that seeing you in that condition only hurt me and I was not able to be strong enough to be at your side and let you hope that you could make it.

I hope that where you are now, you have those gills, so you can swim freely in a very deep, blue and magical ocean. Because for me, you are still here, with us.

So, here’s how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool..

* Opening Credits: Pink & Black – Caroline Lufkin
* Waking Up: The Sweets – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
* First Day At School: Always on my Mind – Elvis Presley
* Secondary School: Yellow Dog – Millencolin
* Falling In Love: More for Me – Tegan & Sara
* Fight Song: Everytime We Say Goodbye  – Ella Fitzgerald
* Breaking Up: When I See You Smile – Bic Runga
* Prom: Enter Sandman – Apocalyptica (hein?)
* Life: Like a Stone – Audioslave
* Mental Breakdown: Noite de São João – Vitor Ramil
* Driving: Cálice – Chico Buarque
* Flashback: Dukes of Hazzard – Less than Jake
* Getting Back Together: I Want to Be Wrong – No Use for a Name (hnnn???)
* Wedding: Crazy for You – Madonna (diva!)
* Birth of Child: Self Esteem – The Offspring
* Final Battle: Hump’em n’Dump’em – Wheatus
* Death Scene: Something to Say – Kane
* Funeral Song: Same Old Inocence – Architecture in Helsinki
* End Credits: Un Amor – Gipsy Kings (I can imagine an ending scene a la Kill Bill right now)

The End.

And she didn’t want a commitment, a relationship. And then it makes me think how true is it nowadays. You just cover yourself with lots of walls and barriers (and excuses), you don’t permit yourself to believe in love and faith. Maybe because you got hurt before, or maybe because you saw your family fall apart because your parents, your role models, they didn’t love each other anymore.

And what rests for the other part? The person can agree, believing that he/she can block him/herself of falling in love for the other person. This can happen, of course, but what if it doesn’t? That silly gesture of the person smiling at you, telling you how beautiful and sweet you are. And, as Gaiman said in The Sandman, your life isn’t your own anymore. You just gave the other person a piece of you. An unwanted piece. But it is there, on your hand, and you cannot just put it back, it sticks on your hand, and you keep waving the hand with a piece of you stuck on it, hoping that the other person will notice it. But you made an agreement, you said that you wouldn’t fall in love with the person, and everything you can do is struggle and try to hide your feelings. You try to hide your hand.

And then you get into a limbo where you don’t know how to act anymore. You just seem to be closer and closer from the other person, but you cannot say how much you like him or how much you wanted for this to work out. And then you are doomed. Someday, he will just walk away from you, leaving you in the darkness with the piece still stuck on your hand. And this piece will remain a little bit more there. Until the next season comes…

P.S.: I recomend the movie soundtrack. It is lovely. And I loved the IKEA scene. Just loved it.

Driver: Are there still borders? More than ever! Every street has its borderline. Between each plot, there’s a strip of no-man’s-land disguised as a hedge or a ditch. Whoever dares, will fall into booby traps or be hit by laser rays. The trout are really torpedoes. Every home owner, or even every tenant nails his name plate on the door, like a coat of arms and studies the morning paper as if he were a world leader. Germany has crumbled into as many small states as there are individuals. And these small states are mobile. Everyone carries his own state with him, and demands a toll when another wants to enter. A fly caught in amber, or a leather bottle. So much for the border. But one can only enter each state with a password. The German soul of today can only be conquered and governed by one who arrives at each small state with the password. Fortunately, no one is currently in a position to do this. So… everyone migrates, and waves his one-man-state flag in all earthly directions. Their children already shake their rattles and drag their filth around them in circles.

Der Himmel über Berlin, a film by Wim Wenders.

Borderlines, limits, big walls, whatever they are called. Some are thicker, others are so thin that can be tore down with a simple blow. And they are there, to protect something. To protect themselves from the others, or to protect the others from themselves?

And what about passwords? What is the code to get to know someone, to just trespass the barriers of each person? Is it a smile, some dumb action, or you have to read the whole “War and Peace” from Tolstoy? Sometimes I feel that there are more than one or two passwords, there’s a whole spaghetti with puzzles and passwords that you have to resolve just to get closer someone. And sometimes, even when you try really hard, you are still in the surface.

P.S.: I’m not talking about Germany. I just thought it would fit with the all modern society situation we live. I live in a one-man-state, and I think that there are more people who also do.