Traces of Me

When I met Lisa, the woman I moved to Australia to be with, we talked a lot about cultural differences and the shock of what I was going to go through. The differences are obviously endless and enormous. When I told her that whenever I had friends sleeping over they shared my bed, she was mortified. When we were on the phone and I had to go somewhere – and of course we didn’t want to hang up until the last possible second – I would start getting changed, and she was horrified to discover I was getting changed wherever, in front of whoever was around – not only my mother and sister but their friends and my friends. When we were talking on messenger and she learned that I was wearing only a t-shirt and undies (which is what I sleep in) while my sister and a friend were hanging out right next to me, she was shocked.  Sure, you might say I spent years in acting school – having to get changed so quickly, having ten people wrap my boobs in five seconds flat when I had to change into a male character in about ten – and ended up just getting used to it. You might say that’s just me, not part of my Brazilian culture. That would be true, but only in part. I did become overly unselfconscious of my body, but friends always shared beds, always hung out in tee’s and often got changed in front of each other. You might say Lisa was the extreme in her culture, and me in my own, but again that’s only accurate to a point.

Somewhere along one of these conversations, we got to the part that really, really freaked me out. I found out that people here didn’t usually kiss their friends hello and goodbye on the cheek, unless they were very close friends. I found out that people didn’t hug as often as I did. More importantly, I found out that the physical contact was minimal, if at all present. Now that, boys and girls, freaked the shit out of me. In Brazil I could walk around holding hands with a friend and it would be the most normal thing I ever did (pardon the use of the term “normal”, I hate it too.) If we were hanging out – at uni, on somebody’s lawn, on somebody’s carpet while watching a movie, you can bet we’d be lying on each others’ lap, playing with each others’ hair, touching each others’ faces. And – I’m gonna do it again – it was just so normal. I wondered if I was going to get here and keep reminding myself not to kiss everyone, and I did. It felt forced and unnatural and just altogether wrong. Whenever I met someone I connected with and did the whole sit-down-for-five-minutes-and-end-up-staying-for-three-hours-and-having-eight-coffees-and-twenty-cigarettes thing, only to at the time of leaving wave a quick bye-bye and say “see ya!”, I felt strangely lonely, as if that act alone took away some of that connection – that had already been established. It was hard, and it sucked. Obviously, six years later, it doesn’t bother me. Besides, I do hug and kiss my friends hello and goodbye. But listen, people, in Brazil I’ll kiss my dentist hello and goodbye. If you come around and say Monica, this is Mary, I’ll instantly proceed to kiss Mary hello and give her a welcome hug. To this day I have people ask me for a Brazilian hug, and it’s no wonder. I’d never known such stiff hugs – it can be very much like holding a lamp-post. I honestly think a lot of people didn’t know a proper, full-body hug until I came along.

However, this isn’t about physical intimacy, or my belief that it adds so very much to our experience of others. It’s about being an alien in my own home. When I started going to university here I had one of the hardest times of my life. I’d just moved to the other side of the world, I was living with this person whose heart and soul I knew and loved but who I had never met in the flesh, I was trying to adjust to hearing only this language that is not my mother tongue – and it freaked me out. I was missing everything and everyone I knew and I was so, so lonely. I held, as discreetly as possible – my map of the campus and tried to navigate to whatever building I had to get to, all the while wondering what the fuck I was doing there. And then I’d burst into tears. On the lawn, on my breaks, behind my computer in photography class, and not once, not ever someone came to me and asked if I was okay, or if I needed anything, or even noticed me in any way. With time I made a couple of good friends who truly cared about me, but even that was very limited. They cared until the phone rang or they had to go somewhere or hanging out with me was just too much. Don’t get me wrong, I have many acquaintances who I’ll sit and have a coffee with or even party with and they’ll all think I’m so charming and blunt and funny, but nothing is exchanged and I’ll come home a little bit more emptied. Just a little bit. But bit by bit it empties me until I feel there’s nothing left, and the only possible way of recharging is going to Brazil.

I have this vision – I’ve had it from the beginning – of everyone walking around inside an invisible bubble, while I’m bubble-less. I’ve seen friends leave other friends dangling because their alcoholism/panic/loneliness/depression/drug addiction/MS and altogether “negative energy” (not my words) just became too much to deal with. It saddens me how limited an experience of life some people have, and don’t even know it. I realize that that’s something very much universal, of course I do. But here… here I have to be strong at all times, because if I fall apart no one is going to try to pull me out of the hole, or help me pick up the pieces.  My partner is absolutely gorgeous and I love her to death, but it is too great a burden to unload on her and her alone.

I don’t have friends like that in Brazil anymore, but I did, once. Someone who would come over and listen to me babble for hours, or who would drag me out of the house, who would leave something that was important for them to do something that was important to me. I know that part of my feeling that I have no network of support is simply because I’m away from my family. (I did tell my mom a few weeks ago that I need to go to Brazil so I can fall apart.) I also feel that it’s a lot easier to make that kind of amazing connection with friends when you are younger. But I also know, without any doubt, that I’m living in a world that is much, much more self-absorbed than the one I come from. Australians, don’t get me wrong, I love you and I’m one of you now. But we live in a world where connections are often so tenuous and ephemeral, the instinct to constantly self-protect so all consuming.

I have many one sided relationships with people. Someone in need, especially someone who needs to talk, will feel attracted to me like a magnet and I’m proud of that aspect of myself. I’ll give without reservation. But if you told me a few years ago that one day not that far into the future I would protect myself from people, I’d have laughed at you. I didn’t believe in protecting oneself from life in any way – call me intense, idealistic, and you’re right. But I didn’t think I’d be able to do it even if I wanted to, which I at times wished for, although would have said no to if it was offered to me – that possibility of protecting myself.

I do now, however. Moving here – along with my first relationship back then – managed to teach me how to raise those walls around me – it beat it out of me, even though I’d been through so much more pain, in the past, without shutting down. It left me so empty that I stopped writing. Now I have these one sided relationships where I just stopped opening up and talking about myself, so that I can still give without feeling that no one gives a shit – because I don’t give them the chance to. So that I don’t walk away completely empty.

I’ve learned how to protect myself, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. It doesn’t mean I’m good at it, either.