Mercury & Lightning
Twenty-seven. This chamber of insecurities and doubt. The looming possibility of joining a club and going out in such a young age. You can never grasp how young Janis, Kurt, Amy and all those others actually were until you stare your own mortality and so called accomplishments by the time you’re up to their challenge. The last honest shot of being young and reckless and irresponsible. It’s like being nineteen again, which is great, since being nineteen should never have been wasted with people young enough to be only nineteen in the first place. Neither of these are original ideas. Nothing really is and I’m somehow comfortable in my own skin to finally admit how fraudulent my ideas have been over the years. It’s like being nineteen all over again, but only for the first half of it. By the time I’m twenty-seven-and-a-half, I’m not the nineteen me anymore. Now I’m suddenly thirty, and it feels great. Feels earned and I can’t wait to earn it.
I’ve been making a bunch of excuses throughout my life. I’ve been meaning to leave my mother’s house since I was twenty. That’s still a very young age to do so in Brasil, unless you either get married or go to some other city for college. It did not come to past. There was always something. Me paying for college on my home town, my mom losing her job and coming to depend on me a few years, we moving out together in order to heal from divorce trauma, a bunch of reasons that try to sow together an excuse to why I’m not living fully independently yet. It works, and many excuses are intended for my own need. Apparently, I’m the only person currently holding myself accountable for it. Leaving the apartment I grew up in felt even more impossible than ever during pandemic.
Then a stroke of serendipity. It’s October, 2021. I get a new job, and so did my mom and sister. Suddenly and without warning, I’m twenty-seven and able to leave. I draw plans, I talk to people online, I search for the right place, the right amount of money, the right walking distance. I’m finally gonna live in the heart and heat of my city. Everything goes well till a promise looms in the distance. The company could take you to São Paulo, the largest city in the country, a global megalopolis, your dream come true. I pause the early plans, ghost those people online, I start searching for places in the gray city. In São Paulo there seems to have no blue skies. Time flies by, it’s almost new year’s, no decision, no real talk, some friends bring about the idea, but that’s it. I have a big fight home. Got no home anymore. I don’t feel at home, somehow. I’m just sleeping in my old bed, in my old bedroom that feels claustrophobic. I take account of it all. It’s early january, I call a friend and tell her “I can’t do this anymore”. I decide to stop holding my life for the promise of a possibility. I reject São Paulo, to myself. Nobody else knows about it anyways. No one holds me accountable on anything. I meet up with Philip, everything seems alright. I brought up the idea. I’m looking for a place to live. He enjoys the idea. He could do that to. We’re gonna do that together then. It is decided. When? Two months seems appropriate. It’s April till then. I search a lot for a place we can both afford and make a living in. Somethings are specific. I need the walking distance to my life in the city. He needs a garage spot for the car. Some places pop up like time sensitive bombs, just to be taken away by someone else before I have the chance to show some interest. But April is far away. No one even knows if it’s coming and I’m still young for some matter. The realization that we can’t afford to live where we want. A third person, he suggests, and thank goodness he did, I was to afraid to tell him we needed someone else. I have some options, ideas of people I know could be interested. You’re the third-third person I brought up. I still try to understand if I started getting closer to you with the intention of casting you for this adventure. Fortunately, we’re way past that. You never signed the contract. If it’s possible, you’re up to it, but you have your regards. We take time to talk them through, a longer time then we should, probably, but the right amount of time so we are ready for every step of the conversation. It’s suddenly April. I’m twenty-seven-and-a-half. And now I’m getting older by the clock. And when we finally get to talk deeply about it, we’re both intertwined into our therapy progress. It is clear that I’ve been manufacturing excuses. It is clear as never before that I’m too afraid to go on this journey by myself. I’ve never been by myself in any endeavors, and yet, could never be more set to success. I have to call Philip, I have to tell him that I need to break this cycle myself. I start looking for places and in the course of two weeks, I’m moving in, tonight, as I figure out how on earth I was able to cope with the heart wrenching feelings attached to this rupture, the very first rupture that feels rewarding.
We don’t know no future, and maybe that expectation that we could do this together could make no sense in a near future or could be the most incredibly appropriate right thing to do sometime from now. Who knows. For now, I have broken the cycle. I’m no longer chasing Mercury and Lightning. Even if it is just the beginning of the journey, I’m starting to find what I’m looking for. I should tell Bono, poor guy.
