Beatriz Lima
As I write this, I can smell fresh coffee brewing, I can hear the songbirds outside my window and I can see the ocean; the immense, immutably sparkly blue water. All of that is given to me because I made a choice to return. My skin is back to olive, and my heart is still filled with longing, but now also with peace. I can feel my body changing and my mind too. Yet, belonging is so distant.
Moving forward
When Joan Didion shared with us her childhood memories in “Let Me Tell You What I Mean”, recalling the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, she described it as something that had “shaped her own imagination in the way that all children are shaped by the actual and emotional geography of the place in which they grow up, by the stories they are told and the stories they invent”. Brazil has shaped my imagination, my identity, and my reality in more ways than one.
“it changed my life forever”
When I first left Brazil, I was 17 and hopeful. I didn’t know a word of English and had no idea people put milk in their tea, but I quickly fell in love with London. I fell in love with London the way Didion fell in love with New York, the way Hemingway fell in love with Paris.
I was enamoured by all of it- the long bus rides to my classes and back, the cold air on my cheeks, and the smell of the city. I fell in love with London because it changed my life forever.
Eventually, I learned how to pronounce the T in water, how to make a proper brew, and to say ‘sorry’ and ‘excuse me’ the appropriate amount of times a day.
When I got to university and started making friends, it didn’t take me long to realise that the things we valued about life in England were not the same as back home.
People would often question my decision to leave Brazil, asking “why on Earth would you leave paradise to come live in this place?”. I knew then that they only knew about the festivals, the beaches, the food, the always-blue skies. So I felt like it was my responsibility to share with them the horrors too.
Self-discovery
Growing up, I always felt inadequate. Moving to the United Kingdom freed me from many of the beliefs that chained and harmed me throughout my life. I would observe people existing unapologetically – dressing creatively, loving whom they wished to love, forever fighting the patriarchal norms of being ‘dull, expected and designed’.
I was for once seen as an individual and not just a body to be gazed at or criticised. I was no longer just an object of desire, I was a person. I was enough of a person to be acknowledged, and not abused. I was almost just like men. I could spend my days walking alone on the streets of London and not get catcalled even once. I could walk home or go for a run at night and not fear for my life.
But above all the privileges this country has blessed me with, it has allowed me respect. I was for once respected. I was no longer my father’s daughter or my ex’s girlfriend or worse, a target. And all of that was given to me because I made the choice to leave. To leave something, that, however painful, was once all I knew to be true.
“That the violence I had suffered through had stolen from me, my sense of identity and belonging in my own birthplace.”
At times, this made me incredibly angry. That the violence I had suffered, had stolen from me, my sense of identity, of belonging in my own birthplace. English culture, conversely, liberated me from the many self-limiting beliefs and Brazilian societal pressures concerning my body. ‘Tits’ were suddenly not the greatest measure of attractiveness, and neither was beauty a definite indicator of my worth.
As I began to perceive life in this country more as my own and less as a very long trip, I began recognising myself, surely as ‘less Brazilian’, but still never ‘more English’.
Dreams
I could never forget, and they would never let me forget, that I did not belong. Over time, I learned to find power in that. Allow me to indulge you in a little whimsical nonsense – the thing with moving around a lot is that you’re constantly undoing the Self, unlearning the needs of the Ego, and filling your life with what is now new and meaningful and beautiful – many times over.
“I could fall in love. And so I did, over and over again.”
So, in England, I was finally safe enough to dream. I could dream of raising a daughter who would feel a little less afraid. I could fall in love. And so I did, over and over again. I left a piece of my heart in an Irish pub in Prague, and another fraction of it in the hands of a singer in Lisbon. I have left fragments of who I am and how I love in parts of the world I might never return to. As a result, I no longer feel ‘whole’ anywhere but instead overflowing everywhere.
After all, nothing ever changes the fact that we are of the world. Still, the indisputable truth about citizenship is just this – homeland is forever loved, forever mine, my unbreakable scarlet string.
“If you’re going to write about your human experience, write the truth. It’s worth it to write what’s real.” – Ashley C. Ford
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Featured image courtesy of Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
