The date is 6 of August of 2012, London is booming with excitement for
the Olympics but that is not what has brought me and my brother here. I clutch
to my pillow tight, I had refused to move countries and leave my bedroom behind
without it. Part of me wants to scream to my brother how excited I am, how I am
finally fulfilling that thing I set my mind to do when I was 11 or 12 years old
and everyone just thought I was a foolish dreamer. I’m moving to London.
But another part of me is terrified. I am only 20 years old and living
at home with my family is all I’ve known my entire life. It had been my life.
The thing that had brought me an enormous pain but a tremendous happiness.
Maybe my levels of happiness hadn’t been top of the chart on these last few
months but my friends – even if scarce in numbers, were the people I held most
truly at heart – they had been my safe haven in moments of need, and my family
the people that gave me strength to get out of bed. How was I gonna manage
without them? What the hell was I thinking?
My brother and I stand with one huge travel luggage and a hand luggage
each, while my cousin – the person who went to pick me up from the airport and
it will soon become one of my five house mates – recounts the newest episodes
of moving houses and tells us how one of our dear mates had just fallen off
what will be known in our house as possessed-by-a-ghost
stairs. I listen with excitement while I forget to pay attention to my
surroundings and keep bumping into people and forgetting that I should now
start apologising in English instead of Portuguese.
When we get to the house, a poor Tânia climbs down the stairs with a
painful look, she has not slept properly in regards of being in the hospital
after falling down the ghost-possessed-stairs. A cheerful Vanessa greets me
heatedly and tells me that she has baked a cake to congratulate my arrival.
Later on, she discovers that I’d practised martial arts whilst in Portugal and
asks me to teach her so she can beat up one of her friends. I half-heartedly
promised, happy for her enthusiasm but feeling slightly nervous: I’m not used
to that kind of energy.
We all climb up the stairs again to see the bedrooms and make a final
decision of who gets what. The condition is: I either share a bedroom with
Vanessa, and use the fourth tiny bedroom as storage or I will have to live in
the tiny bedroom. The decision is not even hard: I will always choose
isolation, a little piece of my own where I can run to whenever the world
outsides starts becoming too loud. Besides I have already heard rumours about
Vanessa’s tidiness and sleeping habits. Two years later we will sleep many
nights together in her bedroom but this one is a decision I will never regret
because although I have changed a lot, I still treasure that little piece of my
own space.
Later in the day, when Tânia and Vanessa have fallen asleep while we
were all talking in what was now Vanessa’s bedroom, Renato shows up. He is
cordial and nice but does not possess the same enthusiasm the others have about
me, to him I’m not the new pet in the zoo. He asks me about my pet peeves, if
there is anything I absolutely go mental when someone else keeps on repeating.
I can’t remember at the top of my head but my brother helps me out.
“Leaving the toilet seat up,” he says, to which I nod in agreement.
Renato promises me I don’t have to worry.
By this time I should probably have mentioned that my brother went move
in with me. He has come here with the sole purpose of helping me move in. “I
came here to work,” he stated once, talking about the fact that he had come to
London to help me carry bags, buy furniture, assemble it and paint my room.
This is a complete new chapter that I must start on my own.
He spends a week with me in London where we see the sights and do all he
was supposed to, except paint my room; I will do that later with my cousin. On
his last day the truth of it all starts gnawing on me like a razor blade and
that is why I move the mattress that was in the bedroom next to mine into my
own, by bed is already assembled but there is no way I’m gonna sleep alone
tonight, I want to feel that the last piece of is still sleeping in the same
room as me one last time.
The next day we wake up to take him to the airport, only to find out
that the place is chaotic because the Olympics have just finished the day
before and everyone is trying to get home. We, me and my cousin, end up leaving
him there although he has no guarantees of getting a seat in the plane, but he
will eventually get home I know. Back home I try everything to keep myself
busy; I don’t want to face this reality just yet. I see Big Fish with my cousin
for the very first time and when it finishes it’s time to go back to my empty
room.
I’m 20 years old, in a more open and diverse country than my own but at
that moment all I want is my mum to be next to me.
