Childhood and Saudades
Well, I'll start telling my story because I'm a nostalgic guy and one of my pleasures that I can still experience is remembering everything, obviously I don't remember my birth and some moments are more nebulous and inconcrete than others and all are distorted because all memory is largely distorted.
It all starts in the 90s when my mother, after her divorce from a Leandro who left her alone to take care of her other two children, met my father at work, a young machine operator from Rio de Janeiro, at work in Goiânia, they fell in love and after years of dating, they got married at the end of 2004 and had a son who was born on July 14, 2005 at the Santa Joana Maternity Hospital, they still say that it was difficult to be born because the whole city was in unbearable traffic, in the early years of life I was always an easy child to deal with, I ate a lot and always when told to, I was attached to a stuffed frog that liked to go to the beach and watch the Backyardigans, you can see in the photo albums that he was always smiling and happy be it where I was and this boy in the photos is the one I want to be proud of in my life, if I want to have a good life, it's so that this always smiling child would be proud of what I am, but this smiling boy didn't know many things that happened and around my 3 years old my parents would divorce, even though I would still see my dad one weekend per month it is not the same thing to grow up with a mother playing the role of both a mother and a father figure, that's probably why I don't have that many happy memories with my mom and I totally understand it and that's why she is the most important person for me the same way.
I grew in size and age and entered my first Ticos school but I don't remember much about it other than that there were capoeira and painting classes and that I even liked it there, I made a few friends who liked it. only one I have contact with until today and he is a great person, I wish him the best, but around the age of 7 I moved to another one in which well.... my first problems started to appear, I never liked groups and I always got attached to a few people in my life and in this school I jumped from one friend to another but never more than one and when I was alone for the first time I became more and more closed off, critical and antisocial, for being such a bad person I was. bullying a younger boy for my insecurity and I never deserved his forgiveness but after years he granted this mercy to me, I feel terrible for having been the person I was, in the same way I continued with this life for a long time I arrived to be manipulative in a certain part of my 10/11 years and I say it several times, I deserve everything bad for that, I was not a good person throughout my childhood, even without having many worries I managed to ruin this phase that was supposed to be magic, but there I used to do judo and play football every now and then, but always quiet, at that time I started to like the first girls in my life, especially one of Asian descent that I secretly liked for about 5 years, but I never found the courage to speak properly with her(or almost any girl tbh)...
When I was 12 years old they changed my school again but this time because my school had been acquired by another and the class was absorbed, and I understood that I had been a son of a bitch for years and I decided to change a little, obviously I didn't change my shyness or introversion but I went from being a totally unfriendly person to a slightly unfriendly one, the damage was practically done to my social development and I ended up being friends with only one person again but that was all, I spoke at school every day but never we did nothing outside of school as friends and stayed but at least it wasn't as horrible as before and it was tolerable until I left school again at the time of the pandemic and it was the same way until today, outside the school environment I had my first friends in the condominium around when I was 13 years old exclusively because I talked about football and these guys liked football as well, but I was never in any way important to them, they never asked me to go out, or even do something, I'm always the one I call in addition to what I feel that if it wasn't for me to like football I would never have friends, but that's what it is, I've fought with them several times which made me even worse and there's nothing to do, this life is one of waste and destined to fail...
Another thing is that I always fought with my mother, and she always punished me severely and physically for the most part with reason because she was a disobedient child too but helpful, did everything they asked of me and it was always like that, with my brothers I never had much affinity, my father was a good but neutral figure in my life and as you can see I never had many friends, that's probably why I cling to whatever comes my way.
But I will use this document every time I remember something from my childhood and I want to immortalize that memory, so these days I was remembering when I was a child, I used to love going in the early afternoon to the arcade at the Mall with my father and playing with him for hours on end. various games they had there, Whack-a-mole and the basketball hoop competition were my favorites, sometimes a year there was a place in this mall that was a big circular pool in which there were empty plastic balls that children entered and they used to fight each other and I liked that a lot, in the late afternoon we would go to the park and play football, we used two palm trees as goalposts, at dusk we ate esfihas at DIB or pizza at Juriti, we rented movies at a nearby video store, whether CDs or the technology that it was fashionable that Blu-rays were.
At the end of the year we always went to my grandmother's small town and before we went I always took a Dramamine, my father had a Ford Fiesta and he didn't have air conditioning and he always asked him how long we had to go, he put on the radio various types of music , the ones I remember the most were a French woman called Je me qui'te pas and a country music called Borboletas of Vitor e Léo, when we arrived after 6/7 hours of mountains and hills at my grandmother's house we would talk to everyone we knew of my father who still lived there and I was affectionately nicknamed Filho do Maninho or Fi do Manin, but when I arrived, I lay down in a hammock and felt as calm as ever, at least until the crowing of a rooster woke me up, and when I woke up I gave my grandma and aunts a tight hug and helped her when I needed it in the kitchen and she made the best meals, the black beans she makes is unbeatable the best I've ever eaten and my father would take me to my grandfather's place soon afterwards he had a van and several animals that I was fascinated to see, ducks, dogs and horses, the same horses that he took me to ride several times, mainly a mare called Ballerina that was the one I always rode, at night we would go to the neighboring city to buy pizza and my dad would drop me off at a playground with some kids next to the playground there was a popcorn vendor that I always asked him to buy me some, but he didn't give it to me with reason, but the coolest thing was in the new year when he got together the whole family and they organized a party, the best food, french toast, roasted chicken and lamb, once they bought fireworks and I helped to set it up, even going to mass before midnight was special, the whole unique atmosphere of that meeting people once a year was indescribably cozy, all the people were welcoming and looking for the simple in life and kindness, I would like to have that same feeling one day, it was very special