Do you know when you ask a child what her future will be like
and she answers that she wants to have super powers or just be big?
If you asked the younger me what my life would be like by the age of 16
I would probably answer that I'll be taller than my father
have a lot of friends, walk alone in the city,
be completely independent and have a long, long hair.
I always had a lot of imagination and I always loved to read.
Translating the letters into images and sound,
though everything was religiously silent,
was a way for a kid, human and muggle, to become special.
All stories made me really believe that
the material normal life wasn’t the only one and that magic existed.
By a certain age I started to see black,
my vision would start to get dark on the peripheral area,
till everything became black and I would get a little dizzy,
but my imagination was so fertile,
that I thought it was something magical that was happening to me
or that I was getting secret information from the universe.
I always wanted to be special
but while I was growing up I had to deal with the fact that
the magic world was getting each day more distant from me.
I would get inside the closet in my house
and I thought that if I really forgot about the panel at the back,
it would disintegrate and I would be able to reach Nárnia.
But I didn't discover a magic wardrobe at 8,
and I didn't receive my Hogwarts letter at 11,
and a satyr didn't tell me I was a demigod by 12.
So my last hope was that Gandalf would take me on adventure by the age of 50.
But, on the mean time, by the age of 13,
I suddenly became someone special,
though it really wasn’t the way I ask it for.
Actually the universe wasn't giving me secret information,
but it was dragging me into a black hole.
By the day of September 23rd, of 2015, at 7:35 in the morning,
I got late to my old school, as always,
because the city bus took too much time to get to my house, as always.
I walked in class and fell.
In the middle of the class, in front of everyone.
I didn’t see a backpack that was on the floor.
I got to my seat and I realized I couldn’t see the letters on the chalkboard.
I couldn’t read.
So I called my mom and later that day I went to the hospital,
thinking about how cool it would be to have a nice pair of glasses.
But I didn’t get them, I didn’t even leave the hospital that day.
I was diagnosed with hydrocephalus,
not a very creative word that means you have too much liquid in your brain,
and I’ll tell you a spoiler,
in my case it was because a glioma was formed in the passage
between the first and third ventricle,
on the base of my head.
This wouldn’t let the liquid in my brain flow,
it would get in and couldn’t leave,
what made my intracranial pressure very high
and it was damaging my optical nerves.
But the doctors didn’t realize that.
I underwent one surgery, then another, then another and another.
I was in a spiral, a cycle that every time me and my parents were starting to get up,
life would hit us and we would fall,
and again and again.
My world turned upside down and we were all anesthetized by the situation.
My magic thoughts were suddenly replaced by a cascade of saints and entities,
that were just as immaterial as my hope on Gandalf.
The problem was that the doctor felt certain he knew what was wrong with me.
But since my problem was caused by a completely different thing,
too much liquid was drained
so they transformed my problem from high intracranial pressure
to extremely low pressure.
In 8 months, I underwent 4 surgeries with this procedure
and 3 other ones to try to fix the mess this doctor made.
But the damage was done.
Then I could finally come back to school,
but I wasn’t the same anymore.
Life continued for normal people and I had lost many of the classic events
and teenage crisis which, honestly, I don’t miss.
I basically spent one year sleeping,
because since literature was taken away from me
this was the only way to sink in another reality in the moment I most needed.
But hey, I’m here today.
There's a sentence that says: I fell in a hole, came out as a giant.
That’s really how I feel,
because every time something hard happens to you, there’s a force,
even if it’s almost unnoticeable,
that will bring you up again,
and this time you will be much wiser.
I can concentrate and have much more focus on one thing now.
And eating, that's a completely different experience.
Everytime I eat “bolinho de chuva”
raindrop cakes
I’m immediately transported to a good and safe place where there are clouds of sugar
and cinnamon.
And also, when I hear or play music
that’s a way to escape from the difficulties I pass in my life
and now I can remember complete Bob Dylan’s lyrics,
which is quite crazy.
My imagination is more intense than ever
because now I use it as one of the most important senses.
It’s the one who allows me to build a completely new world
based on what I have seen and on other sensorial channels.
I have to use imagination as a creative and logical instrument
to survive in this reality that relies too much on visual stimulation.
And I can do that because there’s a difference between looking and seeing
as there is between hearing and listening.
Seeing and listening aren't about an accurate capacity of your senses,
but they mean sensibility,
to understand things and have empathy with others,
so for this I think I can see better now than before.
For an example, I can see you’re paying attention.
In Greek mythology, the most famous seer, Tiresias, was blind,
because he wasn’t fooled with the traps of appearance and the visual world, you see?
I’m definitely not the 16 year old person I thought I would be,
and I don’t have the life I thought I would,
but if you ask me, would I want to go back in time
and prevent this all from happening,
I learnt so much that I don’t want to miss who I am now, the answer's no.
Thank you.