I’m not a lamppost

Being so long away from home has making some changes in my life, in my behavior. Of course I’m not a lamppost that have its destiny of being in the same place doing the same thing all its life long....I do like changes, and besides I do love starting all over again.

My behaviorism started when I first moved to the United States…I remember hugging and kissing everybody, just the way we do in Brasil. People answered in many ways my impetuosity of showing/getting some caring around. Some of them didn’t move a single muscle, some of them, specially my Japanese friends, e-mail me until now saying that they miss being hugged and kissed. Well, I miss that a lot too… a lot!

Anyway…after so many strange looks, I decided to changed my behavior…I didn’t decided in fact, it was changed gradually according to the society I was living in and one day I found out that I had became a cold person, according to my culture. Every time I met somebody, I started waiting for the way that person would greet me and then I played monkey! It applied for first time meeting or I already had met someone. This attitude was the first step I took away from myself, my real me.

I was surprised by the damage caused by this gesture! I got trapped, trapped by something I always fought about it…changing of behavior to please or impress somebody else.
For some years I did that and I think it was an involuntary and unconscious reaction I had, to protect myself against a solitude that was knocking on my door.

In Brasil we use to say that is better be alone than in bad company, but I never believed on that and I still have some doubts about it. I do like people and it’s so easy for me to begin new friendships almost everywhere. I do like people who think differently from me because I really know how to appreciate a discussion. In my university in Brasil, for example, I think the best thing that happened to me there was to learn how to respect a very different point of view from mine and be sure how to separate that point of view that was the focus of a meeting from a person who had it. How many discussions we had, how many times I lost my voice for defending hardly my thoughts and when the meeting was over, all those people from the meeting got together in a bar to drink a beer as nothing were happened before, because we were "fighting" over a subject and not over a person. It was amazing and I really miss that.
So, even with "bad company" there is good discussions and opportunities to grow.

Well, in this unknowing process of changing my behavior I lost my capacity of fighting for my beliefs and I became a huge nothing. Those kinds of nothing that needs somebody’s name to be written in our own name tag to be identified by thirds in a world that don’t belong to us!

All had gone…the discussions, the different point of views, the lucidness, me…

Yeah, I started with a simple “play monkey” and I ended up losing my identity!
It hurt so badly when I found out that I didn’t know who I was anymore. I looked at the mirror and for nights and days I asked myself who was that woman that had occupied my body. Due to the circumstances I’m now, opening the door to let the solitude entering into my life was the better way to get to recuperate myself back. The benefits of solitude combined with silence are helping me in this incessant and tireless search. I’m getting along with myself very well now.

Sometimes I got sadder than ever as tonight. But then, I remember the smile of a friend, words from another friend and suddenly I’m not all alone. Even the tear that goes down on my face now doesn’t bother me as before. It has a meaning and a very important one… it means that I’ll be able to walk by my own legs again, because the fear I had is almost gone! I’m in apparently silence, but in fact I’m screaming hard and loud. I know I’ll come back renovated, happier and stronger! I’m not a lamppost, remember?

It’s strange…I changed again my behavior to get the behavior I lost...back …