for always. forever.

“ i have a friend that knows me beyond time. beyond everything.
she has eyes like the sky, a smile with a baby's colour and life growing from her words.
with her, for her, i chose, i re-learnt that life, the living life, that of giving and sharing, 14 years ago.

i have a friend that knows me beyond me. beyond all that.
she looks me in the eyes and i know i can be true, i know i want to be life, i need to be me.
with her, in her, pain and death are defeated.
for her, the courage of life is reborn. ”

(lisboa, 18.07.07)


...

in the year of ’93, without knowing each other or knowing how close we were, already, how tangled our lives were becoming, flechinha and i lived similar feelings, incomparable of pain and shock, incomprehensible by all those who didn't suffer it, there, with us, teenagers hit with reality and adulthood, without possible warning or truce.

when we met, when we first spoke and smiled at each other with and in life, despite everything, it was a month to the day since that date that i will never hear or feel in an ordinary way, will never be mistaken with any other, will never be part of a normal calendar, as if they all came with defect, just like life, that one, all with that day marked in pain.
i already had open wounds that i didn't understand but that burnt, tears that tasted of death, a kind of living i did not know how to live or feel.
she lived the nightmare of the days that brought the uncertainty of the assurance of the fear of the tomorrow.

we licked wounds together, exchanged lives e memories of those days of despair and confusion, so many and many times, so many and more nights of words and tears and the sharing of everything we were, wanted to be, and what we didn't know was in us, as well. we were the doubt of the present holding on to the past, but we were together, step by step, in the direction of something that existed, should exist somewhere down the line - flechinha with all the love, strength and an almost stubborn refusal to see me giving up of whatever in me.
because i, i sank in the non-predicted and unfair pain of someone who lived so much and wanted to live more.
i wanted to sink in the days, to be a shadow, to be non-life. to refuse to live as a way of protest. and when i refused to leave lisbon because the body of, even if dead, lived here, condemned to rest here forever, when i said no to traveling to anywhere else that would take me from this city, that would take me away from the proximity of her body, for at least that – i believed – still existed, and it seemed so unfair, so terrible what i saw as abandonment, flechinha, in tenderness and unbreakable friendship, reached for me and pulled me to life. when no one else, for my own fault, could do it.
for months in a row she was by my side, until i knew again how to have and live the weight of what i was in myself, no refuges, escapes or abandonment of me.


beyond the distance that life can and does bring, we knew how to have each other inside at all times, regardless of the distance outside, regardless of the worlds and walls between us: i knew, i always knew, that the moment i needed life would be there for me. because she.


when i emigrated, the comfort of knowing her in the same land.
she that needed me, also, so much, but that despite that, when i admitted to her the crying, when fear and the weight of the weakness of missing home hurt me so, she would say to me “if you're not happy, if this way, here, you cannot have strength in happiness, go. go back. go back and be away from me, but stay close to what makes you strong and is part of you.”
...
i stayed. with her strength in mine, as well.
i stayed until i returned,
returned until i stayed.


when the nightmare first began, last year, she wrapped up friendship as a present for me – she that could've had "de-humanized" herself, for all that, that year – and tried, the only (im)possible way, to protect me from the future she had already lived.
she was with me, by my side, sitting on the chair that didn't exist, in that hospital room i'm not sure ever existed, either. morning to night, throughout the dawn, flechinha was with me in every instant of wait, anxiety and refusal of the tomorrow, so much and more than others, “close”...
and never
ever
did she abandon me in myself.
to her, just her, i admitted – in those days of unbearable nothing - the weakness under the weight i didn't want to admit to anyone else. even if. because.
- i can’t take it anymore. how can i stop his suffering?, how does one live through this?......
and she, by my side, living it all with me, suffering with me, without ever, ever, letting go of my hand or my life.


...

and now,
now,
only yesterday,
in the care and warmth of a house of so much and so beautiful love, flechinha and her half “inviting” me to be the godmother of the new branch on their tree of life.

...

and thus, by her hand, as so much more before, i become mother for the first time.
and i can’t even begin to sdescribe the pride that brings tears to my voice and this smile of feeling so much to my eyes for being her child, come from that union of so much everything, that is so much to me, that makes me want to cry happy, me, a simple visit on that house of love.
and i think, i know, it couldn’t be any other way. from anyone else, before.

because the strength, in her.
the support.
the example of courage.
of not giving into what tries
so hard
to bend and break.
the love, in her.

and now,
on her hand,
once again,
life.






“ to close my eyes, raise my arms and tell her “i'm coming with you.”. this is clarity, melody. two hands holding. the inside and outside bits of an orange.
(...)
she stopped. she suddenly opened her eyes and understood. then, looking around, she thought: wherever you are, i thank you. i will never forget you. ”

(from the book you gave me almost 11 years ago...)



...




thank you.

for life.

fixed.




(image from here)