Carla by Carla
Hello, my name is Carla and 2 years ago I found out I spent most of my life watching it go by, like a movie. There are just a few things I wouldn’t change if I could. I just started feeling alive - thanks to therapy, and then it made me see how numb I was, and since I’m 33 years old, I find it quite annoying to have lost all these years. On the other hand, making this decision, to quit my job and my career here in Brazil as a Marketing Manager, to start all over again, is my first step towards the life I should have lived since my intuition, when I was younger, spoke to me and I looked the other way.
The cliche here may be the cheesiest thing, but it’s so huge I can’t ignore it anymore, I’m not losing another chance, and I’m going to write it my way. It’s not flawless, it’s not supposed to be perfect. I just want to feel like I am making the decisions and jumping into whatever comes. Just like now, I want to feel like this forever. Knowing without knowing, but confident that that’s what life is supposed to feel.
Fantasy kept me alive until I was 30. Since I was a little girl I had an urge to make up stories in my mind and it was deliciously weird. I had this secret wonderland, where I could make up situations, dialogues, and characters and they made me feel loved and with this unbelievable sense of belonging. Don’t get me wrong, I did a lot of things in this numb life anyway. I have tons of friends who also made me grow, worked in different places, traveled, studied, and collected a lot of precious people and moments along the way.
Nonetheless, by the end of the day, I’d still have to run, even if for a little bit, to my secret place. Replacing situations, recreating dialogues, and staying in control. I couldn't name one movie, series, or person that inspired me to do that, there were so many, most of those being superhero stories like Batman, or the underdogs Disney princesses, like Pocahontas and Mulan, of course, Friends, especially Chandler, who kept me company during some dark times. As I grew to understand a bit more, so many other incredible, complex, classic stories and many romantic comedies also were part of my development.
In the end, I'm just a girl, trying to bring her wonderland to life. I know all the warmth, all the kindness, all the love that kept me company during all those years can't be not only on my mind. I know it exists! I want a taste of it, I feel like it’s my turn, and I want to try and give my vision of this to the world because it’s beautiful. I know it is. It kept me alive. So I owe this process everything. I owe my creativity, I owe myself this life, I owe myself "A" life.
To sum it up, I spent about 10 years of my life, fighting depression and anxiety, not once believing I could accomplish anything like this. Besides, I know I'm alive because of these stories and characters. They gave me the strength to go and follow a path quite different than what was chosen for me. I want to write stories and if one of those helps a little girl somewhere, trying to fit in, to survive, then my work is done.
Carla Curado
