Leaving Lisbon (and my Youth) behind.
Some personal thoughts.
We knew it was coming and that was supposed to make it easier.
However, in the last moments, when saying our goodbyes and leaving the house, we were still trying to process what was happening fully.
I had a plan.
I was to live in my house, with my 2 other roommates, in Lisbon until June 2024. Then switch flats to go live with my girlfriend.
But you know what they say:
Man plans, God laughs.
Due to the real-state market crisis in Lisbon (and some other personal decisions), our landlord decided to sell the house. He was, however, the opposite of the typical landlord (portrayed in what sometimes seem"horror stories"), being very friendly, attentive and actually feeling bad about the whole situation.
So, 3 months before, we knew that May 29th, 2023 would be our last day in that house.
I wasn’t ready to leave Lisbon.
Neither were my friends.
We started the painful journey of searching for new houses that would fill our requirements but it didn’t take us long to realize that it wouldn’t work.
Of the 3 of us, only one worked physically in Lisbon.
Both I and Daniel have been working remotely for the last few years so we decided to get back to our hometown, while H found a new place with some coworkers.
We had 3 months to get ready for this new reality but, honestly, how do you prepare for that? We have been friends for years and had been living together for 3 more, sharing so many things, so many different phases…It made a toil on us. At least, on me.
I tried to distract myself from it by fully immersing in what Lisbon had to offer and making sure I was always busy. Going the extra mile to not think about what it actually meant.
To be fair, I guess I didn't fully understand the meaning of it all...
On the last day, we came to Alcobaça, with 2 vans filled with things.
After arriving, I took everything out of the car and loaded it into my old room, starting the long process of tidying everything together. Books, clothes, furniture, tokens of my personal story…It’s always an emotional process, moving.
Once I was done, 3 things were missing: a desk, a chair and my old guitar amp. I had asked Daniel to put it into his car since mine was already filled with some more fragile things he had asked me to load.
I went to his house, did the swap, and commenced my way back to my place.
There's something about driving alone, at night, with nothing but your thoughts...It confronts you with whatever you’ve been trying to ignore. It has been a pattern in my story and life decisions. There was no traffic, nothing to be distracted with. Because of it, my mind was free to wander and actually land on the things that I had dismissed so far.
Part of my youth was dead.
There’s a part of your life where you focus on being with your friends, collecting stories, risking different things, experimenting…Actually, that’s something you can do throughout all of your life but, in my case, in different contexts.
My “living with friends” context was over. If I ever go back to Lisbon, I’ll be in a very different place, personally. I want to keep my friends, but also to start my own family.
So, with some “pre-meditated nostalgia”, I wept.
I wasn’t sad. That was clear to me from the beginning. I am very happy about my life and the places where I’m going.
I’m also young and have so many things that I want to make, experience, and live. But there was some “boyish” part of me that I kept alive in these last years, by creating internal narratives that would justify it. With this change, it died. I’m glad it did.
In this new version of myself, I’m eagerly seeking to incorporate the best of my youth so far with all of the things I’ll uncover in my “adulthood”.
It has already started to make a difference in the way I see myself, the world, and the meaning I attribute to things and life in general…but that’s for another post.
For now, I just want to say I’m looking forward to this new part of my life.
A new chapter, with the same awe and inspiration that I’m used to, with fresh challenges and unique experiences that I can’t wait to share with all of you.
Thank you for reading.
I’ll see you soon.
A quick note: I’m organizing a series of salons to discuss my previous post and how can we build a new, better educational system. If you want your tickets for the whole series, they just went live and you can buy them here. Come help me figure out how can we bring a Modern Golden Age to education.