For me - Leça da Palmeira - is a place where horrible things happened.

You were right when you said that I should be able for letting go and move forward with my life (I`m sure this words are always on your mind when the subject is ME). 

Four years ago, I ran away from that city without a penny on my pocket, probably because, I was trying to avoid disaster. At 19 I ran away into the arms of a fiancé for seven years. In the last years, I ran away into the arms of many people just to avoid solitude and to found some human touch and some comfort. It had nothing to do with love (as Tina Turner said “What Love Got to Do with It? " ).

You are the man who listens to my deepest inquisitions. I`m the kind of person that needs this kind of weird and strange connection to a bond related with the past. Most of the days I think that this happens due the absence of a family ( what might be the right answer for missing someone so much that it hurts inside as hell )...People use to tell me : " Get pregnant. Have a son. You will replace that hole in your soul. “But is not as easy as it seems... Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I`m always missing someone or someplace or something. I`m always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing road full of tears and hysterical screams. Most of the times I`m always broken ( broken inside, I mean ) so to find some joy and happiness, I recapture that sweetest moments when we were just a bunch of kids, with our hands on our pockets looking at the blue/blue sky wondering what the future would be...That is the part that I miss most at unpleasant times, ME, just longing to get next to you, to reveal myself to you...And when I close my eyes to grasp that forever gone sweet souvenirs I found myself so quietly, so subtly, almost completely unconsciously doing exactly what I´m not supposed to do: LOVING YOU !

I`m always listening " Vanessa, you`re obsessed and this is crazy " My father used to tell me when I was young: “He is nothing to you, don’t cry because his father is buried. He is not your fiancé, not even a remote friend, he`s just a humble guy and there`ll be more to come "...Well, he was right about that: I had a lot of fiancés that made me climb the walls and that put me upside down and that made my life a rollercoaster but somehow I always come back to you;

It doesn`t matter at all !!! It is a pleasure to write - from time to time - TO YOU!

Someone close to you told me: “For God Sack, do you know at least if he gets any of the messages that you write to him. Do you know if he reads these notebooks of your loss related to him? " No, I get not even a clue all over the years but it doesn`t matter at all cause this is a wow that shall not be broken cause it is related to the only time of my life that I felt that I was human and that I had a heart full of compassion & hope, blinded by faith and seeking for dreams and you were the mirror of my dreams so what I miss most is us as kids and me gathering always around you, longing to see you in the Winter appearing with your heavy coat and some drops of rain all over your dark hair or in the Summer breeze, out of nowhere, whistling down the wind ( yes, cause you`re always whistling or humming a melody )...

I know you since you were a little boy. I might not know the man who asks for another round in some dive across town with his friends or the man who holds with one of his hands a cigarette and the other one a bottle of wine; I´m sure I don`t know that man but if I was not MYSELF (you know what I mean), I`m certain that I would like to meet that guy anyway.

All this kind of fantasies are always blowing me away cause I miss like crazy you in your seventies an ME dreaming of you deep inside the stillness of my soul...

I left Leça to move on with my life but I miss everyday those times when I was almost HUMAN and my heart was not a empty jar full of NOTHING, and most of all I miss YOU, my love for YOU...I don`t miss YOU now, just who you were...Sometimes people hate me and I hate people instead cause they are always telling me, in an echo of sentiments I`d heard so many times before, " Vanessa, you´re a pretty girl and you`re obviously bright enough, so why not just to try to be normal ? " I don`t know! They say death is hardest on the living. It's tough to actually say goodbye to someone... Sometimes it's impossible. You never really stop feeling the loss. It's what makes things so bittersweet!

Look at me!

I practically grew up here. It’s hurt me in ways I’ll probably never get over. I have a lot of memories of people… people I’ve lost forever. But I have a lot of other memories, too. This is the place where I fell in love. And it’s the place I met you. So I figure this place has given me as much as it’s taken from me. I’ve lived here as much as I’ve survived here. It just depends on how I look at it. I’m going to choose to look at it that way and remember you that way.

Vanessa Paquete 2014 ©
   All Rigths Reserved