My mom always told me I was the daughter with wings. That she always knew I would end up somewhere else. And at my first opportunity, I flew really far.
Vancouver was the first place I made my own home. I was going through the “after high school phase”, in which you don’t know what to pursue. The only thing I was always certain of was that I wanted to go to Canada and leave my small beach town, Santos. Since I was young this thought consumed me, but as I was getting older that dream started to fade away. Money, COVID and confusion slowly distanced me from what I had once told my mom, at around 10 years old: “I’m going to study in Canada”.
In my last semester of school, my family had the inevitable conversation: “What are you going to study?”. And I would freeze, not knowing what to answer. I didn’t want them to pay for something I wasn’t sure about, so my father led the way and accepted the idea of me going to Canada. After all it was the only thing I was truly certain of.
Business Communications became the course of choice. At the time I didn’t realize I was choosing a career I would eventually fall in love with. It simply felt comfortable. It made sense.
“6 months or 1 year?” That was the next difficult question that I had to answer. My father was kind of reluctant about the one year at the beginning, as he is the kind of guy who appreciates family and wants to stay together, so maybe the thought of having his little daughter going away wasn’t that nice. My mom, on the other hand, was the one who gave me a push and always stood by my side. The woman who wanted her little girl to fly away. “She is staying a year”, she answered.
And so I went, and I boarded on my first solo flight.
Crossing borders, finding myself
Almost 24 hours later, I remember stepping off the plane, closing my eyes, and breathing in the Canadian air. When I opened them, my first thought was: I’m home. For the first time, I felt really free. I could leave my house without telling anyone, I could make my own friends, make my own decisions. I was 19 discovering the world by myself. It was absolutely amazing.
Vancouver was the first place that truly felt like home because I built a life there by myself, from scratch. I worked at a small coffee shop and at a baseball stadium — sometimes pulling a 10 hour shift and about to cry from exhaustion, but on my way home to my best friend, and also roommate. I would look out the bus window and forget how tired I was.
I studied, travelled to places whose beauty I would never be able to fully put into words, and explored Canada both alone and alongside the people I chose to share that chapter of my life with. I went to house parties filled with young souls that I could see were going through the same journey of self-discovery. I spent Christmas night with friends I chose to be family. My coworker was a Mexican man who watched the most incredible sunset on the ferry on our way back home from Victoria, on Vancouver Island, when we were surprised by a whale that left us both crying, without saying a word.
Somewhere in between, I discovered my passion for photography, writing, listening to people’s stories and getting to know new places. Far away from home I found out what would give meaning to my living days: I wanted to be a journalist. And I came back to pursue it.
It was harder to come back than to actually leave. It sounds strange, I know. But I had built so much for myself, especially a new version of me that I hadn’t met before: fearless, friendly, communicative and hardworking. I was the happiest version of myself there, and nothing would make me come back — just my future.
When home no longer fits
I flew back to Santos and everything was the same. When you leave your hometown, you think things will change, but they won’t. The streets have the same smells, the bars have the same tables with the same customers playing the same music, the homeless man still lives with his dog by the church, the same woman takes your order at the bakery on the corner of your street and your old friends go to that house to have the same jokes and get drunk to the same vodka and judge the same people. Everything you ran away from is spat right into your face.
But one big thing changed: my family. My dad’s gray hairs multiplied, the wrinkles in my mom’s face were more pronounced, my twin sister was living in another city and was more ambitious, my older sister was moving away with her boyfriend and was fearless, and my dog had difficulty jumping on the couch — but still liked my blanket.
I was back, but my old self was left behind 12 months ago. So I had to be the version that I built carefully for myself in this old scenario. It was so hard, that I was diagnosed with depression. Coming back slowly drained the life out of me and took away the passion I had built in Vancouver. The resilient girl I had become in Canadian lands no longer seemed to exist.
But one thing was still burning inside of me: my desire to pursue journalism. Now, I had the choice to study in my home town or move to São Paulo. But Santos doesn’t have as good universities as São Paulo, and I had changed, but not enough to forget that I was the child with wings.
The city lights brought me back to life
São Paulo can truly captivate you. Big city, so many lights that make you think you are in Times Square, so many parks that can almost make you forget you are in the middle of a huge urban center, so many people and cultures that make it impossible to believe that you are in just one place.
This city breathes life, and yet didn’t bring mine back. I remember the first time I stepped on the subway on my way to university: 6am, so many people that we would all move together, the crowd just pushing me along, everyone seemed soulless with sad looks on their faces like cows going to the slaughterhouse, it was horrible. My first thought was: “This is it? This is the city where dreams come true? I definitely don’t want to stay here”.
I would study during the weeks in São Paulo and spent the weekends at Santos. I didn’t want to face the fact that I would have to restart in another city, make new friends and readapt my routine again. All of that didn’t make my depression any better. It got even worse and I shut myself completely from my family, my friends and the world.
People say “there’s no love in São Paulo” and, in that phase, that kind of made sense to me. I would take in consideration the gray sky, busy subway, traffic noises at 7am and rude people as if it was everything that the city had to show me. The time seemed to not pass and I would stay in my bed all day, after class, doing nothing.
Mourning for the old times, longing for that feeling that Vancouver brought me to come back. The only moment that would make me excited was the classes. Learning about what I loved, writing, photographing, reading and diving into the journalism world brought light to my eyes again. Those little hours would make being away from home worth it.
I didn’t love Santos back then. But the sun, the salty skin, the sun-kissed face and the bike rides became a relief from my life in the city. I didn’t spend much time with my parents, but it was better to be in a house where I was comfortable than in the one in São Paulo I was trying to run away from — sometimes I would stay late at university just to avoid coming home. So, my weekends were the time I had to relax, enjoy nature and try to regain my happiness. It was the place where I knew I could recharge my battery before going back to that heavy routine. Although I didn’t love it, it was familiar. Now I understand, it was home.
With time, I made friends who would take me out of my house and discover São Paulo, and the city finally captivated me. The phrases in the buildings make me believe that art is alive, the sound of people in bars on Wednesdays that keep me awake at night annoys me, but reminds me there are lives, the moments when I see a kid at the busy subway — who takes smiles from everyone — make me remember that routine doesn’t need to be always heavy, but when I see someone crying in the middle of the crowd, it shows me that São Paulo is real. It’s life, and I’m home. São Paulo is no longer the place that I study. It is the place that I live. It is the place where I found a job at what I love. Where I could reconnect with my sisters and myself. The same way Vancouver was home for a time, and the same way Santos will always be.
São Paulo built a new version of me. I am now the professional that I once dreamed of becoming. I speak for myself when I need to, I get excited to explore every corner of this city, I smile at the little kid in the subway, I love coming home to eat the food my sister made, and I love even more FaceTiming my parents and seeing that the porch light is always on for me.
No matter where you go, the porch light is always on
Tamara Klink wrote in her book The Atlantic Singlehanded: “Aware that our home is the only place that will never leave us. And the best place from which to leave again.”. Santos will always be the place to find comfort, to find my family, to smell the same odors that I did when I was 8 years old, to cross with the same homeless man at the church by my house, to pass through the same bar with the same people that are no longer my friends, to ride near the house my grandparents used to live and to pass by streets and be able to see the twelve year old me or the eighteen.
I left Santos. I left my home. But it will never leave me completely. It’s comforting to know that I can go wherever I want, and the porch light of my parents’ house will always be on – and my dog will still follow me to the couch with my red blanket.
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The article below was edited by Eloá Costa.
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