When I first opened that faded diary from 1998, I thought I was simply revisiting the past. I had no idea I was about to birth an album.

For months now, you've been with me on this journey: reading excerpts from my eighteen-year-old self, following the stories of graduation anxiety, ice cream shop memories, crushes that felt like earthquakes, and dreams that stretched far beyond the borders of Lagoa Dourada. You've witnessed me in conversation with that girl I used to be, finding tenderness for her intensity, her longing, her beautiful, aching hope.

What I didn't expect was how those diary entries would start humming.

🎧 Today, I'm thrilled to share that From the Beginning—the album—is now available everywhere you listen to music.

How a diary became songs

It started with a single line from March 1998: "I want to hide in the corners of myself." As I typed those words for one of my early posts, a melody surfaced, almost like a lullaby I might have sung to that anxious teenager.

Each song emerged from this same process: a memory, a feeling, sometimes just the mood of a particular diary page. Sometimes they would grow from entries about imagination and play, sometimes from raw, complicated family dynamics and finding my voice in the world while navigating internal conflicts and many, many dreams that I could not contain inside myself.

When the songs were ready to grow beyond lyrics and humming, AI helped me give them the voices and melodies they were asking for.

The album that grew in the margins

This isn't a concept album exactly, but it is a conversation album. Each track speaking to a different post I wrote, and being part of growing up and growing into myself.

In the corners paints the scene of where I grew up
The gate holds a sweet memory of my grandmother's house, which now belongs to me and where I keep many things from back then, including that very gate which hangs as art on my wall
Spell for a girl who remembers offers magic for memory and resilience when they were most needed
Freezer hums celebrates the small joys of my first job, and also touches on grief
House rules sits with raw family conflicts
You're safe here (Instrumental) extends an invitation to breathe and hug yourself
Back page captures my reading habits through a classmate's eyes
Definition offers a spoken word piece reflecting on (rejected) first love

What this album means

From the Beginning exists because that eighteen-year-old girl in Brazil was brave enough to write everything down. It exists because, twenty-six years later, I was brave enough to read it all back. But mostly, it exists for anyone who has ever felt like their teenage self was too intense, too much, too tender for this world.

You weren't too much. You were exactly who you needed to be.

This album is my attempt to create the soundtrack I wish I'd had then: songs that say it's okay to feel everything, that growing up doesn't mean leaving your younger self behind, that there's profound beauty in the messy, magnificent process of becoming who you are.

🎧 Listen Now

From the Beginning is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and all streaming platforms. Whether you've been following the diary series or you're just discovering this project, I hope these songs find you exactly where you need them.

To everyone who has read along, shared your own memories in the comments, and held space for this vulnerable work, thank you. You made this album possible by making the diary series feel like a conversation rather than a monologue.

The 1998 diary may be closed, but these songs carry its spirit forward. They're yours now, to hold whatever memories and dreams you bring to them.

Stream From the Beginning now and let me know which song speaks to your own inner teenager. I have a feeling she's been waiting to hear from you.

Listen to "From the Beginning" on:
[Spotify] [Apple Music] [iTunes] [YouTube]

Read the full series:

“I can’t eat anything. Like an old person with a terminal disease.”
The intensity of this line still makes me smile, not because I’m laughing at you, but because you didn’t hold back—not in your feelings, not in your language, not in the way you documented the world as if every small ache was worth remembering. You were not only feeling things deeply, you were performing them on the page, for no one but yourself. Your creative honesty is something I’ve come to admire more and more. You weren’t trying to be elegant. You were trying to survive your own sensitivity, and in doing so, you gave it shape.

“Thank God not everything in life comes down to numbers.”
I think you knew this long before the world gave you permission to live as someone who favored beauty over logic, symbols over spreadsheets. You never pretended to be interested in what didn’t move you, and even at seventeen, you understood that life (at least the parts that matter) can’t be measured with precision. There is no formula for the first time your heart breaks, no data point that can explain how it feels to sit under a tree with someone who understands you. You weren’t just saying this. You were declaring the truth you already knew would protect you.

“I wish I knew when things would work out for me.”
I remember how you wrote this, almost like a whisper to yourself on the night before your birthday, hoping something would change. You didn’t ask for guarantees. You just wanted a reason to believe. I want you to know that some things did work out, though not always in the way you imagined. You didn’t end up in a castle, but you built a life filled with meaning, and you kept some of your tenderness through it all. You became someone you would be proud to know. You kept going. And that, in itself, was a kind of arrival.

“Everyone else seems so sure of what they’re doing. I feel like I’m just pretending.”
That feeling didn’t go away, not entirely, but I’ve learned to sit with it. What you didn’t know then is that most people are pretending too, some with more confidence, others with better scripts. The certainty you envied was often a performance, and your uncertainty was actually awareness. You were noticing things, absorbing everything around you, questioning yourself because you were awake, not behind.

“If I could disappear inside a song, I would.”
And you did, again and again. You found music that gave your feelings a place to rest, even when you didn’t understand the lyrics, even when no one else around you seemed to feel quite as much. You were making a home inside beauty, inside mystery. Enya gave you space in a world that often felt too sharp, too loud, too indifferent. I’m grateful you let yourself go there. I’m grateful you didn’t force yourself to be more realistic.

“They played Enya. I made sure of it.”
Of course you did. You ran for the student committee, not just to help organize graduation, but to ensure the music sounded like the inside of your heart. You convinced the priest, through a back-channel negotiation involving your grandmother, to let “Storms in Africa” echo through the church, as long as there were no lyrics. You made sure your imagination reached the speakers. You insisted that your world could include beauty, even when others didn’t see the point. You’ve always done that: shaped spaces to feel like you.

“I’m so tired of being good. I just want to be free.”
You wrote that one in the margins, as if it was a second thought. And maybe that’s why it landed when I found it again. You were already starting to see the cost of constant goodness: the way it required you to shrink, to monitor yourself, to stay small so that others could stay comfortable. But you also knew that something inside you didn’t want to live that way. You didn’t stop being kind, but you stopped equating kindness with silence. And little by little, you found your own version of freedom.

You didn’t have the full picture.
But you had the truth.

And you didn’t stop writing.
That’s how I found you again.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading the last post about 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

There’s a myth that teenage girls are out of control.
I would like to offer my 1998 graduation as Exhibit A:
we’re only out of control when someone else is in charge.

In my final year of high school, I made sure I was elected to the student board that would organize our graduation ceremony.
Truth is, I didn’t even have to fight for it. Most people saw it as extra work.
I saw it as the only way to make sure things would be done right.

Also, my name helped.
My mom was a celebrated kindergarten teacher.
My dad, a feared high school history teacher with a legendary stare.
I had a reputation for speaking up, trusted I could run things.
And they were right.

The ceremony had two parts: first, a mass for the graduates.
Then the diploma delivery in the only event hall that hosted anything formal.
I had a say in both.

I needed the music to be perfect.
I needed candles, not balloons.

I needed angels on the invitations.
I needed something different.
And I needed, with every poetic fiber of my being, for Enya to be part of it.

The priest wasn’t thrilled about that.
He didn’t know what she was saying in her songs.
What if it was profanity?

I offered him Storms in Africa.
No lyrics, just sound and sky.
Still, he hesitated.

So I called for backup: my grandmother.
A devoted parishioner, the woman who sometimes hosted him for chicken dinner on Sundays.

She worked her Sunday magic.
He said yes.
I played it cool, but inside I was ecstatic.

By the time we reached the diploma ceremony, I was already glowing, and I still had my speech to give.

As the valedictorian (oradora), I had prepared something I believed in: a speech about how we get to reach for what we want and go get it.
I wore a black dress with a silver shimmer, like a starry sky.
My braces were still on.
My hair was doing its best.
And yes, Enya played.
More than once.

When I reached the podium for my speech, I ended with words that felt like everything I believed:

The programs were hand-folded, the candles flickered, and the music filled the room just as I imagined.

That night, I didn’t just graduate.
I pulled something off.

And maybe no one else noticed how carefully it had all been planned,
but I did.
And that was enough.

People say control is about ego.
But sometimes, it’s just another word for care.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

I spoke to him almost every day. Just small things: questions, comments, conversation that lives on the surface. But underneath, I was building entire worlds. I memorized his expressions, the way he spoke, the cadence of his sentences. I knew when he was tired, when he was distracted, when he was trying not to look too long in my direction.

He pretended not to notice. And I pretended not to care.
But it was all right there.

My friends knew, of course. I wasn’t subtle. I’d light up whenever he entered the room, find excuses to linger, offer help I didn’t need to offer. I once spent hours writing a birthday card I’d never give him, choosing words that could mean everything or nothing at all.

And I really believed there was potential for something between us.
Or maybe I just needed to believe it.
Maybe that’s what longing is.

My love for English bloomed around that time. I threw myself into it, not for grades, not for travel, not even for music, though that played a part—but because it felt like the only way to get closer to the version of him I had made up in my head. It became a devotion. A way of building a bridge.

Sometimes I would write down a date and swear that after that day, I would stop thinking about him. I’d make it official: draw a box around it, underline it twice. But the thoughts didn’t stop. They never do just because you ask them to.

I still remember one of those dates. I’ve used it as a password ever since.
Not because I haven’t let go, but because I haven’t forgotten what it meant to feel something so intensely, even if it never became anything more.

There was a kiss, eventually. A careful one. A moment that felt like the breaking of a spell. It didn’t lead to anything. It wasn’t meant to, and I think deep down, I knew that.

But still, he stayed with me. Long after that year ended. Long after I moved away. Not someone I was meant to be with, but someone who woke something in me. A depth of feeling, a sense of mystery. The beginning of a pattern I wouldn’t fully understand until much later.

I don’t think he ever knew the real weight of it all.
But I did.

And that was enough to make it real.

Definition

Longing /ˈlɔːŋɪŋ/
(n.) The act of building a future
on someone who never asked for it

Silence /ˈsaɪləns/
(n.) What you hear
when you pretend not to care

Language /ˈlæŋɡwɪdʒ/
(n.) A bridge made of verbs
you’ll never get to use

Hope /hoʊp/
(n.) The thing you fold into
a birthday card you never send

Kiss /kɪs/
(n.) A spell you break
by letting it happen

Goodbye /ɡʊdˈbaɪ/
(n.) A word you never said—
because you never had to

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

For a little while, I worked at the town’s ice cream shop, and it felt like I had everything I needed. A job, a routine, a reason to be somewhere after school, and a spot where all my friends would eventually show up: even when I wasn’t on the schedule. I loved it there more than I could ever explain, even then.

I learned more about math scooping ice cream than I ever did sitting in class. At the register, there was no room for guessing. I had to know exactly how much change to give, and I had to be fast, accurate, and calm under pressure. I didn’t want to get in trouble with the owner, who wasn’t strict but definitely didn’t have time for sloppiness. I rose to that. I liked being trusted with something real.

I liked the banana splits too. And pistachio, which I never got tired of sneaking a taste of. Some afternoons, halfway through cleaning the counter, I’d find a little leftover in the tub. It felt like a reward I didn’t need to justify. But what I remember most are the people who walked in. The ones who weren’t regulars, who had clearly been saving up for the occasion. You could tell by the way they paused at the door, hesitated before asking for their flavor. I always made sure to give them the best scoop. Extra sprinkles. A little more than they were expecting. Something that felt like a celebration. I’d watch their eyes light up and tuck the moment away like it was mine too.

Every once in a while, he’d come in. Just him, or with a friend. My heart would stir the moment I saw him at the door. I’d act unfazed behind the counter, but he knew. He always knew. The way he smiled, the pause before he paid… it unraveled me. One visit, and it would be the highlight of my entire week.

Then there were the slow days. Rain tapping on the window, clouds hanging low, the street almost still. Hours could pass without a single customer. I’d sit behind the counter in silence, watching the puddles gather, listening to Enya on the CD player. That music made the waiting feel satisfying, somehow. Like I wasn’t alone in it and the day had something to teach me if I stayed still long enough.

When the shop closed, there was no real warning. The owner said the numbers weren’t working, that he couldn’t keep going with just a bunch of teenagers buying cones and hanging around every day. We were the shop’s most loyal customers—and its worst business model. I understood. But that didn’t make it easier.

I walked by a few days later and still half-expected to see the lights on. Still expected to hear the freezer buzzing or see the shadow of someone leaning over the counter, deciding between chocolate and coconut. I didn’t know where we were supposed to go now, where the new hangout spot would be, or if anything could feel quite the same.

That shop held so many memories. Long conversations with friends while pretending to mop the floor. Afternoons when we laughed so hard we forgot what we were supposed to be doing. Moments with people I barely knew that somehow meant more than they should’ve. It gave structure to my days and made me feel capable. Seen. Part of something.

And then, it was over.

There wasn’t anything dramatic about it, but it’s one of my first losses. I only realize later what it gave me: confidence, connection, a sense of my place in the world. I still think about it sometimes. Not in a nostalgic way exactly, but in the way you remember something that made you better without asking for anything in return.

We all had a place like that once. Mine just happened to smell like waffle cones and freezer air. And for a while, it was my whole world.

Freezer Hums

As I revisited this memory, a melody came to me, like the hum of those empty afternoons. I turned it into a song.

You can listen to it here:

Freezer hums
Sunlight fades
Wooden spoons
Plastic trays

Pistachio green
Sticky floors
Your smile
The gliding doors

Enya played
When no one came
I felt the words
And said your name

The cold, the sweet
The things I knew
Ice cream melting
Me, too

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

There are houses you walk into like a guest, and houses you walk into like a memory. My grandmother's house was the second kind.

She lived there with my aunt Aurora, and I never knocked. Grandkids didn't have to. You just pushed the gate open (or jumped over it, if you felt like being dramatic) and walked right in. I can still hear the sound the gate made when it closed behind me: a soft metallic clink, like punctuation. I didn't know then that it would stay with me for life.

Inside, there was always a certain rhythm. Telenovelas. Knitting needles clicking. A cake cooling.

My aunt often had rollers in her hair, getting ready for church later that evening, with her cross necklace, a swipe of lipstick, and sensible shoes. There was always a sense of occasion.

Sometimes my grandmother would be in the outside kitchen, slowly stirring a pot of guava paste. She made it the old way, with bits of guava skin still folded in, soft and sweet. It wasn't fancy. It was just something that belonged in that house, like the sound of the TV or the smell of fresh laundry my cousin who worked there would be washing.

And on top of nearly every bureau or cabinet, there were saints.

Each had their place, and my aunt and grandmother spoke to them daily, exclaiming their names when needed. Their faith was everywhere.

In the living room hung a black-and-white photo of my grandparents on their wedding day. It was formal and serious, the way old portraits used to be, and framed with the care reserved for the holy and the gone.

My grandfather died when I was six. I don't remember him well, but I knew his story. He was the town's notary, the one who registered births, signed marriage certificates, and made things official. He had an office in that very house.

When my grandmother passed away in 2013, the house was passed to me. By then, it was falling apart: the foundation shifting, the walls worn down by decades of life. In 2023, we made the hard decision to tear it down. In its place, we built something new that still holds the shape of what came before.

I kept pieces of the old house woven into the new one. The wood floors became small carved items scattered throughout the rooms. In the office, which is in the exact place my grandfather's had his, sits his old typewriter, as if he'd only just stepped away from his desk. His saxophone also rests nearby. Most importantly, I saved a piece of that iron gate, the one that made that soft metallic clink. It hangs now on the living room wall, a piece of all those entrances and exits, all those moments of coming home.

When I go home now, I see my nephew running through the rooms while my mom smiles, watching us all make this space ours. The house is different, but the life inside it continues the same story.

You can feel it in the bones of the space. The memory in the walls.

That house taught me a lot about presence. It taught me that some things don't need to change to matter. That love can look like cake and sound like knitting needles. That saints don't only live in churches. And that even when a house is gone, the life that happened inside it can still hug you. It takes generations to build a story, and I am happy to be part of it.

The Gate

I used to jump the gate
It sang when I landed
The metal knew me
We were almost friends

She moved through the rooms
With thread and grace
Watched Mass on tv
A rosary in place

Now the gate hangs inside
Steel against white
On the walls that once held her
Now holding what’s mine

The house I made from hers
The hush beneath the frame
Her memories behind me
I gave the walls my name

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries, one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

In 1998, we weren’t just watching the World Cup.
We were living it.

There were bandeirinhas—green and yellow little flags—strung across the streets like prayers. Storefronts painted with soccer dreams. Entire town squares transformed into open-air living rooms with radios, TVs, fireworks on standby.

During a Brazil game, the streets emptied out completely. Catechism was postponed. Doctor’s appointments were rescheduled. Even the priest would wrap up mass early with an encouragement to the national team.
For those 90 minutes (or longer), everyone was somewhere, worshipping a screen.

It wasn’t just soccer.
It was identity. Theater. Religion.

I remember that final match vividly. Brazil vs. France. July 12.
I was standing outside Aquarius, the only bar in town that we teenagers could call ours. The flags were still fluttering in the wind, like they didn’t know what had happened yet.
And I was crying on the sidewalk, inconsolable.

We’d lost the penta: the fifth title, the one we believed was ours by destiny.

My friends were sad, of course, but I was always the one who took things harder.
I felt it in my chest like a personal betrayal, a breakup I hadn’t seen coming.

The loss was stunning—but also strange, because we’d been so sure. So proud. So beautifully naive.

That game… it unraveled.
Ronaldo, our golden boy, wasn’t himself.
There were rumors even before kickoff: seizures, nerves, conspiracies.
Zidane scored twice before halftime, and though we hoped for a miracle, France sealed it with a third goal.

3–0.
Silence.
Then sobs. (Mostly mine.)

My dad had a habit, during past World Cups, of walking away from the television during penalties. He said he could feel his blood pressure spike. Said he needed to breathe or he might actually have a heart attack. That’s how serious it was. For him. For all of us.

But the World Cup wasn’t just intensity, it was intimacy.
It was the first time, every four years, when our little town cracked open and the whole planet came pouring in.

I watched people on TV who looked nothing like me.
I heard new anthems, learned about faraway customs, stared at the flags and languages scrolling across the screen like magic.
I memorized players’ names I couldn’t pronounce.

And yes, I’ll admit, I had a mild obsession with Japanese boys at that time.
Watching the tournament felt like being let into a candy store of cultures and men to admire.

It was also one of the few times I saw my town unified by something bigger than gossip, politics, or God.

During the World Cup, everyone had the same hope.
The same fear.
The same celebration dance ready to go.

People you barely said hi to would high-five you in the street after a goal.
It stitched us together: kids, elders, shopkeepers, teachers, the guy who barely spoke at the deli counter.
For a few short weeks, we were all part of something larger.

So when we lost… it felt like something cracked.

But the thing about hearts is: they break, and then they beat again.

The next day, the bell rang. The square filled back up.
The priest went back to preaching about eternal life instead of extra time.

And me? I stopped crying.
I wrote it all down.

Because even in that moment of sorrow, I knew I was witnessing something.
Not just a match, but a window.
A window into the world.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries, one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

I don’t remember exactly when she came to me, but I know what summoned her.

A pair of silver earrings, shaped like a tiny witch on a broom. Hair swept by the wind, arms raised mid-flight. She looked… joyful. Not scary. Not wicked. Just... free. And I couldn’t stop looking at her.

So I gave her a name.
Possidonia.

And then I gave her a life.

She wasn’t the type of witch who was brewing curses or lurking in forests. She was clever and curious, a little sarcastic, and kind. She could talk to animals, I think. She had a best friend who lived in a tree trunk and offered strange advice that always turned out to be wise. She rode her broom not to escape, but to see things. She liked how small the town looked from up there.

Her world wasn’t mapped, it just spilled from me. Page after page. I remember the handwriting. I remember feeling like I was uncovering something, not inventing it. Like she already existed, and I just had to keep up.

There are only traces left now, little notes and mentions I found in my 1998 diary. I must’ve written dozens of chapters, but I don’t know where they went. They vanished like spells cast into the wind.

But I remember how it felt to write them.

I was a teenager in a tiny town, trying to make sense of things that didn’t fit inside the rules I was given. And Possidonia gave me a way out. Or maybe a way in. She let me believe in power that didn’t come from grades or obedience or being liked. She let me build a world that made more room: for feelings, for questions, for wonder.

She let me be wild in a place that rewarded quiet.

Sometimes I wonder what she’d tell me now, if she could land beside me with that same silver smile. Maybe she’d say, “You don’t need a broom anymore. You already know how to fly.”

Maybe she was never meant to stay.
Maybe she was just a spell I wrote when I needed one.

And maybe it worked.

🖤 SPELL FOR A GIRL WHO REMEMBERS

Say the name 
but not too loud 
Names can float or they can drown 
Say it soft, say it right 
Say it once, and hold the light 

Fly is just a kind of fall 
If you never leave at all 
Fly can mean to slip away 
Or to come back home and stay 

Light can burn or light can guide 
It can blind or it can hide 
You once said the stars don’t lie 
But witches sometimes do 

Home is not a door or key 
It’s the one who lets you be 
Say the name, and if she hears
She may land beside your fears

Say it once. Then let it go. 
If it’s meant, she’ll always know.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

The town library was a big room on the second floor of the town hall—the same building where the mayor governed and official papers were stamped into being.
You had to walk up a narrow flight of stairs, past the low voices and office doors, to get there.

Once inside, it was just books.
Metal shelves, a couple of long tables, and silence that let you think.
Nothing fancy, but to me, it felt perfect.

I started going often during high school—at first, just to study.
But eventually, I went just to be there and find something new, and to get out of the house.
To disappear into someone else’s story.

I read poems I didn’t fully understand and novels that made me feel older than I was.
I’d finish one book and then immediately start another.
Sometimes I’d read the same one twice, just to see what I had missed.

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Little by little, I got through most of it.
Not all—no one ever gets through all—but enough that even Ronaldo noticed.

He was in my class and never talked much, but he was always watching.
He never had to raise his hand or take up space to make himself known.
He just paid attention.

Years later, long after we’d left school, we reconnected via Facebook messenger.
We were talking about dogs (he suggested giving mine carrots for teething), and out of nowhere, he said:

"Back in school, if I ever went to the library and didn’t know what to read, I’d look to see if you’d already signed it out. If you had, I figured it must be worth it."

It still might be the kindest compliment I’ve ever received.

All that time, I thought I was reading alone.
But someone had been following the breadcrumbs.

I never read to impress anyone.
I read because I was hungry: for meaning, for language, for a world larger than the one framed by the town square.

Sometimes I even wrote to publishers, asking for authors’ addresses so I could send them letters. I didn’t get a single reply, but it didn’t matter.
I just wanted to reach out to say: you made something that moved me.

Books gave me permission to be who I already was: curious, observant, a little intense, and always asking more questions than anyone had time to answer.

The library didn’t belong to me.
But it welcomed me like it was home.

And so, years later, that memory became a song. I wrote it from Ronaldo’s perspective, borrowing his steady, grounded presence: the same strength I always felt when he was near. It’s called “Back Page,” and, just like those library afternoons, it’s less about grand gestures and more about the ways we show up for each other, sometimes without even meaning to.

You can listen below.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

Some things don’t need to be said.
Or—they’ve already been said enough, in therapy, behind closed doors, in my own head.

This song is all you really need to know.

he had rules
i had eyes
watched him speak
watched her comply

no tears aloud
no space to shake
just broken people
in their place

the patriarchy ran wild in that house
we called it normal
we called it love
but it felt like silence
it felt like dust

i lit up outside
words came easy
but at that door
they left me

school was air
books were light
home was tiptoe
home was tight

the patriarchy ran wild in that house
we called it normal
we called it love
but it felt like silence
it felt like dust

don’t be loud
don’t take space
don’t ask why
just behave

i didn’t cry
i didn’t scream
i just watched
and learned
how not to be seen

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Subscribe now

Next…

After forty days of Quaresma—Lent—when parties were considered sinful, when the priest might be tipped off about any gathering and call it out on the church megaphone (“End that party, it’s a sin!”)—we were more than ready.

Hallelujah Saturday was glorious.

That night, we danced like no one was watching, though of course we were watching each other—especially our crushes from the week’s processions. The room was packed. The 90s music was magnetic. When “Macarena” came on, the whole place jumped. Everyone knew the moves. Everyone was laughing. Arms swung in perfect chaos like we were shaking something off.

It felt like being let out of something.
Like we could finally move without being measured.

We stayed until late, half-hypnotized by freedom and sweat and the feeling that anything could happen—even if nothing really did.

And then, just a few hours later, we got up to make the carpets.

On Easter Sunday morning, before the sun was fully out, the streets came alive again. Our high school teachers had partnered with the church to assign sections of the main procession route to different groups of students. Each group was responsible for a stretch of road to decorate, and we took it seriously.

We designed intricate street rugs made from flower petals, sawdust, coffee grounds, colored sand—whatever we had. Some were full of religious symbols: chalices, doves, the sacred heart. Others were more abstract: flames, suns, radiant crosses. A few had real artistic ambition: an angel with real dimension and shadow.

People ranked them in whispers.

“Did you see the one in front of the bank?”
“Ours was too rushed.”
“Hers looked like a real painting.”

We were half-tired, half-thrilled. Some of us still had glitter on our faces from the night before.

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And then, at noon, the priest began the final Easter procession. He walked carefully across our creations, robe gleaming in the sun, flanked by choir and incense. Everything felt quiet again. Fulfilled. Glowing.

After that, it was over.

The visitors left. The shops quieted down. School started again. The bell rang like always.

But for one week—our spring break—Lagoa Dourada became something more.

It became alive.
And so did we.

These days, a lot of that has been watered down. The crowds are smaller. The traditions faded, or forgot their way.

But I saw it before all that.
Before the color bled.
Before it turned into memory.

That week lives in me still.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

Candlelight. Incense. Murmured prayers and careful outfits. And in its own way, it was just as intense.

The week kicked off with Palm Sunday. I watched the first procession from my grandmother’s balcony, right next to Rosario’s Church. People passed below like a tide, carrying palm branches, whispering prayers I could barely hear but somehow felt in my chest. That moment marked the beginning of the sacred, and the unofficial start of our social season.

From then until Easter, the whole town moved differently.
Slower. Charged.

Each evening brought another procession. Candlelight flickered against colonial facades. The air filled with the scent of old wood and frankincense. Church bells rang a little longer. People dressed better, walked with purpose, spoke in reverent tones, even outside the church.

It was like the whole town had agreed to become devout together.

But reverence, I learned, had its own kind of electricity.

Families who had moved away returned for the week. Cousins arrived from São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, crowding into small houses with big stories. The local clothing shops, usually quiet, buzzed with people searching for something new to wear. Even devotion had a dress code. You couldn’t be seen in the same outfit as last year, especially with your third cousin from the city watching.

The women in the family spent an entire afternoon ironing dresses, the ones reserved for important church occasions.

“Stand up straight during the processions,” my grandmother told me. “People notice everything.”

And she was right. In a town of twelve thousand, being noticed was both the fear and the goal.

Between daily masses and evening rituals, my friends and I carved out our own flow. We lingered after church, pretending to admire the flowers while secretly scanning the crowd. We walked the square a little slower, hoping to cross paths with someone interesting. Out-of-town boys showed up like plot twists, and we obsessed accordingly.

“Did you see him? The tall one with green eyes?”

“He’s staying at his aunt’s house until Monday.”

“His name is Roberto. He goes to private school in the capital.”

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One glance could fuel a week’s worth of speculation. One smile could carry you through the whole season.

By Thursday, everything felt saturated: prayer, tension, desire, restraint. It was like we’d all been walking around with our breath half-held. Teenagers tried to look holy while their hearts raced every time someone new walked through the church doors.

And then came Good Friday.

That night, the streets turned solemn. The lights were dimmed, and the town transformed. A full cast of biblical figures walked in silence: Moses, Roman soldiers in makeshift armor, barefoot women in veils, children carrying candles. Deep purple fabric was everywhere, trimmed in gold thread that shimmered softly in the dark.

The moon was out. So were the stars.

You could hear the pace of it: the steady sound of feet on the cobblestones, like a heartbeat that belonged to all of us. No one talked. No one even cleared their throat. We just watched.

And then Verônica stepped forward.

She wore a black cloak, her face covered. She stood on a small wooden platform and lifted a white cloth edged with embroidery, the face of Christ in the center, somehow alive in that candlelight.

Edilene was playing Saint Veronica—the woman who, according to tradition, stepped out from the crowd on the road to Calvary to wipe the face of Jesus. This was her moment in the procession.

Her father was a local musician, known for playing in a style that kept older regional traditions alive through families with deep roots in Brazil’s Afro-descendant culture. His music had weight. So did hers.

Edilene sang O vos omnes.

O vos omnes
qui transitis per viam,
attendite et videte
si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus.

Her voice filled the silence like water in a vessel. Pure. Unhurried. Each note seemed to hang in the air just a moment longer than expected, as if the night itself was listening.

And all the while, the church bell rang its funeral cadence: heavy, echoing across the hills. One note at a time. Like it was answering her.

There was no applause. No movement. Just the sound of her voice, the flicker of candles, the toll of the bell, and the soft night holding everything in place.

When she stepped down, the cloth still held in her hands, the procession continued.

And we began to move again—toward the night, toward home, and toward whatever might finally break loose the next day.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries, one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

There was one year—1998—when I said almost everything I needed to say through greeting cards.

We had a family computer. A chunky, humming gateway to something beyond Lagoa Dourada. But access to it came with rules. My dad, always practical and slightly suspicious of anything that didn’t involve a textbook, made sure we didn’t spend too much time on it. Electricity wasn’t cheap. And computers, in his eyes, weren’t for playing: they were for printing reports and doing research, preferably about biology or history.

But every now and then, I got my window.
And when I did, I opened Microsoft Word and made magic.

I made cards.

Page after page of pastel gradients, swirling WordArt, angels with pixelated wings, hearts, sparkles, prayers. Some were for birthdays. Others for encouragement. A few were just because. If I had a feeling I couldn’t say out loud (and back then, I had so many), I would channel it into a card.

I’d pick a slightly romantic font, drop in a clipart rose, and write something between a poem and a benediction. Then I’d print it, fold it carefully, and hand it to someone at school as if this was the most normal thing in the world.

And for me, it was.

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I couldn’t always say what I felt out loud. I was sensitive, observant, already holding more emotion than a small town really knew what to do with. But in a card, I could make it beautiful. I could soften the feeling. Or amplify it. I could give someone something they didn’t expect, but maybe needed.

Sometimes people were touched.
Sometimes they were confused.
But either way, I kept going.

No one had taught me how to make cards. It wasn’t part of any school project. It wasn’t something my friends were doing. It was just me, sitting in front of that glowing screen, trying to translate whatever I was feeling into something someone else could hold in their hands.

And looking back, I realize, it was design.
It was language.
It was emotional strategy.

And maybe it was a little bit of love.

Not romantic love (though I’m sure a crush or two received an anonymous angel-print message). But that feeling of just wanting to connect. I didn’t quite know how to say “you matter to me” without wrapping it in flourishes and sparkles.

We didn’t have Instagram stories.
We didn’t have Canva.

We had Word.
Clipart.
And time.

And for one year, that was enough.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

Rosana and I met on the first day of fifth grade.
I don’t remember how we started talking. Only that once we did, we never really stopped. Back then, I was in the thick of my New Kids on the Block obsession, already scribbling English lyrics into my notebooks. She didn’t get that part, but the rest, she really did.

The years between fifth and eighth grade blurred together in the way childhood friendships do: sleepovers and school projects, shared secrets and inside jokes that built the foundation for what came later.

By the time we were seventeen, our friendship had its own flow. That year, I was taking evening classes, and after school, we’d head straight to the house her family kept in town: a simple white place, quiet and minimalist, just a few streets from mine.

Her parents lived out on their farm, but the townhouse gave the kids a place to stay during the week. Very often, Rosana would be the only one who stayed. There was no TV or distractions, just enough to keep things comfortable: heavy blankets, fresh fruit and vegetables her dad would drop off from the farm.

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We’d walk home together from school, sometimes sprinting if the cold had set in, trying to spend as little time as possible outside. Winter in Lagoa Dourada could be sneaky like that. The moment we stepped inside, it felt like the whole world slowed down.

We'd warm up some food—maybe a boiled potato or something already on the stove. We’d put our bags down, kick off our shoes, and drop into a rhythm that felt both familiar and weightless.

We helped each other with homework (my math, her English) and then we’d just talk. For hours.

There were no siblings to compete with. No noise. No floating moods to decode or tiptoe around.

In my house, there were five of us. Always someone talking, interrupting, needing something, or navigating around my dad’s short temper. I was used to being on alert.

But in Rosana’s house, it was just the two of us.
And in that space, I could let go of everything I carried during the day.

We’d jump into the same queen-size bed, pull the heavy blankets up to our chins, and talk until we fell asleep mid-sentence—some unfinished thought about a crush or a test or something someone had said in the hallway.

We didn’t need much. That house gave us the basics, and we filled it with the rest.

There’s something about teenage friendship that’s hard to explain later.
It wasn’t pretentious, it was so honest. Calm. Exactly what I needed, even if I didn’t have the language for it yet.

Rosana’s house was almost empty.
But it never once felt that way.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

There was a bell that rang every hour in Lagoa Dourada.

It came from the main church at the top of the hill, the one that loomed over the town like a stern but loving grandmother. Every hour, on the dot, the bell rang. And at six o’clock, it played Ave Maria, as if to remind us to pause, to breathe, to remember where we were.

That bell marked everything: school days, bored afternoons, heartbreaks.

Lagoa Dourada had about 12,000 people when I lived there. But it felt smaller, because no one was ever just themselves. You were always someone’s daughter, someone’s niece, someone’s classmate’s cousin. Even strangers came with footnotes: “He married Dona Maria’s granddaughter,” or “She’s from the farm next to João’s land.”

There were no chains. No malls. No cinemas. No coffee shops where you could disappear into a notebook and watch people you didn’t already know. Just three churches, two schools, one town library. And a small clinic, where you hoped not to run into anyone you knew in the waiting room.

And a bakery near the highway, where I’d go every morning to buy bread: warm, wrapped in soft, greying brown paper. I’d be waiting for the attendant and staring outside, watching the buses pass, full of people I’d never meet, going places I couldn’t yet imagine. I used to wonder what their lives were like. What language they were speaking. If they knew how lucky they were to be going somewhere else.

I’d been dreaming of leaving since I was small.

Part of it was the books. My mom was an avid reader of Barbara Cartland romances: tales of castles and dukes and piano recitals in faraway places. She’d read them first, vetting them to make sure they were “clean enough,” and then hand them to me. She even clipped pictures of castles from magazines and tucked them in between pages.

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I grew up surrounded by those images—moats and stone towers and women named Beatrice. That world felt impossibly far, but I wanted it. I didn’t know how or when, but I knew I’d get there.

Still, for a long time, this town was my world.

I worked my first job scooping ice cream. I spent long evenings at Aquarius, the one bar we could go to, full of familiar faces, sticky tables, and bad napkins. I studied obsessively, tried to avoid math, and filled my notebooks with poems and horoscopes no one asked for. I made greeting cards on the family computer and decorated them with clipart angels, eager to give them to my friends and hoping they would marvel at the sparkly wings as much as I did.

But while the town gave me structure, I always lived a bit outside its pace.
The girl who believed in signs.
Who spent too much time in the library.
Who stared too long at the horizon.
Most of my friends had more practical dreams.

This is the town that shaped me, sometimes without knowing it.
It made me curious. Restless. Devoted. Awake.
It taught me how to notice things, how to want more, how to stay still and imagine movement.

This is where we begin.
Not at the very beginning of my life, but with the first diary I’ve chosen to open.
The first year I’m ready to revisit.

One town.
One bell.
And a girl who dreamed in English long before she could speak it.

🎵 Listen to the song that grew from these memories: In the Corners

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

Next…

Golden angels on the cover. A year etched at the bottom: 1998.

I was seventeen. Finishing high school in a small town of 12,000 people. Working at an ice cream shop. Dreaming in English. Writing everything down with theatrical urgency: heartbreaks, poems, complaints, hopes. There was a lot of longing. And a lot of glitter gel pen.

I’ve decided to go through this entire diary and let it guide a series of reflections here on Substack.

Stories that are funny, intense, awkward, a little dramatic, and surprisingly wise.
Unrequited crushes. School elections. My obsession with Enya. Teenage angst. Library marathons. And the absolute panic of anything involving math.

Each post will be grounded in a memory, but also in what it reveals now, all these years later.

We’ll start with 1998.

The year of valedictorian speeches and braces. Of sleepy Catholic towns and disco parties. Of secret poems, dramatic metaphors, and a girl trying to figure out who she was.

I’m so glad you’re here.

✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

The journey continues here:

At the time, I wasn’t ready to open it. So it stayed tucked away in the closet, patiently waiting.

Until now.

This week, I felt a strong urge, a need, to open the box, and what I found left me speechless. There was so much there. I had completely forgotten how much of my life I had written down. How closely I had paid attention to things and how I was already trying to make sense of the world, using words as anchors.

I’ve decided to go through it all and share pieces of what it sparks here with you.

Some of it will make me laugh. Some will likely make me cry. But all of it feels meaningful, like holding a conversation with the girl I used to be.

This series is called From the Beginning, and it will unfold one memory, one revelation at a time.

If you’ve ever felt the pull to return to the younger version of yourself, the one who still believed, or felt lost, or wrote just to survive… I think you’ll feel at home here.

Thanks for being here with me.

Lilian

The journey continues here:

But here, I want to tell you the whole truth.

Not just the jobs and the milestones, but the fear, the notebooks, and the girl who came here without knowing how it would all turn out.

This is the version I’ve never shared.

It was summer in New York.

Hot. Humid. Everything pulsing with energy, excitement, and unfamiliarity.

I had just arrived as an au pair, after dreaming for years about what it would feel like to live in the U.S. I still remember stepping out into the city for the first time, feeling the thick heat of the sidewalks rising up, the smell of pretzels from a corner cart, the cab horns, the sound of so many languages mixing in the air.

And then, there it was.

The Empire State Building.

The same one I had cut out from a magazine years earlier and taped into my vision notebook back home in Brazil. A notebook filled with English words I didn’t fully understand, but wrote anyway. Words like “skyscraper.” That one stood out to me early on. I loved the way it looked, the way it sounded: full of possibility.

I would spend hours adding photos and scribbles in English. That notebook was a map of where I wanted to go, who I wanted to become.

What I didn’t know then is that it would take nearly a decade to get from that sidewalk to the inside of that building.

After my au pair year ended, I stayed in New York. And for the next several years, I pieced a life together through jobs that were more about survival than passion.

I worked in offices, as an assistant, project manager, account manager—whatever would allow me to keep my visa status. But I also worked evenings and weekends doing whatever else I could: I cleaned houses. I was a nanny. I sold clothes at street fairs. I waitressed. I kept going.

It wasn’t what I had imagined when I dreamed of life in the U.S., but the experiences shaped me.

Those years were hard, but were also wonderful. I met people from all over the world. I became part of an international community, speaking a language I had taught myself with flashcards, movies, and faith. I was building something, though I didn’t always know what.

There were mornings I’d wake up and have no idea where I was. I’d forgotten I was no longer at my parent’s house. I’d sit up slowly, my heart pounding, and have to remind myself: You’re here. You made it.

There were many nights I cried and questioned if I should just go back. But I kept telling myself: If you give up now, you’ll regret walking away from your dream.

And then, almost 10 years later, it happened.

I was hired as an Account Executive at Shutterstock. The job felt glamorous in every way: the office perks, the paycheck, the professional polish. But what moved me most was the location: the Empire State Building.

On my first day, as I stepped into the elevator and began rising floor by floor, I felt it deep in my bones. I was being lifted, literally and metaphorically.

It was a moment I will never forget.
The word I had once underlined and circled in my notebook—skyscraper—was now conquered. I had entered it, and risen with it.
I had once admired the building from the sidewalk. Now I passed tourists looking up at it, remembering I once stood there too.

It took time to adjust. To stop feeling like I was playing someone else’s role, and start realizing I had written this script. It was mine.

Being an au pair was never just about childcare. It was about courage. I crossed the ocean with no guarantees. I trusted that version of me who dared to dream from a tiny town in Brazil, who was strong enough to follow through.

And she was.

It wasn’t easy. There were long days, hard conversations, cultural confusion, moments of deep homesickness. But I will never regret taking the shot.

Coming to the U.S. was about trusting myself.
About betting on a dream that lived in a notebook, and I recognized as mine.

Skyscraper.

I didn’t just learn the word.
I climbed it.

I wrote this because I’ve been thinking about what it means to belong.

About how many people still arrive in this country with just a suitcase and a dream, and how much kindness can change someone’s path.

I was lucky. I had a home to return to if things didn’t work out. Many don’t.

If my story resonates with you, I hope you’ll take a moment to look around and ask:
Who can I meet halfway?

I’m writing about my early memories in a new series: