Latest / Just Julia / I Had Forgotten That Girl

Transcript

I Had Forgotten That Girl · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had forgotten that girl.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: This week,
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: someone reminded me who I was before I had a CV,
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: before Milan,
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: before the UN,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: before job titles,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: before marriage and motherhood,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: before I had all these adult ways of explaining who I am.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was 17.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had just landed at Auckland Airport with a suitcase and the absolute confidence
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: that I spoke English.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I did not.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least, I did not speak New Zealand English.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Peter picked me up at the airport that day.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was part of the Rotary Club hosting me during my exchange year,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: but that doesn't really explain who he became to me.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was never officially one of my host parents, but he treated me like a daughter.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: He looked after me, took me places, showed me New Zealand.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: He became one of those people who somehow turns into family without ever needing
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: an official title for it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I still remember that first drive,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Auckland to Palmerston North,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: about six hours in a car with someone I had just met while trying to understand
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: an accent that made me seriously question all those years of English lessons
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: in Brazil.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: We stopped at Hookah Falls along the way, and we listened to James Blunt.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of James Blunt.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think the same CD played for most of the journey.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Even today, when I hear You're Beautiful, a part of me goes straight back to that car.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's strange what the brain decides to keep.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Almost 20 years later, Peter wrote something about me on Facebook, and I cried.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It happened because the day before my mum's birthday, she finally subscribed to my Substack.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I say finally because until then,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: my mother had been receiving Portuguese translations from me
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: while remaining mostly uninterested in understanding what Substack actually was.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then, on her birthday, she shared an article I had written about her.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: She just kept becoming.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote it because lately I have started looking at my mother differently.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not only as my mum, but as a woman.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: A woman who changed direction many times.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Who worked, stopped, started again.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Who didn't have one perfectly mapped out career, but kept finding new versions of herself.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Her Facebook filled with comments.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, family, people from our hometown in Brazil.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So many of them recognised the woman I had written about.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: They told her she was brave.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then, juliasillveira
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Your determination has not changed since we first met you when you were a young lady
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: of 17 years old and we picked you up from Auckland Airport.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was the part that got me.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have spent the past few months trying to work out what comes after
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: a life I thought I understood.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And when you lose a job,
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: it's surprisingly easy to start questioning things that have nothing to do with
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: the job.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your abilities, your judgement, your confidence.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Whether your next idea is exciting or completely ridiculous.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're moving forward or simply lost.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some days I have 10 ideas before lunch.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Other days I wonder what on earth I'm doing.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there was Peter, reminding me of the girl at Auckland Airport.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: He knew me before the CV,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: before I had a professional identity to hide behind,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: before I could explain myself through companies and positions and achievements,
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: He knew the girl who got on a plane in Brazil at 17 and travelled to the other side
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: of the world.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: A girl who arrived thinking she spoke English and quickly discovered otherwise.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: A girl who didn't really know what she was doing, but went anyway.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently, Peter still sees her.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Lately, something else has surprised me.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the people who have encouraged me most during this period don't live anywhere near me.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: They are scattered everywhere.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: New Zealand, Belgium, Germany, Brazil, the United States.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Some knew me when I was 17.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some belong to my years in New York.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Some are former colleagues.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Some I met only recently.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: some people who were physically part of my everyday life
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: for years have become very quiet.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying not to make that mean more than it does.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: People move on.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jobs end.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Lives become busy.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not every relationship we build is meant to follow us into the next chapter,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: but it has made me think differently about closeness.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe proximity and closeness aren't the same thing.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Someone can sit beside you every day for years and eventually disappear from your life.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else can live on the other side of the world and remember exactly who you were at 17.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: There is a cost to making your life bigger.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know that too.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: My sister has newborn twins in Brazil,
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: and I am watching them grow through photographs and videos.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: There are birthdays I miss, ordinary afternoons with my parents that I don't get back.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Moments when I wonder what it would have been like to build a life closer to where I came from.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, I don't want to romanticise leaving, but I also can't imagine who I would be if I hadn't.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: That flight to New Zealand didn't just show me another country, it made my world bigger.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I am only now understanding what that really means.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: When you go somewhere new, you aren't only collecting places.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: You are collecting people.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not deliberately.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You don't meet someone at 17 and think, perhaps this person will remind me who I am when I'm 38.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: You just live.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: You get into the car.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: You try to understand the accent.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: You listen to James Blunt for six hours.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: You stop at Hooker Falls.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: You keep going.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere along the way, people become witnesses to different versions of you.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's one of the unexpected privileges of having lived many lives in many places.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are people scattered around the world holding memories of versions of you
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: that you sometimes forget existed.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And every now and then, one of them gives that version back to you.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Peter didn't give me confidence with his comment.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: He reminded me that there was evidence of it long before I started questioning
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: whether I still had it.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why I cried.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: when you temporarily forget who you are,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: someone from another version of your life remembers for you.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just Julia.