About Me — Mariana Portela
A look into my life as an overly emotional person.
Let’s get straight to the point: self-presentations are almost always awkward. The pressure, the looks, and the mind going blank. I could go on and pretend this is all a huge inconvenience, but that wouldn’t be me.
A woman shall have the right to be expressive; a woman shall be happy. I always have the desire to talk.
I was born on August 20, 2002 in a small Portuguese village called Baiões. I was the first child, and my arrival was big news. My parents had been trying for a child for almost five years, so let’s say I was born with the ego of a Hollywood star.
Family and friends described me as extremely extroverted and confident, always posing for the camera with fabulous style. I now find piles and piles of my pictures in the living room, a memory of my happiest years.
For the first six years of my life, I was a “menina do papá” - Daddy’s girl. We would spend many afternoons watching Tom & Jerry on VHS, my favorite show to this day. My mom says we would laugh a lot.
There was this room in our house with a mattress on the floor where I would spend hours jumping. The walls, which used to be white, were covered with “rabiscos”. Hundreds of drawings in pen, crayon, and paint. That was my own playroom. It was so much fun.
One day, my mom called me to the bathroom with big news - “You’re going to have a baby brother”. I don’t remember how I felt, but according to the stories, I simply said “alright” and walked away with an unpleasant expression.
The day we went to visit the hospital was bittersweet. I looked around, everyone was welcoming the new baby, and I couldn’t help but feel very jealous. I felt like nobody liked me anymore, like I was being abandoned by the ones I trusted the most. Before leaving, I sat next to my mom, and we hugged deeply.
This was a pattern I would notice for the rest of my life: the jealousy, the suffering and the crying. The fear of abandonment. The fear of being alone.
My school years weren’t the best. I was bullied all the time, and I don’t even know the reasons. One time my picture was chosen to be on display in a photography store, and a bully of mine happened to see it. The next day at school, he said something like “You’re so ugly, I don’t know why they chose your picture”. I felt small and humiliated, as always.
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My favorite subjects stayed consistent through the years: English and Art. I loved reading, and I loved books. I loved always having a book with me to carry in my purse. At 16, my favorite writer was Oscar Wilde, the wittiest man I had ever known. I loved his sarcasm.
I would spend all of my free time in the school’s library, either reading or doing some form of art. One of the workers there had noticed my drawings a long time ago, and so, on a regular afternoon, he approached me with an idea. “Would you be down to make an art exhibit here at the library?”.
I ended up saying yes, but only because he let me invite other people to join. I felt shy about my artistic expression.
By the time I entered university, I already knew I wanted to be a writer. I just knew it deep inside. The degree in Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Aveiro University started a new chapter in my life. If on one hand I felt free from my parent’s rules, on the other, I was about to experience the worst years of my life.
It was summer, and a month had passed since I slept for an entire night. The fear of my family dying consumed me. I believed that sleeping implied waking up to my family already gone. It was scary, it was painful, but most of all, it was insane. Their life was in my hands. I felt shame for not knowing what was happening to me.
After a few weeks, I started noticing another pattern. I washed my hands every five minutes and more than once, in a detailed order. The fear of catching a deadly disease kept growing, and the thoughts wouldn’t stop. Living was exhausting.
I decided to visit a psychiatrist. I told him everything about the hand washing, the diseases, the fear of poisoning food while cooking, the reading and rereading, the racing thoughts, the feeling of guilt, and a lot of other things I can’t remember anymore. I left with medication and a diagnosis – Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
There came a brief period of relief. Brief because I would soon notice that some of my symptoms were getting worse. I always felt too much, and that meant hurting myself in many ways in order to cope. However, I was living in extreme instability.
We were all having lunch when my family started to argue about something stupid, and I thought “Dying is so much easier than dealing with this”. So I ran to my room and tried to jump out of the window. That was the final straw for my mom.
My first appointment with my psychotherapist was a good one, he was nice and very soft-spoken. I could say the most barbaric things, and he would reply with a laugh. We never used technical terms since he doesn’t believe that helps with the treatment, but the sessions consisted of creating healthy boundaries for my very difficult personality.
I took a break from university that year, and it helped me to grow a lot. I made new friends and visited new places, but perhaps the nicest thing I did was learn bass and create a rock band. We would practice in my garage, and it was lots of fun. Before we disbanded, we played at two small festivals that I still attend to this day, in the crowd.
It’s been a while now, and I’m hoping to finish this degree soon so I can move cities and start a life. I did receive a final diagnosis (kind of), and it was “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder inserted in a Cluster B type of personality (Emotionally Unstable)”.
After so many months of therapy and good memories, I can say I’m back to trying my best every day. It’s the little moments that make me happy – the smile of a child, the taste of my mom’s soup, or the wet leaves outside. They make me feel alive, again.
