Travel · October 2, 2021

THERE WAS NO SPACESHIP GOING TO JUPITER, SO I TOOK AN AIRPLANE TO MELBOURNE.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL SCHELLER – SOUTHBANK, MELBOURNE.


At some point, I started to feel inside me that I wasn’t living my life as I wanted to and I thought: I want to live.

There would be days of decision, of change, of taking down the mast and making the turn. I have never sailed, I have difficulty with left and right. I didn’t have anything decided and for a while, I was adrift. Waiting for a sign, I was looking at the sky and it was good. I like to see the horizon. At times, not knowing the way is not a problem. 

I don’t really like to plan and this can be surprising because, strangely, I’m very punctual, I’ve always been, until I found myself in this period without a feeling for, without paying attention to time. 

Counting time always ends up being a dilemma for me. In one of the deepest moments of indecision and restlessness, I found myself lost. I forgot appointments, made them wait for me and, I didn’t want this, I forgot and remembered it later, in the middle of the night, during insomnia.

I wasn’t well, I made desperate choices and I became worse, one mistake after another. Out of balance, I wanted to give up and that made even less sense, I cried. By myself. I couldn’t like myself and I wasn’t letting anyone get close.

I didn’t wish to do anything at all. 

I don’t know what it would be like for you, but for me it was impossible to keep living like that, I felt like I ran away from myself. I felt like I was trying to fix a stuck window that wasn’t even mine. 

And finally, I came back to myself and even surpassed myself. 

A little over two years ago, I regained my power. At that point, I was already aware that there were times when you hit a roadblock. A block that looks like it cannot be overcome. But, after a while, I was able to find a way. And then, what I had been going through became smaller than I had imagined it to be. I was already another version of myself. 

I didn’t leave everything behind. I kept with the essentials.

I resigned from my job—I loved my job but it didn’t make sense anymore. I returned the apartment I was renting and which I had considered a victory to manage keeping for three years. I sold everything, things that had taken so long to buy. I caused changes in my family’s life: when we change, we don’t change alone. And I totally changed my life.

In the last month that I lived in São Paulo, I did so many things, I met new people and I enjoyed myself with the ones I hadn’t seen for a long time. I visited places I didn’t know of and others I wanted to say goodbye to, I made peace with SP, the eternal relationship of love and hate that I have for my city (generally, it’s more love). 

With only a one-way ticket, two suitcases and a lot of internal things unsolved, I moved, geographically, to the other side of the world. Without anyone knowing me around, I wanted to reinvent myself. 

Immense was my desire for change, Aquarian, resilient, even a little lunatic, I tried extraterrestrial contact, a spaceship to Jupiter (metaphorically speaking). After 27 hours of flight and two stopovers, at 10:32 am, on Tuesday, June 11, 2019, I arrived in Melbourne

PHOTO BY MICHAEL SCHELLER – DOCKLANDS, MELBOURNE.

I had arrived in that new city, there was no one waiting for me, I barely knew how to speak the language and I had no expectations of anything.

The city of Melbourne is the capital of the state of Victoria, Australia. Considered one of the best cities to live in the world, I can’t deny it, I was able to enjoy the best the city has to offer. Quality public transport, low crime rates, availability of work, an active cultural life with several museums, galleries, events, in addition to musicians who enchant the city, singing on all sides of the streets. Great cafes, bars, pubs and restaurants all over the city, for me as a vegan, options almost everywhere and easy to be found. In Melbourne’s nightlife, even though it finishes early, for those coming from São Paulo, I always saw myself returning home after having fun in at least three or four places in the same night.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL SCHELLER – SAINT KILDA, MELBOURNE.

I was living in Melbourne for a year and a half. For the last year or so, I lived between ups and downs, trying to keep my sanity, amid the severe restrictions that a pandemic caused by Covid-19 demanded (and still demands today). I did different kinds of jobs. I found myself in various  situations. I moved houses six times, I lived with people I had no connection with and I lived with strangers, who over time became my family. 

In these circumstances, I met many people and with them long, short, true, false, shallow and deep relationships.

Living abroad wasn’t supposed to be easier and it wasn’t, I found and rediscovered myself, I learned to communicate in other ways. I went beyond anything I imagined, I saw myself at my best and worst and I could choose who and how I wanted to be. Most importantly, I went back to listening to myself. The human mind and body are complex, and to hear what your mind and feel what your body are saying, you have to be attentive.

These days, now living in Sydney, I look at myself in São Paulo, with my bags packed, boarding for Melbourne and I realize that what echoed in me at that moment is echoing to this day: Don’t let fear take over your life. 

PHOTO BY MICHAEL SCHELLER – BRIGHTON BATHING BOXES, MELBOURNE.