Starting Fresh… Is That Really Possible?

Life as a blank piece of paper. Every stupid mistake you’ve ever made erased. All the possibilities in your hand like a brand new, beautiful pen. You can just start writing a new story and this time it will all be just right.

Recognise the fantasy? I bet you do, because we all indulge in it, from time to time.  I, myself, probably began by the age of twelve – for my friends never get tired of telling me how very old I was from the early days and, well, they do have a point!

Well, right now, in my life, I had the opportunity of turning fantasy into reality. I decided to go to another country. I got rid of everything that was old, or broken, or not quite to my taste. I carefully selected my favorite clothes, books, small objects. I even did a complete check-up with my doctor just to make sure I would be turning the page in a perfectly healthy, fresh, perfect way. And then, suddenly, I found myself inside an airplane. Ten hours later, here I was: in my very own “starting fresh dream come true”.

But was I? Really? It never felt completely like that… I mean, the whole new country, new city, new apartment, new everything feeling came over me, of course, and it’s quite overwhelming – in a nice way, I mean, at least for me, a person who does love changes. Getting passed that, what did I really find on my supposed-to-be blank page?Myself. A lot of new things, for sure, but they were just sitting on top, and being shaped by, the same old base that I know so very well and answers by the name of Flávia Ruiz.

Was I suddenly braver or more of an extrovert just because nobody around knows me anyway and who cares?… No! I was all the same in that department. Was I free of my fear of heights? Or birds? Horses? Bees? Basically everything that is found in open air spaces (yes, the list goes on and on….)? Absolutely not. What about cooler or more confident when it comes to my ambitions and my work choices? Oh, yes, you keep dreaming!

The thing is, I quickly found myself dealing with the same things in my own same way. Does that mean I will, from now on, advise people against big changes? Not at all!Much on the contrary. I urge everyone to do it, in any way they want or can. For external change is the thing to always look you in the eye and scream to your face: “you cannot run away”. From life, from weaknesses, from yourself. You cannot. In fact, the opposite happens.

Some strange force of nature pushes you to be more and more of yourself. Sometimes, in an intensely painful way. And the very moment you realize that, is the moment you begin walking the path that leads to what you tried to do in the first place, in a more instantaneous, but not at all real, way: to write a new, not story, but chapter. For the story has started a long time ago. It can never be erased.