Nice to meet you, Nicole!

HI, PLEASURE. My name is Nicole and I will be your guide on this incredible journey of memories through the years that were the happiest and also the most torturous of my entire life.

I was a teenager at the time most of this narrative was written, and people tend to make a lot of mistakes at that stage. Yeah, I know. I also had my slips.

I hope that you, who are reading these lines, can identify a little with my story, or that at least you are sensitive to what I have to tell. I am not a great writer, nor do I pretend to be one, but I will try to maintain a minimum of coherence in my text to make myself understood.

OK.

Here we go, from the beginning...

My parents met while they were still in high school, in the late 90s.

He, Lúcio, was the sporty type, one of those who skipped class to play ball on the school court. She, Silvana, was the popular party girl who rocked the parties and enjoyed all the attention turned to her.

My aunt Silvia, my mother's older sister, said that the two had taken an interest in each other right away, at a year-end party for students at the private school where they studied. Dad already said that he thought Silvana was too showy at first and that he didn't like her very much. Mom used to say that she only really fell in love with him after the first kiss they shared at that party, after drinking too much.

I never knew what the true version of that story was.

Lúcio and Silvana officially became lovers in the middle of their third year of high school, and soon, they started going to each other's houses. Dad came from a well-to-do family whose ancestors had inherited an electrical engineering company, and becoming an electrical engineer seemed to be Lucio's destiny, until he met some friends who convinced him to embark on the path of tourism.

When my dad came home that day and revealed which course he had chosen to go to college, grandpa didn't like the news at all and didn't speak to my dad for almost two months. Grandma was more receptive to her son's choice and gave him all the support he needed, saying she would change her husband's mind. “May your other brothers follow the family business,” the woman had said affectionately.

Dad had two younger brothers — Luciano and Luiz — and, as grandma Vanda had prophesied, they did become electrical engineers years later. Old Licurgo Rodrigues had felt betrayed by his eldest son, but to his heart, at least the two youngest sons would honor the family heritage.

While Dad embarked on the world of tourism, Mom had never stopped dreaming of studying medicine. Already in the middle of the third year of the Medium, he began to study voraciously for the entrance exam in December. He knew that he would face strong competition from the main public universities in the country and began to prepare himself diligently for the battle that lay ahead.

She wanted to be the first of her humble family to go to college, she aspired to help people with her medical degree, she had a thousand dreams...

It was then that she became pregnant with Dad.

I grew up with the weight on my shoulders of knowing that I had not been planned by my parents, who at the time were students dreaming of their university future, a career and a life without children.

Mom was only seventeen, my dad barely turned eighteen. The news of the pregnancy fell like a bombshell on both families. My maternal grandfather threatened to kick my mother out of the house when he found out that she was pregnant and together with my father, the poor thing had to postpone her plans to graduate from a medical school, starting to look for a house to live in and raise the daughter they once had. nor did they.

Yes, it was hard to carry the guilt of having screwed up my parents' plans and I knew I would need to go to therapy one day to get over it.

Grandpa Licurgo ended up helping my father with the house and the old man bought a property very well located in the Itaim Bibi neighborhood in São Paulo, giving it to his son as a gift.

About to graduate from high school, dad now had the obligation to get a job and support that house in the upscale neighborhood, and it was mom who didn't let him give up going to college because of the new responsibility.

He started working as a salesman at a mall store to be able to afford the furniture that the two needed to buy for the house — after vehemently turning down the job at the family engineering company offered by grandfather — and so, my parents started their new life. In the beginning, as expected, the couple went through a lot of difficulties together, but they ended up uniting even more, overcoming all obstacles.

I was born in August and my father had to leave work in a hurry when he heard from Aunt Silvia that my mother had gone into labor at a private hospital. At the time, the aunt also had a baby in her arms, my cousin Igor, who is only a few months older than me, and the child's father had given her all the support she needed, although both had not been together.

My aunt was a single mother and my cousin Igor only saw his father from time to time, which meant that the two of us practically grew up together, always with sisters Silvia and Silvana visiting each other's houses.

After I was born, Dad went to extra lengths to try to juggle life as a salesman, college student, and head of household, and from what Mom told me, he always looked exhausted.

The two grandmothers were very helpful with what my mother needed to take care of a newborn baby and she can never complain about that. When the first year passed, Dad put his pride aside and took a job at the family engineering company, earning a higher salary and other benefits like more flexible hours and weekends off. Mom then went back to dreaming about medical school, and even with me still in her arms, she signed up for the entrance exam the following year, full of hope that she would succeed.

(...)

Failed.

That year competition had been even fiercer for places at the main public universities in the country and my mother hadn't had time to dedicate herself to her studies to take care of me.

Although frustrated, Silvana decided to enroll in a scholarship program at a private college and changed her major to nursing. She was ranked in the top ten and the following semester, she went back to school, taking care of me during the day and leaving me with Aunt Silvia at night.

As she had taken care of me for a long period of my life, I ended up establishing a very healthy relationship of friendship with my aunt and much of this information about the Rodrigues couple I got more from her than from my own mother. Silvia told me that those first years were very troubled between the two and that due to the lack of time they had for each other, the threats of separation were always on the agenda in their marriage.

While working with my grandfather, Dad worked hard to dedicate himself to studying tourism, seeing me briefly at night when Mom picked me up from my aunt's house from Monday to Friday, and on the weekends when the three of us spent together at our house.

Mom started doing residency in the second year of the nursing course, and in that period, I practically moved to Aunt Silvia's house, with my cousin as my main playmate in the wide, tree-lined backyard of her house. I remember that I missed my parents a lot on a daily basis and our contact at night was so brief that that feeling extended to Saturdays and Sundays.

Most of my childhood memories were of Silvia's house, and my reference to male presence was more that of Uncle Dário — Igor's father — than of my own father, even though he went to visit his son only once a week in aunt's house in Itaim. It was bizarre to remember that!

When I turned nine, my parents' marriage went into a very serious crisis and they finally decided to separate. She had already graduated and practiced her profession in a private hospital in São Paulo with increasingly demanding schedules. Sometimes I worked twenty-four hours a day and was entitled to only one day off a week. Their days off didn't always match the days when my father was home and they barely saw each other anymore.

He, in turn, was doing a post-graduate course in administration and had started working at a travel agency three hours from the center of São Paulo. There were Saturdays when he didn't even come home following some trips with the agency's teams and I only had Sunday to see him at home. Even so, it was rare for him to be able to detach himself from the phone where he seemed to continue working even when he was off duty.

It wasn't either of their faults, but the breakup just happened kind of naturally. My parents had chosen professions that kept them away from each other almost all the time, and without sex, affection or even the company of a couple, the best option was divorce.

As much as I had been waiting for that, I cried for almost a week without stopping and once again it was Aunt Silvia who welcomed me.