if you’ve found this secret page, welcome to my real life. here, i’ll keep an even more secret diary, where i’m bare and unfiltered, without masks. after all, if it’s secret, i can truly be myself. i want to record the main things that have happened in my life, but mostly my thoughts, because perhaps this’ll become a record of the person i once was on this earth. i don’t want to leave one day feeling that i wasn’t transparent enough to be understood. i ask that you don’t judge me, for i’ll make sure to explain clearly the reason behind one particular topic here.
well… i hope few people ever find this page.
About Me
my name is Melissa. i was born in Brazil on 7/7/2004 in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. i lived there until i was five years old, and then my family moved to a large city in the interior of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto.
✦
✦
links to my pages on the web:
School
I used to enjoy going to school up until middle school, specifically up to 8th grade. Ninth grade was the worst. It was in 2019. I had transferred to a religious school because the education there was better, even though I wasn’t religious. I had actually studied there before, back in 4th and 5th grades. I thought that by meeting some people who had been in my class before, I wouldn’t be completely alone. Well, I was wrong. At the beginning of the school year, as the new student, I became the center of attention among the boys and girls. They talked to me and included me, but I was always too shy to socialize much. As the year went by, I still hadn’t made any friends. All those initial conversations faded away. Everyone in that class already had their own groups of friends and pairs. I felt extremely lonely. Everyone around me laughed, talked, and had fun, while I... was there, alone in the middle of them. I hated it when the teacher asked us to form pairs, trios, or groups for presentations or class tasks, because I was always the last one to be chosen. I was just a spectator, watching everyone come together while I was left out, a burden no one wanted. I remember once the teacher asked me to sit with two girls who were best friends, and I felt uncomfortable. Even though they treated me politely, I knew they didn’t really want me there. I would skip school on days when we had to present in front of the class because I was afraid of being laughed at. That only made things worse, as they started including me even less in their groups. PE was no different. I was always the leftover when teams were formed, and on top of that, I was terrible at sports, so... yeah. Earlier that year, I found out that some boys in my class had talked about me, saying unpleasant things about my looks and my smile. It affected me so deeply that, at the time, I blamed myself and told myself they were right. I don’t blame myself anymore, but I’ve never fully healed from those traumas. One time, a group of girls from another class mocked me right in front of me. They were using Instagram filters that made me look ridiculous. At first, I didn’t realize what was happening, but as soon as I did, I turned my back to them and felt like crying. My grades kept dropping, and eventually, I failed the school year. I left that school, a place I should never have returned to in the first place. It was humiliating and shameful. I had never experienced anything like that at any other school. I had always had friends in middle school, and they treated me well. I still carry many good memories from that time… High school wasn’t as difficult as I had expected, but I was going through severe depression and ended up withdrawing. I finished the last two years of high school at home, doing my schoolwork and sending it to the school. That was the end of a cycle for me. I didn’t graduate with my class, because I felt that it was the end of everything. I was already tired of school.
Family
I won’t go into too much detail because it’s unnecessary. Some relatives are very toxic, and I remember several events from my childhood, especially disagreements with my godmother. The family member I’ve always felt closest to is my grandfather. He did everything for me and defended me whenever the rest of the family tried to hurt me verbally. In 2015, we were walking down the sidewalk when he said, “You’re my favorite granddaughter.” I asked why, and he simply replied, “Because you are.” That moment is still so vivid in my mind that it feels like it happened yesterday. He never said anything like that again, and when I asked him once more, he claimed he loved all his grandchildren equally. But I know that isn’t true. He had shown it through his actions since I was a baby, and even before hearing those words, I already felt it. He was always kind to me and never hurt me the way the rest of the family did. I will be forever grateful for that. My relationship with my grandmother was always normal too, not like with my grandfather, but we never had conflicts. I have a good relationship with my mother and my sister, and with my father as well, though he is more reserved with the three of us than with the rest of the family, which frustrates me, especially when he defends his sisters, who have hurt me, as if nothing happened. I wish he were more like my grandfather. My grandparents had four children: my father, my uncle, my godmother, and my aunt. My uncle lives in Rio Grande do Sul with his wife and their two children. My godmother is a single mother to a girl, and they both live with my grandparents. My aunt met her husband in 2016, and they now live together. She is the one I had a falling-out with this year, and we haven’t spoken since. My godmother and I have started talking again, but I will be cautious after everything she did to me in childhood. My aunt was always the coolest of the siblings, and I trusted her deeply, sharing almost everything with her. But after she met her husband, she changed considerably, becoming more extreme and focused on religion and politics, which was the worst part because she had never been so prejudiced. I gradually distanced myself, especially as her behavior began affecting my mental health. I feel sad for never having had an emotionally stable family. On my mother’s side, things are different. She has a sister and a brother who live in another city. I was never close to my maternal uncle, the last time I saw him was in childhood, but I have always felt much more comfortable talking to my aunt than to almost any other relative.
