Cristina Gomes

I’m 20 years old, and I’m a Portuguese student about to move to Cambridge, UK, to study drama. I hold a vast world inside of my mind. There were times when I was alone in my home and I’d start imagining myself somewhere else, imagining as if there was a perfect place just for me. And that’s when I’d feel agony because I didn’t feel right where I was. I would cry over that, that strange feeling of dis-belonging, a need to run away from everything I knew and enter into something or some place that would perfectly fulfill me. It was a utopia, of course. My daily anxious feelings don’t help either—every thought of self-doubt consumes me every single time.

Then, the performing arts came as a sort of liberation in my life. With every drama group I’d join, every time I would step on stage, the voice that was locked inside me screaming to get out was finally and wildly released on a theater stage. It was as if I was telling the world: “I’m here. I belong here.”

Though I’m reserved socially and speak only when I truly think I have something important to say, when I’m about to perform in front of a big audience, nothing holds me back. I’m not afraid of their reactions; in fact, I want reactions. I’m not afraid of being eccentric or even obscene. I’m being seen and heard, and I love it.

As I’m growing up, there are decisions about life to be made and day-to-day activities to be done, and there is little time to torture myself with these thoughts of self-doubt that creep into my mind. But I’m not going to lie, they are still there, every single day—only it’s up to me to not be my own enemy and listen to them.

Instead, I’ve decided to make my life’s journey joyful. I will not listen to the self-doubt if I can help it. And now, I’m taking the next step towards joy by moving to the UK to graduate as an artist, to work as one, and travel a lot.

Am I afraid of going forward? Hell, yes. But the fear doesn’t overshadow my strong desire to see what I can make of my path, of where I can go, and of what I can conquer. I’m pursuing my dream, I’m going to learn and to discover. And sometimes, I will still be alone with myself and with that screaming feeling of dissatisfaction. But other times, I will get out of my head and just go, probably always in pursuit of that place that doesn’t exist, that feeling of complete fulfillment that probably will never come. And that’s okay because I don’t know anyway what I would do if I found it.

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