Image description: The image is a colorful drawing depicting elements related to health and disease prevention. From left to right, we see a person sitting and holding a tablet, with a medical mask floating beside them. In the center, there is a thermometer and a plus sign, along with a smiling heart with raindrops falling on it. A blue cloud sits above the heart, and a sad face emoji is behind it. On the right, there is a bottle of hand sanitizer gel with a cross symbol and a water droplet. Above the bottle, there is a virus icon. The person on the right is wearing a horizontally striped shirt and appears to be looking at the viruses.Listen to an excerpt from the letter narrated by its author, Isabela.
Rio de Janeiro, May 14, 2021.
Depression
Sorry for such a dry introduction. I wasn't quite sure how to address you. It would be strange to refer to you as "dear," "dude," or "esteemed," since you know that's not what you are at all. You are simply present.
I also imagine that you don't receive letters often, and I know this might seem a bit strange to you. So, let me get straight to the point of my words: after so many years together, I'd like this relationship to stop being a one-way street. The problem is that I never tell you anything, while you dominate my thoughts and consume me a little more with every moment, every day. I think I've finally found the strength to tell my side of the story.
I know you are quite old, and that I'm not the only person you've accompanied throughout the history of humanity. You are in the words of Clarice Lispector, my favorite writer, of Charles Dickens and of Sylvia Plath. You were also with Santos Dumont, the inventor of the airplane. You even knew Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most emblematic figures of the Western world. I also know that all these people came from a singular life context, and that it isn't always possible to know exactly why you decided to appear in their reality, nor in mine.
That's why I think it's important to express my feelings, because every individual lives with you in a different way. In my case, you make me feel like a being that is not. Something of such a fragile existence that appears and, soon after, disappears. I feel, mostly, like a writer who doesn't write: words keep me from losing myself within my own thoughts, but I can't find the drive to write them down. So I'm left with an excess of feelings, some relevant and others not, in an eternal to be or not to be. I have to keep constantly balancing myself on this tightrope, between giving up and holding on.
I don't want to feel this way anymore. I want to find ways to exist completely. Sometimes I catch myself imagining what it must be like to breathe far from all this haze. What it must be like to smile genuinely with my eyes. And how I wish I had energy and love to share with those around me. So, don't linger inside me, not the way you are. That's my only request.
I'm sorry, but I don't see any content to translate — your message only contains "Sinceramente," (which means "Sincerely," in English). Could you please share the actual text you'd like translated? Once you provide it, I'll deliver the English translation while preserving all formatting markers as specified.
Isabela
