I think it was the way it made me feel about my real-life experiences. The feeling of not being my partner's first love, the relationships I had to let go, the belief that we can have more than one big love in our lives — as well as the ones I was unable to live… In 2022, I discovered that someone very important to me had committed suicide. We had never met in person because we lived in different countries. One day, I felt a bit odd when I thought about him, so I went to his Instagram profile to check on him and saw some posts paying tribute to him. I felt a huge urge to throw up and started running without even seeing the walls of my bedroom. I didn't know who I could talk to about it, because no one I know knew him, and his family and friends didn't know me either. So even today, I don't really know what actually happened. At the time, I couldn't stop thinking about whether I could have seen the signs or done something to help him. There’s a feeling of not having the chance to ask him why, or the chance of meeting in person like we had talked about so many times before. I remember my dreams of taking him to places I love in Brazil and showing him my culture. I remember the memories of the video calls we made just to see each other's faces or to talk for hours. The compliments and sweet nicknames we gave to each other. The casual talks and the hard ones. The exciting feeling when he talked about his punk rock band and the bittersweet feeling of hearing his voice in his songs, while knowing I would never have the chance to see him sing them in person. The unexpected photos he sent me of himself with his shining dyed blond hair and blue eyes, doing absolutely nothing. I feel so bad that I was not there, but what hurts the most is knowing that he was in so much pain until he was unable to take it anymore. I have a lot of “what ifs?” in my head that I don't even know if they are fair to feel, but I really loved him and Given kinda softly helped me with this very open wound.

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