When I was a child, I hated the beach. The heat bothered me, and so did what the sun did to my skin. If we traveled to the coast, I preferred to stay in the air-conditioned room, which displeased my parents. The pond at my grandfather’s farm, where I could ignore the sun, was much better.
During the first Carnival I spent living in Rio de Janeiro, I started to like the beach and Carnival. I wanted the burn of the sun as if I had never been that child who looked for shade. The cold swim in the sea, the cold mate, the cold wind — I loved them all.
In 2025, I moved back to Campina Grande. I had grown tired of Rio after five years. I met unforgettable people and places, but after a while I felt there was nothing left to learn. I wanted to feel what it was like to live where I grew up, but now equipped with a new self.
Campina gave me back what I had given it during that time: not much. Even feeling a strong sense of belonging, I wasn’t excited by what the city had to offer. What I had to offer, the city wasn’t ready to accept.
That year and a half close to the people I love most was wonderful in that respect. In another, it was when I felt a part of me drying up. The part that had grown with movement, with the breeze, with the chaos. Forró, in the land of the World’s Biggest São João, I struggled to find.
When people ask me why I’m moving to João Pessoa, the first answer is that I had planned it from before. That isn’t untrue. Before going to Rio, the plan I had was to spend some time there and return to João Pessoa. But that can’t be the full explanation, not for me.
The Paraíban capital of beautiful beaches doesn’t lack reasons for someone to want to live there. Those reasons have reached the world, and the flow of people moving into the city has even become a problem — one I’m going there to make worse. I’m drawn to the idea of a place like that, sought after.
There’s something about new beginnings that has always enchanted me. As much as moves take a lot of work, I’m on my sixth one and all of them were done with enthusiasm. My grandmother says: “a stone that rolls too much doesn’t grow moss” — I never know if moss is good or bad in that case, but I prefer to believe it’s bad.
At the risk of being naive, I believe the best discoveries of my life are still ahead. Living in a tourist city, with people who arrive to stay and those who leave never to return, has its pleasures. I’m looking for people who are looking for people.
Seeking another transformation, I want to keep being shaped on Paraíban soil, with warm seawater and a little chaos. Whether this phase will satisfy me for a long time… I’m sure it won’t.
While trying to arrive at an explanation that satisfies me, I have empty boxes in the room I’m in and I need to close them. When someone asks why I’m moving, I’m convinced of what to answer. It’s for the beach.
