No, we are not a ‘fucking chill girl’

PalmaThat chic who is this girl, look at her. I don't know her, but she is next to me on the beach, on the bus, or I read her articles online. She is no one in particular and she is all of them at once. She is a type of girl. She is the girl who, without any effort, makes you want to be like her. She's a woman who seems to have asked life for permission to create her. In return, it gave her this face with just enough personality not to stop being beautiful. I don't know if it's cool or is it that she has a beauty mark right above her upper lip, where I would have always liked to have one. With that beauty mark, it seems like the world has to be a little easier. Maybe it's that she has naturally rosy lips or large, almond-shaped eyes, as if they've never known mascara.

Perhaps it was her name that predestined her to be remembered without even having introduced herself. A good compound name or a sonorous lineage, the kind your tongue tends to repeat, because it makes it exercise different muscles, emit sounds to which it is not accustomed. And that's always fun. A good name does the work for you. When you arrive, it has already prepared the ground, satisfying the curiosity of those who await you, filling the void left by your initials with a convoluted personality. An inner voice that says "ask, and it will be given to you" is activated when people refer to you by your full name. You've done nothing and you're already someone. Fake it until you make it. And you already have the first part done.

I don't know what's up with this girl. But she's wearing the same Birkenstocks as me, she's got the same bangs as me, and her Instagram tells me she does the same thing as me. Even so, if we were both Sims characters, I'd choose her a thousand times over myself. What separates us? Unlike her, I was born with those round cheeks from having been around since 1995. I pretend not to, but I do: I ask for permission and forgiveness all the time from everyone. I'd like to be mysterious, but mystery flees from me. I scare it more than if I wore my resume hanging around my neck. Because I need to explain everything about myself, so you'll understand that everything I do has a justification and you'll forgive me when I don't meet your expectations. In the meantime, I'll let out a pretty cynical joke about myself to show you that I'm not pretentious, nor am I naive, and - above all - that I'm funny enough to defuse all this tension.

We are not what you would call a "chill of balls”, as are the aunts I would like to be if life were the Sims game. My friend Jabi tells me I need to relax. The other day he asked me if I didn't see that no one else does everything I do or, rather, nobody else said yes to everything: lunch and pool with friends at 2 p.m., demonstration at 7 p.m., and film festival at 9 p.m. I understand you wanted to show me I was trying to have too many personalities at once. So here we are, admitting that I jit is too late not to be everything I wanted to be.

In high school I learned to dissimulate quite well: I balanced being the most studious and the most fun-loving, all to avoid falling into the repellent black hole. I pretended to get good grades effortlessly, to go out partying effortlessly, as if friends and exams weren't the most important thing to me. It was just as my prefrontal cortex was finishing forming that this game of lights and shadows, this trompe-l’œil –this artifice–, a mechanism so that each one saw in me what you are looking for.

The art of expectation

At times I can seem like a puddle of oil – because I like to sleep, because slowness makes me late everywhere – but my brain has the metabolism of a squirrel, especially in conversation. I anticipate the moment when we run out of topics to have two or three in reserve and save you an uncomfortable silence. I listen to you attentively to ask you the questions you would never have asked yourself. And, if I'm premenstrual, I'll agree with you too much (but because I genuinely believe your opinion is worth more than mine).

As a passive smoker, I sometimes think I'd like to be a dialectical smoker – only in conversations – to space out my thoughts a bit, or at least the ones that come out of my mouth. I'd like to learn the art of expectation: to remain silent because I'm searching for words at the same time as filters, to pause at the climax of the story to lick the paper, to avert my gaze towards the lighter, to take a puff and gain time in my response. As if smoking would stop this discursive vomit, like a little girl who raises her hand in class and knows she only has 30 seconds to answer; as if, narcotized, I could stop seeing the other's gaze as a countdown that in 3, 2, 1… warns me that I've lost it. Like a death drive towards this not-so- chill girl that I am.