Intermission - Fernanda Santos (part 1).

Her body felt heavy and her head was a mess. She had too many things in her head and none of them made any sense to her. Her head hurt, and yet that was her best workday so far. What did that say about Fernanda Santos?

A failure.

She returned home after closing shop. Not her apartment alone close to her university, but rather her parents’ home. She had come back with her tail between her legs and they welcomed her with open arms and big smiles.

Pathetic.

“Ah, Fern! Welcome back! Dinner’s almost ready,” said her dad from the kitchen, speaking in that loud, cheerful voice of his. “Come, tell us how work went today.”

“...” Fernanda felt a knot in her throat. She **** a smile as she looked at him. “I’m not hungry right now. I’ll eat later, I promise.”

He would worry even more if she didn’t eat at all, and Fernanda was at least smart enough to know not eating was bad for her. Her dad was the cook in the house, making sure to prepare meals that satisfied all of their nutritional needs. He put an ungodly amount of effort into them and her mom ate them somewhat begrudgingly because she would rather have pastas and hamburgers, but Fernanda actually really liked her dad’s meals. She wasn’t lying when she said she wasn’t hungry. Her stomach just… felt like it wasn’t even there.

Ungrateful child.

She went up the stairs and locked herself in her bedroom. She lay down on her bed, eyes closed and shut hard to stop the itching. Her lips curved down against her own will, inner turmoil forcing a facial expression on her even as she consciously tried to stop it.

Fernanda Santos was an utter failure of a human being.

She lacked nothing. She had a loving family that worked hard for her; they weren’t filthy rich but were very well off; when she said she wanted to get a degree in something related to arts, her parents supported her; when she said she wanted to live alone, her parents worried but found an apartment for her. Fernanda had everything she needed… Which made it all feel a lot worse.

She had no excuses and wouldn’t make any. She was just a plain and utter failure.

She wanted to live on her own to prove to herself and her family that she was capable of doing it, that she could take care of herself. It was way harder than she thought. Managing groceries, cooking, cleaning and laundry along with her studies and her personal projects… Her apartment was a mess; she ate quick, high-calorie meals instead of her dad’s perfect dishes; she messed up her laundry too many times and sometimes had **** but to go out with either an old shirt or a clean but wrinkled one. She lost more than one set of underwear in the wash just because she didn’t read the instructions.

Classes were also harder than she expected. She had decided to major in fine arts because she believed it would help her with her own projects, but her teachers didn’t take classes into any practical direction, instead focusing on historical aspects and theory. It was hard to keep up with for someone who had spent most of high school doodling in notebooks instead of paying attention.

Six months of that and Fernanda was on the verge of losing it. At first she tried to keep herself to a routine, but she didn’t have the energy for it. She then tried to focus on what made her happy: drawing. That had the effect of lowering her grades even more. Nothing was working.

To top it all off, Fernanda felt utterly alone. She was away from her family and had failed to make any meaningful connections with her classmates. She’d always been an introvert and more than a little awkward at school. She kept herself to her two close friends that were very much like her, but after graduation one moved to France and the other left to study in another city.

Anxiety, stress, awful academic results, no progress in her own projects, loneliness, failure to even function as a proper adult and putting the weight of it all on her own shoulders, Fernanda Santos fell into a deep depression.

She broke down when talking to her parents about it. She cried and she apologized, feeling more worthless with every word. Her family comforted her and asked her to come back home. She did.

She went to the psychologist one time at her parents’ behest. His words still echoed in Fernanda’s head, loud and painful.

“You’re too pretty to have depression.”

It was further proof that Fernanda had it all, yet continued to fail at life. She had a good body and a pretty face. Girls like that didn’t have to work for anything. That was what the psychologist implied. She had never seen her dad angrier than when she told him how that appointment went. That felt good, at least. Despite being a failure, her family loved her.

She didn’t deserve it.

Her dad dropped everything, had Fernanda freeze her semester and they made a two-month trip back to Brazil to see the rest of their family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins… It was good. It made her feel better, if only a bit.

It… It recharged her. The warmth and comfort of family did her well. It was a temporary escape, but not having to think about classes was freeing. But that couldn’t last forever.

Fernanda felt pathetic, a failure and undeserving of everything she had. She didn’t want anything, she didn’t wish for her problems to magically disappear. She just wanted to be able to stand on her own two feet, and she was failing.

Unlike him.

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