Tati Bernardi: Why do you expose yourself? – 03/26/2023 – The Worst of the Week

Tati Bernardi responds to the strangest comments and most unusual questions from her readers.

Marco Antônio wants to know why I expose myself in my chronicles and books. And yet: how much “my character” has of “real person” and how much of invention.

For at least two decades, other readers, especially those interested in becoming writers, have been asking me the same questions. I fear the day when I have the most correct, exact and honest answers about my writing; certainly on this day I will no longer be able to write a single line.

Can I try to answer with guesses? I was a child who felt very alone. I was surrounded by affection and care from my parents and grandparents, but it was more focused on my physical health. To this day, I’m compulsive for blood tests, ultrasounds, MRIs, probably the result of this somewhat useless investigation learned in childhood.

However, if I really wanted to talk about sadness, anguish, lack of control and fear, listening to this was somewhat limited. My mother was the one who tried the most, but soon she was already giving me the itch to go to life, because being lazy would make me a “little nobody”.

I believe that, in her disaffection, mother did a million times more for me than a philosopher or psychoanalyst mother could have done. Looking back, if there’s one thing I did (and curiously I was only able to do it because I wrote about sadness, anxieties, out of control and fears) it was to move forward.

Since I was young, I had a thirst to connect with others who might think and feel like me. I had something “not ok” inside me, and I was irritated by the very sporty, sunny children or the very focused students.

Even boasting a remarkably happy and nurturing psychic make-up, I reached sides in myself that were too dark and frightening for my age. I spent about 15 years of my life with anorexia nervosa, panic attacks and what, thank God, no one medicated at the time, but which had the appearance of being (today I know) a mild mixture of bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder.

I went to and from school every day, thinking: what will become of me in the future? Well, all my best friends from school became engineers, doctors and built their very traditional families, well copied from their ancestors.

Even though I was a dumb girl with glasses and braces on my teeth, I didn’t want any of that for myself. I wanted to be an artist. And where were mine? How would I find them not to feel so alone? I thought about sending a letter to the newspaper, telling exactly how I was and summoning other beings who might be as strange as I was.

What a surprise when I realized the size of my audience (and that I didn’t need to have an artist’s soul to feel all the same, therefore, among those perfect or unsalted people from school, college and first jobs, there must have been at least 60 % of crazy people disguised as boring people).

I am an only child, from separated parents, and until I was 25 I lived with my mother, a very strong woman, convincing and seductive in her arguments. I distinctly remember wishing, while I lived under the same roof as her, that my discussions could be televised across the country so that people in their homes could vote for the candidate least varied in the head.

I never had a father, a brother, even a relative, to intervene in our relationship and say: “oops, just today, just today, the girl is right”. So I’ve spent more than half of my life wanting other people’s opinions of my life. And I never stopped needing that opinion.

I took the same desire later to all my relationships at work, in fraternal relationships and in love. Whenever I was in any situation, I thought “what would an audience say about this scene?”. And so, because of this unbridled desire to narrate myself, to connect with others, to feel less alone, to thrill, provoke, summon other people, I started writing at 19 and have never stopped.

In adolescence and youth, my mother, when she thought I was too quiet and strange, had the habit of spying on my diaries. Rather than feeling invaded, I remember, for that reason, starting to write in a way that would tease and worry her even more.

Since it was supposed to have some audience, even if it was just one person, that she could feel something strong when reading my words. Today I write to thousands of people, but always focused on provoking just one. And every hour changes “the addressed”.

Someone who hurt me, pissed me off, let go. Someone I want to conquer, disgust, turn on. Someone who didn’t know how to hear exactly what I thought and felt, so now he’s going to have to swallow me. Someone who screwed me over badly and needs to be exposed. I also write a lot driven by revenge.

Finally, I believe that I write to exist. I didn’t get much attention at school. She had this very normal face. She was neither beautiful nor the epicenter of bullying. At parties, at recess, at family gatherings, in class, at work, in order to get any attention, I had to be quick and jokey.

I took this potential into my work as an author and screenwriter. As a woman, everything I wanted to do, I had to fight against the current patriarchy. In the case of any woman, and I know that I have privileges because I am white, exposing yourself is also a cry, enough is enough and a way of doing politics. This has all become clearer to me in recent years.

Well, Mark Antony, about whether it’s me or a character, that answer would deserve another long text.

While I’m here always perplexed watching my fingers move, I always ask myself who writes in me and for me. There are times when I feel like I’ve been taken over by a spirit. In ordinary life, when I go to a pharmacy, for example, I often feel like a hypochondriac talking about chronic pain to a stranger.

In my book “Then I’m the crazy one”, I talk about all my panic attacks. But when a reporter asked me at the time of its release what an autobiographical author managed to hide, I remember replying, “Since I always exaggerate, the truth is always protected.”

Many times, I write a chronicle that is 50% a fantasy in my head, but, weeks later, I no longer remember if it happened or if I made it up. The truth is that I and all my characters never quite understand what we’re doing. And that’s why it’s so beautiful, pleasurable (and it works).

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