If My Life Were a Trope

(Spoiler: it would be several, and all at once.)

People say real life is not like fiction.
Mine is — just not the glamorous parts.
If anything, my life reads like a romance novel written by someone who can’t stick to one genre and refuses to choose only one main character.

If my life were tropes, I’d be:

1. Slow Burn — but make it existential

I don’t “rush” into things.
I simmer.
I marinate.
I overthink for three to five business months.

Even my best ideas arrive slowly — they walk in like Maya and Tomás:
quietly, awkwardly,
but with the kind of emotional chemistry that surprises you later.

My romances (in life and in fiction) don’t explode.
They grow.
Like roots.
Like fig trees.
Like the kind of love that stays because it understands itself.

2. Enemies to Lovers — but I’m both enemies

Look, I wish I were joking.

I disagree with myself.
I misunderstand myself.
I ghost myself.
I come back dramatically with a whole monologue.

If Mariah and Thomas argue in (Un)Calculated,
just know: yes, I wrote them from experience.

3. Found Family — but my family found me first

My daughters, my husband, my characters (yes, them).
I didn’t “find” them —
they just showed up and said:
“Okay, we live here now.”

Stella, Marcus, Mariah, Maya…
Some came knocking.
Some came uninvited.
Some appeared at emotionally inconvenient times (looking at you, Girl Who Listened to Houses).

But all of them turned into home.

4. Forced Proximity — with my own brain

Sometimes I’d love to take a vacation from myself.
But no.
I’m stuck in a tiny studio apartment with:

• my anxiety,
• my creativity,
• my immigrant brain switching languages mid-thought,
• and the Tagarela narrating everything in rhyme.

Honestly?
Ten out of ten for entertainment value.

5. Second Chance Romance — with writing

I left writing once.
Life was heavy.
Everything felt too loud, too much.

And then — quietly — it found me again.
Like the one that never really left.
Like a love you don’t want to admit you still think about.

I didn’t chase writing.
It waited for me.
It forgave me.
It opened the door when I knocked again.

6. Grumpy x Sunshine — but both are me

Portuguese me?
Drama queen, stormy skies, passionate speeches, existential crisis at breakfast.

English me?
Soft, warm-light aesthetics, gentle texting energy, apologizes unnecessarily.

Danish me?
Functional grump with potato-in-throat accents.
Smiles occasionally.
Thrives on rye bread and sarcasm.

Together?
Chaotic serotonin.

7. “It Was Always You” — but with my own stories

Here’s the truth:
I write myself into every book.
Sometimes it’s obvious.
Sometimes it’s hidden.
Sometimes even I don’t realize it until the chapter is done.

But every time, the revelation is the same:
It was always me.
All along.

The girl inside the fig tree.
The woman who listens to houses.
The one who calculates love and then ruins the math.
The one who believes in quiet love instead of fireworks.

Always me — and never just one version.

8. The Final Trope: A Touch of Chaos

Because let’s be honest:
no trope fully captures me.
I’m a trilogy.
A multilingual spin-off.
A romance that stops mid-plot to reflect on life and then forgets why it walked into the room.

If my life were a trope, it would be this:

The Multiverse Main Character,
living three languages, five moods, twenty tabs open,
and somehow — beautifully — making it work.

If you read my Journal, expect all of it:
the slow burn,
the chaos,
the depth,
the jokes,
the tropes I love,
the tropes I am,
and the ones I’m still becoming.

Because no single trope can handle me.
But all of them together?
Now that’s a story.