#bsw day five + gifs

[joselialopes]

“And when I first showed him my scar, he said it was interesting. He used the word ‘textured’. He said ‘smooth’ is boring but ‘textured’ was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever it was that had tried to hurt me.”

BIOGRAPHY | CONNECTIONS | MUSINGS | PINTEREST | SPOTIFY

STATS

Name: Joselia “Jo” Lopes Silva Faceclaim: Bruna Marquezine Gender & Pronouns: Cis woman & she/her Sexuality: Pansexual Age: 30 Birthday: June 3, 1993 Zodiac: Gemini sun, Leo moon, Virgo rising Education: BSW, UC-Riverside Occupation: Addiction Counselor (Social Worker) Neighborhood: Bighorn Hills + open-minded, adaptable, passionate - hot-headed, flaky, impulsive

BIOGRAPHY

tw: drug mention, alcoholism, abortion

also tw I say “daddy” one billion times and I’m so sorry that’s just what Joselia would say

Daddy was always a free spirit. He and Mama married young– him 17 and her 16– and he promised her the world. He painted a beautiful picture of a long, successful career as a football player, a big move to America, and a life where she seldom had to lift a finger. But Gisele Lopes Silva was always more grounded than her husband. She didn’t want all of that, really, just a man who loved her and happy kids. Still, Daddy was determined to shoot for the stars and, in the end, he landed pretty close. Roberto Silva qualified for the Campeonato Brasileiro Series at 19 and he swore up and down it was a straight shot to US Nationals from there. Mama got pregnant with Roberto Jr. that winter, 1984, and five years later in 1989 they had Miguel. With two babies, Mama’s asking Daddy to retire and get a real job graduated from passing remarks to deadpan questions to begging. 

They were doing okay, what with Grandma helping with the boys while Mama worked, but Gisele was wise. She knew it wouldn’t last long. Besides, she’d rather have Daddy around the kids than him be some big, international soccer star. It was a fight she didn’t have the energy for but every now and then, and Daddy became an expert at weasling out of it– bringing home expensive gifts, magazines about life in America, VHS tapes of sitcoms. Money was tight, though, and it was Daddy’s magic-making that made the room dividers in the living room that hid Jr.’s cot feel enchanted, like a portal to another world instead of a family bursting at the seams. In retrospect, Jr. says Mama resented him even then. She was caught in the trap of working all day in the factory and coming home to cook and clean, all the while the boys tugged on Daddy’s pant legs and clamored on top of him and asked to hear the story of his trip to San Fransisco for the hundredth time. 

Mama says that having Joselia in 1993 changed everything. She was finally getting somewhere with Daddy– touting the baby, the only girl, as the reason why he should quit chasing this crazy dream and get a real job. Settle down and give them all the life they deserved. Of course, the very next year was the beginning of the San Jose soccer club. The Earthquakes wanted Daddy on their inaugural team, and Daddy leaped at the chance to move to California– the land of opportunity. According to Daddy, getting recruited to the U.S. was the best thing that ever happened to him. Mama was just grateful that he finally got a kick in the ass to make something of himself. In 1994, the family migrated to San Jose to start their new life. 

Daddy always talked about those first few years like they were something out of a fairytale– all blue skies and palm trees and balmy breezes. Long days of doing what he loved, coming home to a slice of Brazil in Mama’s cooking and Jr.’s singing and the artifacts they’d managed to bring with them. Mama isn’t so romantic about it all. Sure, it was nice to not be so strapped for cash. But it was lonely, she says– hardly anybody else spoke Portuguese, and Daddy was alright with his English but Mama struggled. She could hardly make it through trips to the grocery without aid, and she missed her mother. But, Daddy was happy, which had been the point all along, right?

Daddy’s first season with the Earthquakes was a building year– at least, that’s what all the players would say when they would crowd around the kitchen table, drinking and talking and making messes that Mama stayed up well into the night cleaning up. But the kids loved it, crowding around the table with wide eyes and hanging on every word they said. It was this way that Joselia learned English; When her kindergarten teacher wrote home and asked where she’d learned to say “damn it all to hell!”, Daddy just laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Season two was better. By the end of it, everybody was talking about the Earthquakes, and Daddy was even named in a couple articles as a player to watch. That was 1996, a year he still calls the best of his life. Joselia remembers the whole family travelling to LA and Washington, DC and Dallas to see Daddy play. It was exactly what Daddy always promised– traveling the world, staying in fancy hotels, a balanced diet of stadium hot dogs and room service. Even Mama loosened up on their trips, had a glass or two of champagne and got giggly. It was like they were really in love, then. Life should’ve been like that forever– and it would’ve been, if Daddy hadn’t gotten injured.

Three games before the end of the 1997 season, an ill-timed slide tackle caused Daddy’s leg to break in two places. Mama, Jr., Miguel, and Joselia were watching from home, and everything instantly devolved into chaos. Mama screamed and immediately called the neighbor to come watch the kids while she rushed to the hospital. The three kids planted themselves in front of the TV, watching any and all coverage they could find on the local channels, and praying to every saint they knew. 

Daddy put on a brave face, at first. He had high hopes, unreasonable expectations that he’d be as good as new after surgery. But then came the minimum two years of physical therapy, and by the time he was in any condition to run again, they were so far behind with medical bills that Mama put her foot down. He had to get a job– they had to get back on their feet before he started his crazy training regimen. His old teammates still came around back then, and one of them even pulled some strings and got Daddy a job as a daytime bartender at a pub near the training facility. 

But there’s always a point in time where the sympathy runs out. People can’t hold pity forever. The guys stopped coming around, Coach stopped inviting him to closed practices. Mama was never gentle with him– she said that was that, it was time to move on. Find a new dream. Joselia wouldn’t know until much later, but underneath all of his bravado, Daddy was incredibly sensitive. He didn’t take to normal life well, and started mixing his pain meds with a few too many drinks. At first, it was an inconvenience. He would get too drunk and forget to pick up Jr. from school, he would leave Miguel an hour or two longer after school than he meant to. Most nights would end in whispered arguments behind Mama and Daddy’s door– Jr. learned to press a glass to the wood young, but he’d never tell Miguel and Joselia what was said unless it was really bad.

It got really bad when Joselia was in middle school. Jr. was twenty-one and still home, fulfilling the role of oldest child and peacekeeper while he saved up for college. Plus, the income he brought in from his grocery store job helped keep them afloat when Daddy overslept and missed his shifts, which was becoming more and more frequent. Jr. kept them together, with Miguel’s help– they would divide and conquer, Jr. going to Daddy and Miguel going to Mama. But when Daddy started gambling and they lost the apartment, Mama was done. 

Joselia was thirteen when Mama moved them into a new apartment and refused to give Daddy the key. Jr. had to drag her, kicking and screaming, refusing to leave Daddy behind. She’d let him in at night, and Mama would wake her up yelling every morning that she woke up to discover him on the couch. He can’t be trusted! she would say, pleading with Joselia to keep him out. Everybody else had enough of his broken promises, except Jo. She loved him so much that she moved with him to Philly at fifteen, pledged the next decade of her life to following Daddy around, dreaming big dreams with him and picking him up when he fell.

It was difficult leaving Mama and her brothers behind, but Joselia was so hurt that they could be so cruel to Daddy that she buried the grief under anger. Life with him was the same as always– high highs and low lows. On good days, they’d catch a game in the city and share a hotdog and Daddy would tell Jo-Jo all about how he was gonna become a soccer coach. If you can’t do, you teach, he said, and she believed him. She always believed him, and that belief carried her through the bad days, when he would stumble home angry at four a.m., cursing her Mama and her Grandma and the world, vomit dribbling down his chin and too-heavy footsteps.

It took an extra year, but Joselia graduated high school. Her part-time waitressing job became full-time, and her steady paycheck made up for the weeks and months that Daddy was out of work. Mama sent money every couple months with express instructions not to let Daddy touch it– but she always did, and he always blew it on a scratch-off or a round for all his friends. He was chaos personified, but Joselia wasn’t afraid of his self-destruction. Mostly, she was afraid of who she’d be without his fantastical tales and his believing the best in her and his promises that he’d take care of her, one day. 

Joselia met Matthew Foster in Philly, at a show for some grungy band she was just drunk enough to enjoy. Their whirlwind romance felt like home– the ups and downs, the unbridled passion and the teeming rage felt like what Joselia reckoned love was supposed to be. Daddy wasn’t consistent or stable, and he loved her more than anybody in the world– So must Foster. Midnight screaming matches faded into afternoon picnics and so on. He never said so, but Joselia knew he loved her– he showed it dozens of ways, whether by making the best food she’d ever eaten in her life (aside from stadium hotdogs, of course) or by buffing out the same dent in her car over and over from the damn apartment gate. 

They were young and dumb and it felt like everything. Daddy hated him and loved him, depending on the day– and when things were going right for everybody and the three of them drank and watched Daddy’s old matches, well, that was the best feeling in the world. It was after one of those days and a couple of Foster’s custom-made cocktails that they decided to get married at the courthouse. They didn’t have a ring or a dress or a care in the world, and somewhere in a box covered in a thin layer of dust, Joselia has a picture from that day: her in one of Foster’s button downs and a Dodgers hat, him in his usual tshirt and jeans combo, all bright smiles hanging off one another.

Being married didn’t stave off the fighting at all. If anything, it made it worse– gave them each more ammunition to launch at each other, and made it a hell of a lot harder to untangle from the mess. They fell into a familiar pattern– a couple of good days, maybe a week, a fight where they swore they were broken up for good this time, and a couple days later they’d make up. Anything was fair game on these breaks– and it’s not like Joselia had a ring or anything to stop her from seeing other people, so she did. Nothing that stuck, but a couple one or two night flings before she surrendered to Foster’s gravitational pull again.

When Joselia found out she was pregnant after a week “off”, she panicked. She wasn’t going to tell Foster, she was just going to take care of it on her own– but they had such a good day, and she was half convinced they could make it work. They were perfect, they only fought so hard because they loved each other so much. He bolted after that, and in retrospect, she couldn’t blame him. Joselia still harbors that hurt on especially lonely nights, revisits the feeling of waking up and seeing his shit gone, the days-late realization that she’d never see him again.

But it was okay, because there was always Daddy to take care of, and with no Foster and no baby to distract her, Joselia poured all of her energy into him. She was twenty-five and working the same waitressing job she’d had since graduation, spending her weekends taking care of her drunk father– and with nothing else in Philly, reality stung. She started to resent Daddy the same way Mama always had– she resented being the stable one, she resented not being able to fall apart because it’d hurt them both when that’s all she really wanted to do.

A decade late, Joselia’s breaking point finally came when Daddy wrapped her truck around a streetlight. He survived, thank God, but he had a broken arm and a couple of years in jail and mandated therapy. With no other choice, Joselia made her way back to California and turned up on Mama’s doorstep, tail between her legs. The rush of apologies for years of hating her, of thinking Mama was selfish and wrong for abandoning Daddy, was crushed in her mother’s arms. She was home, for real this time, and reconnecting with Mama and Jr. and Miguel helped Joselia figure some things out.

It wasn’t perfect, and she still felt an unreasonable degree of protectiveness over Daddy– they kept in touch, between letters and phone calls– but Jo decided to enroll in college. Better late than never. She started at UC-Riverside and declared Social Work as her major, staying home with Mama until she graduated at 29. It was a big deal, because Jr. had enlisted at 22 and Miguel had gone to trade school. Joselia was the first in their family to graduate college, a fact that Daddy cried about on the phone the morning of her graduation– a fact she still holds with pride.

Her fresh start extended to Colorado Springs, where Joselia took her very first “real” job a year ago as an Addiction Counselor for a nonprofit serving unhoused and at-risk individuals. It was Jr.’s idea, originally, and Joselia ended up loving it– finally her life experience was helpful with something, and the tough love she always should’ve given to Daddy was a requirement. It’s such the perfect fit, in fact, that she was promoted after only a year and transferred to the Providence Peak location. Joselia was hesitant at first to leave Colorado Springs and the comfort of Jr. right down the street, but it was high time for her to forge her own path. She made it up to Philly one more time, to visit Daddy and to clear out the rest of her shit from a storage unit, and is now settling into her new routine.