This is how an influencer was born
Marli was a girl who always had her head in the clouds. At least that's what her parents and grandparents said. She was reserved, quiet and shy. She was hardly ever seen around friends: she preferred cats and books. She spent every afternoon of her childhood alone, only in the company of her maid, Berenice, who was like a second mother to her.
No one had bothered to socialize her when she was little, taking her to the playground to play with other children, because everyone was always rushing or busy around her. As soon as she started walking, she was sent to kindergarten, but since no one there knew what to do with shy children, she spent the whole day quietly in her corner. In fact, the quiet ones were considered a blessing from heaven by the teachers, as the restless children caused enough problems.
At the age of four, Marli came down with severe pneumonia and, for three months, she received intensive care from her grandmother. Her grandmother, who had been an elementary school teacher in her youth, didn't know what to do to distract her and decided to teach her literacy. One day, her grandmother sent a message to her mother: "Neusa, could you come and pick up your daughter this afternoon, instead of sending Berenice? I'd like to show you something". When Neusa arrived, her grandmother handed Marli a newspaper clipping and said, "Here. Read it" and Marli began to read the crime news.
That's how Marli ended up enrolling in school at the age of five, so she wouldn't lose her reading and writing skills. But as she was the youngest in her class, her classmates took no interest in her. For her, this was nothing new, and Marli remained quiet in her corner, dedicated to her inner world. Although she got ten in almost every exam, one day her mother was called to the school: "Your daughter needs attention, she doesn't fit in with her classmates!". "What does this woman want me to do? It's like I've got nothing else to worry about!" Neusa said in between breaths, as she dragged her daughter by the hand on the way home.
That same day, when Marli arrived home, her father had already drunk a few too many beers and could barely control his anger. When Marli's mother started complaining about the outdated decoration in the living room and the need for new plastic surgery on her breasts, her father started shouting and throwing things at the wall while her mother resumed the role of poor-suffering-wife-who-makes-sacrifices-for-her-family and went to cry into her pillow, complaining that if she hadn't given up college to take care of the home, she would certainly be a successful professional in the corporate world today.
Sitting on her canopy bed, with the bedroom door tightly shut to stifle the noise, Marli dedicated herself to reading her latest passion, Hans Christian Andersen's The Princess and the pea. In this story she had discovered that her heightened sensitivity to everything around her - lights, sounds, the fabric of her clothes - could only confirm what her father had always said: she was a princess! Tonight, she would put a pea under the pile of mattresses where she slept. If she woke up with a backache, PIMBA!, her royal blood would be proven.
Time went by and Marli grew up in her own corner. In her teens she was cute, but as her only social skills were limited to getting likes on Insta and Tik Tok, she preferred not to hang out with her classmates. She dedicated all her free time to the cause of protecting an specific type of crustaceans on the sands of Copacabana beach. "It's a lost cause," cried her mother. "Why doesn't she do like everyone else and go and enjoy her youth, the boys and the mushrooms?" said Neusa to her friends when she went out clubbing. But Marli was a sensible girl who didn't like drawing attention to herself.
When she went to university, she had become a vegan and only interacted with other vegans, so as not to pollute her aura. She was an advocate of pure food: no fat, no sugar, no gluten, no preservatives and no refined salt. "My body is very sensitive, it can only cope with the highest quality ingredients," she explained to Berenice, who took twice as long to prepare lunch because of her princess' demands. These days, she hardly saw her father, who had decided to leave home and had bariatric surgery. Now forty kilos thinner, he devoted all his energy to his Insta channel, where he gave his twelve thousand followers tips on how to succeed in seduction.
As for the rest of her family, Marli hadn't heard from them since the last elections. "They're all fascists," she said, who would only talk to educated, common-sense, politically well-oriented and open-minded people like herself. The others had been cut off from the family Whatsapp groups after countless quarrels. Dona Neusa, who had appeared on all the television channels when she was beaten up by a date she had just met on Tinder, now only went on home dates with her friends.
On the days when her mom and her friends met at her house, Neusa would often call Marli into the living room. "Before you is the future of mankind, to whom I have given all the best. What other generation in the past has been so inclusive as to be concerned about the preservation of a small type of crustaceans from the sand beach?" she would say proudly to her friends, while embracing Marli. That very night, Marli gained new followers for her cause. A new influencer was born.
Voltar