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By Santiago Galar 

“At 24, I say this, knowing there's no turning back: I like guys and everything that implies, no more and no less of a faggot than any other faggot. A faggot, period.” I wrote it in an email and sent it to my closest friends. I grabbed a backpack, packed some clothes, and went off to Azul for a few days, where I could rest easy because no one had received that email. My hands were shaking. My heart was pounding. The bus hadn't even left the La Plata terminal when the first text messages full of “everything's going to be okay” started arriving. This month marked the tenth anniversary of that email.

That summer, like any sociology student, I went backpacking in Machu Picchu. Upon my return, along with my final thesis grade, I received the news that I had won a scholarship. The drama of uncertainty faded. The future was promising. Life was smiling upon me. Or at least it seemed that way. Suddenly, a deep, unbearable pain settled in my head. The pain was there all the time, no matter what I did. As the weeks passed, with the results of the clinical studies in hand, I began to realize that the pain was nothing more than my body telling me that I had run out of excuses, that I had to face what I had been avoiding so effectively for so long.

"People come out of the closet when they can."

Being gay, growing up gay, in the 1990s and in a small town is complicated. No amount of self-esteem or optimism can overcome the variety of signs that simultaneously tell you that deviating from the norm will be severely punished. To make matters worse, I was a Catholic activist. Because in the 1990s, if injustice challenged you and you lived in a small town, the only space to activate was stale Catholicism. Then came a degree in sociology, university, questioning everything and wanting to change everything. It wasn't the 1990s anymore; I no longer lived in a conservative town, but I remained immobile, pretending. Therein lay the greatest of my furies. Why, in an open environment, surrounded by people who were yes , when I believed anything was possible, why was the path to recognition and acceptance still so difficult? Over time, I understood two very simple things that lessened that fury. First, that it was hard for me to come out because coming out is difficult. Second, that people come out when they can and however they can.

After that email, many things changed. Over time, the relaxation began to show on my face and body. I had the pleasure of no longer facing the same drama on repeat and starting to face new ones. And ten years of new dramas passed. I was thinking about that round number when I returned from vacation this summer when I realized I had retained very little of the intense days following the email. Not even in therapy could I reconstruct them. Those days were a black box in my head, the one that a decade ago housed that unbearable stitch. That's why I decided to talk to my friends so they could help me remember, so they could tell me what happened after I clicked "send."

"I preferred to feel even if it hurt"

The fragments began to emerge effortlessly. They told me about the behind-the-scenes details of receiving the email. Flor told me she was crying and that she read the email with her father, who was visiting from La Plata. Miriam told me she felt a strong need to hug me tightly. They also reconstructed moments in which I had participated. Caro, for example, remembered that she went to Azul and visited me to make sure I was okay. She told me that we weren't explicit because my mother, always intense, never left the round of mate. But my calm gaze was enough for her to leave peacefully.

And I began to remember. I remembered when Carlos, interested in valuing my desires, asked me if I liked this or that guy. When Fede, less deconstructed but very hardworking, assured me that if a guy made me suffer, he would beat the shit out of him. I remembered when I took the first anxiolytic they prescribed me to ease my anxiety, the pained look on Sabri's face as I tried to speak at a seminar, half-drugged, and how I gave up taking the pills because they made me feel stupid. I preferred feeling, no matter how much it hurt, to going through life under anesthesia. The pieces began to fall into place.

A few days ago in Azul, during dinner, Dad told me he was sorry he hadn't acted in such a way as to spare me so much suffering. It sounded like an apology. I told him that, indeed, he could do nothing for me. But I also warned him that he could do a lot for his grandson. That his responsibility, our responsibility, was to do what was necessary so that we could live in a less horrible world, where he and his generation could be and desire with much more freedom. Where coming out of the closet would be an experience that was less and less traumatic and difficult. Until it simply ceased to be an experience, so that the closet no longer existed.