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By Santiago Galar 

“At 24, I’m saying this, knowing there’s no going back: I like guys and everything that entails, no more or less gay than any other gay guy. Gay, period.” I wrote it in an email and sent it to my closest friends. I grabbed a backpack, packed some clothes, and went to Azul for a few days, where I could relax 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 started arriving, full of “everything’s going to be alright.” This month marked ten years since that email.

That summer, like any good sociology student, I had gone backpacking to Machu Picchu. Upon returning, along with my final thesis grade, I received the news that I had won a scholarship. The drama of uncertainty was receding. The future looked promising. Life was smiling on me. Or at least it seemed that way. Suddenly, a deep, unbearable pain settled in my head. The throbbing 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 realized that this pain was nothing more than my body telling me that the excuses were over, that I had to face what I had been so effectively avoiding for so long.

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

Being gay, growing up gay, in the nineties in a small town is complicated. No amount of self-esteem or optimism can overcome the multitude of signs that simultaneously tell you that deviating from the norm will be severely punished. To make matters worse, I was a devout Catholic. Because in the nineties, if injustice confronted you and you lived in a small town, the only recourse was the traditional Catholic faith. Then came my sociology degree, university, questioning everything and wanting to change everything. It wasn't the nineties anymore, I no longer lived in a conservative town, but I remained stagnant, in hiding. That's where my greatest anger lay. Why, in an open environment, surrounded by people who were open about it , when I believed everything was possible, was the path to recognition and acceptance still so difficult? Over time, I understood two very simple things that lessened that anger. First, that coming out was hard because coming out is hard. Second, that people come out when they can and how they can.

After that email, many things changed. Over time, the relaxation became noticeable on my face and in my body. I had the pleasure of no longer facing the same drama on repeat and began to face new ones. And ten years of new dramas passed. I was thinking about that milestone number when I returned from vacation this summer and realized how little I retained of the intense days following that 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 pain. That's why I decided to talk to my friends to help me remember, to ask them 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 said she cried and read the email with her father, who was visiting in 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 going to Azul and visiting me to make sure I was okay. She said we weren't explicit because my mother, always intense, never left our mate circle. But my calm gaze was enough for her to leave at ease.

And I started to remember. I remembered when Carlos, keen to validate my desires, would ask me if I liked this or that guy. When Fede, less deconstructed but very hardworking, assured me that if a guy made me suffer, I'd beat the crap out of him. I remembered when I took the first anti-anxiety medication I was prescribed to reduce my anxiety, the pitiful look on Sabri's face as I tried, half-drugged, to participate in a seminar, and how I quit the pills because they made me feel stupid. I preferred to feel, even if it hurt, than to go through life numb. The pieces began to fall into place.

A few days ago in Azul, during dinner, Dad told me he was saddened that he hadn't acted in a way that would have spared me so much suffering. It sounded like an apology. I told him that, indeed, there was nothing more I could do for myself. 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 becomes an increasingly less traumatic and difficult experience. Until it simply ceases to be an experience, so that the closet no longer exists.