In high school, my friend Ricardo fell in love with his classmate Manuela. I followed his fears as he found the courage to talk about how he felt. They started dating, traveled together, met their families, and for him it was a lifelong love. Until it’s over. Ricardo’s world collapsed. He said he couldn’t find someone like her, and his chest hurts… suffering worthy of a Mexican soap opera. For our peace of mind, Ricardo got married last year. Not with Manuela.
- Joaquim Ferreira dos Santos: One mistake and you’re right there at the crime scene
- Jose Eduardo Agualosa: African Mamdani
Years later, I discovered another story. At around the age of thirty, Lucas fell in love with Roberto. A feeling he had never allowed himself to experience until that moment. This was new and startled him. For the first time, Lucas found himself unable to control his emotions. With tears in his eyes, he told the analyst that he wanted to go back to how he was before, to be in control of his feelings. Emotion hurts a lot. A dramatic statement, but one that Lucas could only make at that moment, because he was experiencing something unprecedented. What he didn’t know yet was that he would start racing against time trying to make up for the experiences he never had. Experiences stolen by a society that insists on saying that what it is is limited by age.
Lucas’s story is my story… and many more.
I grew up changing my personality, the way I act, and my interests. And with them I also lost experiences from ordinary young people. I admit that I tried to reproduce what was happening around me, while I watched my colleagues experience their first emotions. But the problem is that feelings cannot be imitated, no matter how much desire arouses hopes.
27 years stolen from me.
- Julio Maria: The first generation that does not know Pele
I was happy with women, but not perfect. Perhaps that is why the emotional descriptions in the books seemed exaggerated to me. Is the first emotion capable of changing someone’s life to this extent? I learned too late that yes.
When you accept yourself and allow yourself to live fully, the realization comes of how much was wrongfully taken from you and that those responsible will never give you back what you failed to live. Today, I feel disconnected between what is expected of my age and what I want to experience. This race to make up for what you lost generates anxiety, pain, and the question: When will enough be enough? When will I know that, like Ricardo, I lived what I should have lived? This feeling of not living becomes painful in the lives of people in the LGBT+ community.
At least it reassures me to know that new generations can find references to what I thought did not exist even for the teenage Pedro. Growing up with the belief that you suffer alone causes hopelessness and hopelessness. Even if these new young people face obstacles because of their identity, they will at least know that their experience is neither unique nor alone.
At the same time, we, my generation and those before me, are trying to convince ourselves that there is no need to rush, and that the little that was taken from us does not hurt us much.
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