LET ME BE: second excerpt of the book

As we move closer and closer to the publishing of the book it's now time for me to reveal an excerpt of the Chapter 1: The year of death. This text reflects a time when I was still discovering my true identity...

"September, 2006.

For my own good, the internet was already a unique tool for my discovery. And so, in some late afternoon after school, I found myself avidly reading the forum of an association for young people who were... like me. But that virtual space was not just that. I soon realized that there was a much more complete side, which included several sexual orientations and other definitions that had never crossed my mind. It may seem not that much of a deal looking at it right now but, in addition to the vast load of information, what I really felt was that I finally had an online place where I could get in touch with other young people like me, without having as a first question something about my favorite sexual position.

            And that was when, with such thought,  I transpired the first timid smile in many and lengthy months which had forced me to drag that uncomfortable pain of not wanting to be that way. Inside of me a light was turned on. Perhaps there was nothing wrong to be that way, maybe I had a place in the world, maybe I could be fully understood for that.

            But somewhere, many miles away, my father was now experiencing another kind of pain, the one of not accepting that a child could be different from most. I wanted to take all that new information I discovered to him. I wanted to sit with him, I wished to sit beside him, I wished to explain. But fulfilled wishes were not really part of my days at that time, so I confined myself to that place, sitting on my bed, with my computer on the lap, dwelling on the duality of discovering so much and at the same time being unable to speak about it, hence swinging between these two opposite poles.

            I stopped on one of the forum’s threads, which had something about LGBT bars. Several people talked about the places that they attended in their cities and, because nobody could take the imagination from me, I dreamt about the possibility of having a place like that in my city. But why limiting yourself to wondering when you can ask? I would remain anonymous, nobody would know me. So I created an account on the forum’s website and I wrote my first and short question. In doing so I felt a sort of freedom that was odd to me. I remember that I spend some time looking blankly at the screen, reflecting on the name that was being displayed. Rede ex aequo. That was the name of the association, which, translated from Latin, gives us the word equality. And wasn’t that what I was looking for? Equality. No more no less.

             I lost myself in the anxiety of wanting an answer to the question which I had just submitted and so I looked at the street through the huge window, where large drops of rain were running down. I fixated that image. Quiet. In silence. I simply remained petrified by floods of thoughts and recent memories of my father’s voice yelling that I could not be that way, that I was an abnormality, a sick being or an aberration. And then I went back to my childhood, not so distant, with my father giving me everything, the affection, the gifts, the compliments. I relived the pride that he had in me and in what I did; I revisited his jovial expression when he took me to the music school, when I read to him something that I had written, when I told him that I dreamed to be a writer and publish a book. My father truly loved me and encouraged me to go after my dreams. But now, at the same time, these flashes of my life were all juxtaposed; the past and the present were tied to one another, and the fact that my father could hate me overnight did not make any sense. I had not changed. I was the same old Filipe, only much more shattered now. But what I was before was still there and that father was too. All that could not have suddenly disappeared. It couldn’t. 

      Someone knocked on the door of the room. Those images faded immediately and I assumed my happiest semblance."

 

"Let me be" will come out in October.