Taking things out of my chest

I should start by saying Italy has been a blessing. It is way more than what I imagined, and I often feel overwhelmed by everything that is going on. However, this sense of great awe comes with a great deal of confusion and disorientation. I’ve been accumulating a few things, and since writing is the only way I know to acquire some catharsis, here I go, in a manner of a random confession that may at least reach some of the people that I feel I had to talk to.
I should start this paragraph also by saying that I’m very lucky to have many friends in Europe. Since I started this trip, the invitations to visit them have not been short. And although it is true that once in Europe the possibilities of traveling become easier with low cost airlines, it has not been so cheap as I expected. When I started this trip, I had savings that I brought with me and allowed me to start with my door to door campaing, but I’ve been here 5 months and last week an account balance by mail gently informed me that I’m poor. The implications of this are very simple: traveling outside Italy is no longer a possibility (unless I get a crazy offer on a direct flight that is). I should also feel very grateful that when I have promised friends to do my best to go and visit them, they have believed me. That means they regard me as reliable. This is an unfortunate time because I cannot be reliable. Be it for the nature of the work I have here and simply because now I am absorbed by the impromptu “Italian way” of doing things, I will continually disappoint if I keep making promises. Right now, I have a one way ticket to London for June and a bag full of ideas of what to do to buy the ticket back. Apart from that, I’ll be here, in the island, living a life that lacks no imagination but counts with only 265 Euros a month to make some magic happen.
I have also been very frustrated because of my foreigner status, and I’ve been thinking really to what extent I should continue fooling Italians around me with the impression that I will try to blend. I won’t. As a matter of fact, one of the best days I’ve had here was a Friday when all volunteers embraced their “alien” status and we went to dance under the sunset in the port of the city. We didn’t care how people looked at us: people looking at us is the rule. I am strange, and I don’t think I can change that. I learned their language just to discover that I cannot connect to their mainstream humor; that alone is a mood killer, especially in the island where people joke with you all the time when they are in a good mood. I can see myself enjoying with Italians in a context when they show tolerance to my strangeness, but never outside of it. This is so far the most crushing finding for me, who have dedicated a good part of life and career to understand interculturality and cultural adaptation and failed to integrate into his hosting environment. Back in Costa Rica, I’ll be strange, I promise; way more than I have been. But at least in your own country you can say your right of being strange is equality valid to the others’ right to follow society’s rules without questioning them.
I have also become very anxious by reconnecting with people from the past and meeting new people. For the people of tha past, sometimes I wish facebook could add a disclaimer that says “the person you are trying to add occupies the same body but no longer is the person you used to know”. It’s like all of the sudden I have to open my life to criticism from people who think they know me when they have missed in average, the last ten years of my life, the period when I constructed most of what I am today. Here in Italy I have my share of anxiety coming from the new people too. Every new circle I come in means that I have to eventually "come out". This is particularly shaming for me because I simply have lost the ability or even the desire to come out. Some people approach me because “wow, a Costa Rican” “wow, a latino”. Then they find out I’m gay and the smooth interaction is over. They start treating me like they feel cheated because I didn’t state it at the beginning before they got ideas of me being their next wingman – or date, and I feel terrible for those girls. Excuse me? Why did you even assume on my sexuality on the first place? I am embarrassed with myself because in my head, I am an out gay man, and one who wants society to be more accepting of difference. It was really hard to move to a new house a month ago because that meant finding the space to come out to new people again and then wait for the implications of it in my life. I’m sick of it, so sick. I wish it wasn’t a big deal, but when I have some recurrent nightmares of my mom kicking me out of the house again for being gay, I know it is. I’ve been trying to call her and ask her: “do you know that I remain gay, right?” just to check if she does not believe that overtime I’ve changed my mind about it. I’ve been waking up, gasping for air, wishing to reach out the phone just to know before going back if the distance has not made for her more comfortable with pretending she’s never had a gay son and she’ll rather have me stay somewhere else where my sexual identity cannot bring her shame. It's like I want to know if the progress we've made in acceptance is still there. This whole gender thing has been particularly frustrating because I come from a place when my friends attend Pride with me and where being self-sufficient gave me the room to make my own choices and defend them aggressively, but now I’m in a house I don’t rent, in a strongly heteronormative country that is not my own, somehow disconnected from any gay social bubble, and so far away to ask my family for hugs and understand through their actions and not to words that they whole fight’s over, that I can rest my case because their love is unconditional… this was getting to my head so much that I felt that if I did not put it at least into words, I was going to go crazy. I got drunk last weekend, and I told the flatmate I get along with the most that I was gay. He's completely cool with it. One anxiety less.

Oh, man. Confessions. Catharsis. A cry to the wind (the cyberwind.) I feel better already.