M

Dear Mum,
How are you?
Is every thing fine there?
I’m still in Berlin at the moment. I like it here.
Here I am away from my home, I am away from my friends, family, culture and my routine.
To me Berlin is like a monastery, in which I should conduct a life of reflection and seclusion.
This is why I decided to come to Berlin, to find something in me, maybe something lost or more likely something I never had. In the process I actually felt I almost lost myself, all my beliefs, all my securities, in other words completely spoiled of everything I had in my head, simply resting in a lake of confusion.
How terribly fascinating it was!
I realized that part of my character, of my ideas, stuck me in a cage from which I could see the world, but I didn’t have the possibility to interact with it. I correct myself: not possibility, but capability.
Only accepting myself I could be free, paradoxically free myself from myself, but at the same time I knew (still now) that my relationship with you would be deteriorated, accepting myself would have meant refusing part of you.
Because my moral (and conservative) ideas were given to me since I was a child and they’ve continued to grow more like weeds that suffocated me than strong and healthy trees that would donate fresh air.
I have to say that I tried so hard to remove these “weeds” and to plant new seeds in all these years, or at least in this last year. I played with my words, I exercised a lot talking to you, refusing completely you. It was useless, I wasn’t in harmony with my heart. On one hand I wanted to tell you some things, but on the other my heart wasn’t ready. I couldn’t change it with my mind.
So in these months I thought so much about what happened, about how much it was hard for you and for me. At first Babbo’s death, then the mourn, which was long and difficult, especially for you. After that you being sick and you not doing much, with the consequence of me screaming at you…outside because I didn’t like how you were and what you represented in my mind (the old moral conceptions), inside because I didn’t like how I was and how you influenced me. I didn’t like how it would be so easy for me to disappoint you, I didn’t like the thought of you not loving me, of you not being proud of me. I was afraid.
I guess it’s true that when kids turn fourteen is always more difficult. They finally arrive at first to a blurry image of reality and with time to a more and more clear one. Clear image also of themselves.
Nevertheless you being away from me helped. I learned more about myself and about you. I learned how to appreciate you and all of your interests, most of all your religious one.
When I called you, you seemed so happy, so calm, so serene and I craved for that too, but I can’t possibly take your same path, even though this letter is the fist step to a change.
I am more flexible, more tolerant. Now I love you and consider you for what you are and not what you should be. I love you because you are my mother and I’m bound to you for a spiritual and sanguine bond. It is natural that I love you, it’s my instinct.
Going against you would be going against myself, going against nature.
Now I know that I have to tell you this or you will never know me completely.
I am gay. Please accept this side of me, without asking stupid questions like why or how, because I can’t hide it anymore. I am like I always was with the difference that now I’m totally honest.
Don’t think you did something wrong. You are wonderful.
Sincerely yours,


I know that this letter is maybe too short for this confession, but I also think that a mother understands and supports without needing too many words.