My mother had always been paranoid about my sexuality. She spent all of my teenage years making all kinds of threats to try and fix me before she even knew there was a problem. She looked so hard for so long for some kind of evidence, until she found what she wasn't really ready to see.

My first attempt at a relationship wasn't even John. It was Karl, a few months before. I could tell Karl really wasn't into me and I wasn't keen myself to imerge into his universe, but I was young and inexperienced, so I thought that was what relationships were all about, no wonder so many people get divorced.

None of us was out yet and one day, less than three weeks into trying to figure out whatever the hell we had, my mother found a picture of my shaved face on my phone. The subtitle read 'hey babe, do I look nice shaved?'. She had entered my room and retrieved my phone from under my pillow while I was fast asleep on top of it. Back then it was a flip phone which didn't have a password. I woke up to a true nightmare.

I have found resolution and forgiveness, but you can never really smooth out paper once it's crumpled.

Of course Karl chickened out and left me to deal with it alone.

Out of all the horrific things my mom told me during that time, the two most frequent were 'you'd better find your own corner of the world, because I can't have you here with this lifestyle' and 'why can't God just take you already?'.

I was nineteen, fresh off terrible fifteen years of isolation and constant bullying at my school and here was my mother, the one who had always carried the cross of making me feel loved all by herself, wishing I would die.

I can't put my finger on exactly when, but I once found some suicidal notes she had written, all of them saying that life was too painful for her to take it anymore. I finally lashed out. I woke her up, told her that if she wanted to die I didn't grant her the right to place the blame on me, she would have to take it to herself. I tore her notes in front of her, threw them away, locked myself in my room, and cried my eyes out until falling asleep. Up to this date she still says that, according to me, I don't care if she dies.

I endured her constant blame attacks for longer than anyone else should ever have to.

When I was twenty I tried going to college for the first time. I had never been around openly gay people before and it felt like heaven. I didn't take long to develop a ridiculous crush on the guy who looked the most okay. But then he arrived.

Tall and built, short curly hair close to his skull. Caramel skin with an awkward smile, trying to find his way around with lots of kindness and a deep voice. He became the centre of everyone's attention and I became the centre of his.

His name was Alex. I can't remember for the life of me if it was short for Alexander or Alexandre, both variations being very popular in my country.

It was all so ridiculous that it looks like a cheap fiction. Take the full package: school pair project; him asking me to his place on the weekend to do it and help him with the contents he had missed before enrolling; twenty minutes of study followed by hours of making out and sex; him asking me to stay over and me accepting.

Before I knew it I was living with him.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a fairy tale.

He didn't live in a house or a flat. It looked like it had been a small doctor's office with a room, the tiniest of kitchens no one could even enter, a small bedroom with a malfunctioning bathroom inside of it. It made John's flat look like a mansion. Alex lived with a sick grandmother, a Pitbull called Leona who I learned to love really fast and was loved back and just too many cats. I think six or seven. Three people and almost ten pets in what used to be a small doctor's office.

It took my mother a while to figure out I didn't live under her roof anymore. The whole situation was so stressful that I was already loathing the job I never liked in the first place.

He was a very troubled person, full of demons I truly wished I could cast away. He was a rather violent man. He never laid a finger on me that way, but the furniture was never that lucky. With his nerves always on edge, it never took him too much to burst. Once, bothered by the noise the front-door children were making, he threw a foldable chair at our door. So many times I would wake up in the middle of the night to an empty bed and he'd come back hours later; only he knew the things he did. The sex was nothing special, he was a large man everywhere except inside his pants and the little thing he had barely tickled me or ever managed to give me any pleasure. He almost always refused to bottom. With Alex I also learned how uncomfortable it is to lay on a built man's chest. Hard like a rock without the slightest warmth, without the slightest feeling.

I used to wear a golden chain with a cross around my neck, which had been a Christmas present from my father when I was thirteen. I felt good wearing it, so I occasionally placed it around his neck, whenever I felt he needed the same serenity that it brought me.

When Alex's grandmother was admitted to the hospital, from which she never left, he texted me saying he needed time alone and that when he got back home he didn't want to see me or anything mine there.

Maybe the universe did like me, for some God-ordained miracle, right after I read his text my mother called me. It was the first time I heard her voice since I had moved in with Alex. She had called me just to tell me that she loved me and that should I ever need anything I should just ask her.

I swallowed my pride, feeling like the smallest person on Earth, holding back my tears inside the van that was taking me to where I thought it was home.

'Can you come pick me up? I'll give you the address.'

One of the things I will never forget is the look on her face when she entered the flat. I could see she was holding back her tears. We packed my stuff and she drove me back home. Without a look at her of my grandmother I carried my things to my room and locked myself inside. My sister didn't live with us anymore, having wedded in '06.

None of us said anything about what had happened, but my mother knew how broken I was. She seemed to realise her fault in it, maybe if she never truly saw the harmful extent of her words.

I had forgotten a few things at Alex's and we had agreed to meet. I was still so lost and broken that I didn't have the strength to refuse when he wanted to have sex with me. It was the first time in my life I felt empty. My mother blatantly asked if I had done it and I couldn't lie to her, so I said nothing. She sighed and said I shouldn't have, but also that she knew how impossible it was to resist.

I never saw him again and was truly afraid of him. He knew where I worked, I had taken him even there. I decided to quit my job and also college. I stayed home until the year ended a couple of months later. I cried everyday.

On the second time that Oliver had asked me to his house, it was a Sunday afternoon. He lived with his brother and his grandmother in a very humble single-bedroom house. The similarities were always sending chills down my spine. He explained to me why it had taken him so long to invite me. His ex right before me had moved in with him when they were dating and, when they broke-up, the guy left without a word even to his grandmother, who was very fond of him. For this reason she had forbidden him to ever take another boyfriend to spend the night. I don't think I could ever stay over, even if ever invited. I couldn't. I just couldn't place myself anywhere remotely near what I had had with Alex.

On the first time I went to his house, a late evening, his brother wasn't there and his grandmother went to bed quite early. A few moments after being alone he took me to the bathroom, where we had sex for the first time. I am no quiet bottom and one glance at what he had made me drool and want to ride him like there'd be no tomorrow, but I knew myself enough and I hadn't had sex in forever. It was after our fortieth date. I decided to top, then. I couldn't come. Not that I wasn't liking it. I really was, given all the discomfort. But that's another trauma for another time.

On the second time I was there it was a Sunday afternoon and we were watching a James Bond movie on TV with his grandmother. His uncle, a neighbour who shared the land and the garden, called him out and I stayed there with her quietly staring at the screen. Oliver came back shortly after and told me we were leaving. I obeyed, kissed and hugged his grandmother goodbye and left after him.

Once we were out of earshot I asked him what had happened.

'My uncle. He came to scold me because I was taking a boyfriend home and he doesn't want me to because my grandmother told me to not bring anyone to sleep over.'

'It's okay, my love. I can respect it without the slightest problem. Just... Don't get me wrong, but don't expect me to come back here. I have no grudges, but I know where I'm not welcome and I make sure to never go anywhere I am not wanted.'

'But I want you.'

He looked really down and angry at the same time. I continued.

'We still have our square. I'm sure we'll find a way to have other intimate places. Don't worry. My love for you is as strong as ever.'

He looked like he wanted to hug and kiss me, but knew better than trying that out in the open in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

I felt a weird mixture of emotions. On one hand I hated seeing Oliver like that. It was actually the first time I saw him angry, he has always been the most patient person I have ever met. I could see he was working his hardest to swallow that anger, especially because he knew it wasn't targeted at me. I let him vent about his uncle for a while, feeling somewhat grateful that, by the looks of it, I had been able to solve those painful similarities with Alex and it seemed like I would be able to keep away from repeating that story, which still hurts a full decade later.