OUT with it already

Well in the very first post I alluded to recently ending a relationship of several years.

This weekend I met someone who I had a lot in common with. Actually two people.

The first was a friend of my crazy friend M., who she knows since childhood... A very nice lady named Marta who was very generous and welcoming, it really helped a lot to bring me out of the depressive funk I've been walking around in. What she has in common with me is, she moved to another country to be with the man she loved (as did I) but she broke up with him (as did I) afterwards and wound up alone. Just talking even for a short time with someone who'd had a similar experience helped a lot. Saturday night was really quite nice because it was M., Marta, and a friend of hers.

Marta's friend was interesting to talk with. M. and Marta both speak English, but her friend, nope. But I manage ok. It was kind of funny because Marta was going on about how there's little attention paid to animal welfare in this country (my take on that is, not for humans either!) and her friend said "Marta! Be careful what you tell him, he hasn't been her long and he might start thinking badly about our country!" I had a hard time not giggling at that. I mean, what ever could be here to cause people to think badly about the place?

But if Saturday night was like a ray of sunlight through the clouds, Sunday was positively blinding. I met someone who seems to be a lot like me in important ways. We spent nearly five hours just talking, about everything. I look forward to seeing him again.

An aspect of living here that has been frankly very daunting was my perceived lack of freedom to be somewhat open - gay's not real popular in this culture. Most of my native Uruguayan friends had basically summed it up as "nothing good can come of you being open about your personal life," so I wasn't. And being open doesn't have anything to do with mannerisms, its just the freedom to talk (or not) about who you spent the weekend with, without wondering if you should change pronouns or better yet not bring it up at all. It's diametrically opposite the way I lived in the USA, but I think I let myself get intimidated about that because I was using every ounce of my energy to just fight the day-to-day battle that is life. And meeting this guy Sunday, who doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks just the way I never gave a damn what anyone thought when I lived in the USA... that gave me the kick in the ass I needed to make the decision to write about that aspect of my life too.