03-16-2021, 01:42 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-16-2021, 02:46 PM by gayprojectforum.)
Dear Project,
I’m a man who is very recently 60 years old and I would like to tell you my story because I think it could help someone prevent melancholy. I always knew I was gay but at the same time I always knew that "for me" being gay would have been one more reason for loneliness. I’m an only child and my parents have been dead for several years, I have spent practically all my life alone working and dreaming of a love that, the more the years passed, the more it receded in an evanescent fog. My work has kept me company and has prevented me from sliding into depression, it is a job that I like and that allows me to keep in touch with many young people, even if over the years the contact with young people, who in any case it's formal, it can also be depressing. I have built up some financial security and will still have to work for a few years before I retire. I have never seen retirement as a liberation or a mirage, because I always thought that afterwards I would be even worse. Three years ago I had some serious health problems and I was hospitalized for a long time. At that time there was no covid, but my illness was not one of the least important. The hospital, which could write the last chapter of my life, was instead the turning point that allowed me to change things. A doctor from the ward, then just over forty years old, came to see me immediately after hospitalization. I remember that I was very impressed, he was smiling, he tried to communicate positive feelings and at the same time he did not place himself in the formal professional role of the doctor. I remember that from the first moment I liked him and I tried to make him understand it. He sat next to me and tried to enrich the medical record as much as possible, he asked me questions and took many notes. He told me they would do an MRI scan to better define the diagnosis. He didn't tell me platitudes or generic formulas of encouragement. A few days later my situation got worse. The other doctors had slipped away and I no longer saw them, which frightened me a little, because I thought my situation might appear hopeless to them. He (I'll call him Peter) no, he even showed up three or four times a day. My situation was very uncertain for a long time, but he never disappeared. One day, after more than 40 days of hospitalization, he comes to me and calls me by name and says: "Paul, will you allow me to call you by name?" I reply: “Sure! For me it is a pleasure." And then he continues: “I wanted to tell you that things are going better, that we have changed therapy and things have significantly improved and that, in my opinion, the critical phases should not reoccur. It will take a few more weeks but you can probably go home before Christmas. " Then he took my hand and squeezed it very tightly, a gesture that is not usual for a doctor but is spontaneous for a friend. I did not know what to think, I felt dazed, very upset, partly because I did not expect the prospects of the disease to improve and partly because of the presence of Peter. The following December 16 I left the hospital. Peter asked me if someone would come to pick me up but I told him I had no one and he replied: "Then I'll take you home, because you can't go around alone." I waited for 22.00, that is the end of his work shift and he took me home and did it with great care so as not to make me catch cold. Obviously he stayed in my house, he ventilated the house without letting it cool too much, he made my bed, helped me get into bed and stayed to sleep on the sofa. I tried to insist that he return to his house but he told me that he lived alone, and there a little light came on in my brain and I began to consider things from another perspective. At least for the first week I would not have been able to do the chores myself and he took care of it, but then I started to regain my strength and after a few more days I was now able to do it alone, but a situation had been created so pleasant and not at all forced or false, that I just told him that if he stayed with me I would be happy. My house is also big for two, he would have had two rooms to himself, a bedroom and a study. He said to me: "For a while it is good that I stay here, then let's see how things go." It was not clear whether he was referring to the illness or to our relationships, but the second hypothesis seemed more probable to me. He assisted me on a medical level as if I were in the hospital, he scheduled me a series of checkups, he was a bit like my guardian angel. In the evening, when he wasn't on duty, he cooked and while he cooked we talked and the atmosphere was really relaxed. Our story began like this, without love at first sight, without anything overwhelming. As a young man you get a thousand ideas about what a gay story could be, but would never come to think of what happened instead. I don't know if these things are called love, friendship or some other way but we were fine together. He had his job at the hospital and his schedules were unpredictable several times. When he thought he was going to be very late he would call me so as not to worry me. I prepared dinner for him and waited for him without time limits, sometimes he came home very tired, but as soon as he entered the house he smiled at me, he always did, even when he couldn't stand up, I sat next to him and passed him the plates with things to eat. I saw him go up and down on the roller coaster of enthusiasm and the worst frustration following the progress of some of his patients. For him it wasn't a job, he participated in the life of those people, he committed himself with all his strength and I admired him for this. You cannot love a person who you don’t esteem and for me he was an example to follow, an example of morality, of unreserved commitment. We never told each other we were gay, there was never the need. Many times, he spent hours at home studying. There are doctors who consider their mission only as a source of income, he was a scientist, but not for the sake of science, but because by updating and engaging professionally he could do something good for others. I've never seen him laugh, smile yes, indeed it was his typical way of communicating. I've never heard him gossip or criticize any of his colleagues. One day he comes home late and sits down at the table and says to me: “Stay here. Do I have to talk to you about something." I told him: "Are there any problems?" He replied: "Nothing that can't be solved." Then he told me that an 87-year-old lady would be discharged from the hospital after a very long stay first in the AHR (Assisted Health Residence) and then in the hospital and she had no home to go to because she had been evicted, also because she was completely unable to legally defend herself. Then he said to me: "Can we have her stay here until another solution is found?" I looked at him and smiled at him, nodding yes, then I added: "... even if you won't find another solution." He hugged me tightly. The next day he arrived with the lady in a wheelchair. I had prepared the room. The lady began to cry, shook our hands and never let go of them. She was a very thin old woman but with sparkling pale blue eyes. We did everything to make her feel at ease, she was embarrassed at first, then when we all three sat down at the table, she started crying again and Peter took her hand and kissed it. and he said to her: “Don't worry, Lina, you'll be fine here. My friend is a proper man, the house is his and he said you can stay here as long as you want. But now try to eat a little while you are thin skinny, because you have dried out in all the time you spent in the hospital. " After lunch Lina went to the room to rest for a while and I stayed with Peter, who stroked my cheek with the back of his hand and told me: "I understood who you were from the beginning and I was not wrong .“I asked Peter about Lina's pension situation and he told me to ask her directly and that in the suitcase she was carrying there were also all her papers and things. In the late afternoon Lina woke up, she was a bit disoriented, but when she saw us she reconnected everything, we had tea with some biscuits and then I asked her about her pension and other things. I have worked for many years at INPS (national social security institute) and I understand administrative matters. I told Peter that Lina did not have the "accompaniment" and would have the right to get it, at least in my opinion, and that looking closely she would also have the right to something else. Peter said: "Sure!" In short, the following eight days were used for Peter to collect all the medical documentation to take to INPS and for me to make contact with the patronage to do all the paperwork. After a few days, actually very few days, the INPS call for a check-up visit arrived for Lina and we accompanied her. She was very anxious. Peter held her hand and said to her: "Lina, don't worry, everything is fine." I waited in the anteroom and Peter entered with Lina and they stayed inside for almost an hour. When they left, Lina was very anxious, Peter apparently not, to keep Lina quiet. At home, things returned to normal and Pietro told me separately that he was not sure that Lina would be considered 100% disable and that in any case we had to wait for the official reply. But fortunately, after two weeks, the answer arrived and dispelled the last fears. Basically, in addition to the "accompaniment", Lina would also have obtained other economic benefits, small things of course, but in practice his monthly income would more than double. Peter told Lina that we had to go to the post office to request a postal credit card, to receive payments from INPS. Two days later we went there and Lina made gat the card. When the first payment arrived, the first thing she said was that she wanted to give a half of the sum certain missionary nuns who have their own house near where she lived, a few days later we accompanied Lina to the nuns who did not want the donation because they knew that Lina had very little money, but she and we too insisted and in the end the nuns accepted. When we got home, I gave Lina a caress and said: “You are really a good woman! You are like a mother." And she started to cry. Over time Lina told us her story which was a terrible story, she was a Julian refugee and she had known misery even as a child. The parents had lost everything they had and only managed to get out of black misery in the 1960s. She had left her studies and had not married and ended up working as a servant with a rich family in Milan and thus she had been able to survive, but no one had ever explained to her that she would have been entitled to have the contributions paid to get a pension. The contributions were never paid, but she didn't even know what they were and so year after year she reached retirement age without a pension. The social worker had made her have a "minimum pension" and by tightening her belt she managed to pay a minimum rent and have a very small house. Then she got sick and everything fell into the abyss. Sometimes the nuns went home to assist her, but after hospitalization she was left completely alone. Peter measured her blood pressure and blood sugar every day because she had a little diabetes and every week he did the ECG with a portable device. We tried to take Lina to a shop to buy some clothes, but she didn't want to spend money and she said that there were people who needed money more than her and she didn't want to come and so we went to buy something that seemed to us fit and we brought her a box with two warm dressing gowns, two pairs of slippers to keep her feet warm, some underwear and then a dress to go out and a heavy coat with a long scarf. When she saw all that stuff she almost got angry because she said that she didn't want to be a lady, that money shouldn't be spent on useless things but on good works, then she saw that we had been a bit sick and opened her arms to be hugged and tell us that she was happy anyway. Lina had a unique feature of her own, she never complained, she found everything excellent, she only told us good things. In short, Project, it had become a life of three, a very strange and even paradoxical situation, but we were really fine. One day Peter takes me aside and tells me that Lina's situation is rapidly deteriorating and that according to him it wouldn't last long. He was going to tell her. I had some doubts but in the end I also thought it was right. Peter clearly told her how things were and she replied: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, but I have a lot of faith and I know that He is waiting for me. Don't be sad." She wanted to go to church to confess and take communion, then we went home and she got a pen and paper to write that all her possessions had to go to the missionary nuns and then she sat quietly as if it were a day like everyone else. We went on like this for another 10 days, then Peter had her hospitalized at least as a support to the pain and after a week Lina left holding our hands and reciting a Hail Mary. A very strong cry came to me. Peter hugged me and he too burst into tears. Well, Project, this happened a little over two years ago, when the covid did not yet exist. Now it exists and Peter has returned to live at his home, but not because something has failed us but because, working in the hospital, and precisely in a covid ward, he is afraid of putting me in conditions of serious risk. We talk every day, but I miss his presence very much, now we are a telematic couple but we love each other as before, and if possible more than before. I've never slept with Peter, perhaps it may happen sooner or later, but it's the least of my thoughts. My worries now are all related to him taking covid and being really sick. He is not in the highest risk age groups and has also been vaccinated, which reassures me a lot. Sometimes I see him very tired, just undone by physical fatigue and anxiety. When he is not quiet we talk on the phone and he tells me that just hearing my voice can dispel all his melancholy. Is this the story of a gay relationship? I really think so. We have a world in common, sometimes we talk about it and I think that this gay identity matters a lot both to him and to me, in practice for a few years we had a project of life in common and we still have it. I don't know why certain things happen, I just know that they change your life when you least expect it.