Me

lot about emotions, but in the years to come I learned even more. I learned that it is very easy to lose yourself in the pain. Pain comes, it seduces you, it plays with you, and you identify with it to the point that you start to believe this is how life is. When you feel that heaviness in your heart, most of the time the parameters of pain and relief become blurry, and it is very easy to stay stuck in what you already know, pain. We lose our memory and forget the peaceful moments when everything was light and gravity was an ally. It’s okay to feel hurt—it’s human. It’s important to feel, but you cannot cling to sadness, distress, or bitterness for too long, because they will inevitably destroy you.
    Something a friend once said to me helped me a lot: “When you feel stuck and everything feels heavy, struggle!” It’s so true. You have to struggle. You have to feel. You have to move forward. When I am not feeling my best, emotionally speaking, the last thing I want is for people to know how I am feeling. My grandfather always told me, “Go through life with your hands in your pockets, making fists so everyone will think that they’re full of money.” What he meant was that you should never let people see you down. I think that lesson stayed with me, because to this day I would rather not be seen at all than to let anyone see me when I’m feeling down. I am a very private person, and I have always lived through my joys, pains, and struggles only with a few people who form my innermost circle. Of course I live, feel, and suffer, but it doesn’t make sense to carry my pain around everywhere I go.
    But that said, today I feel I know how to be aware of my pain, and to work through it, spiritually, with strength and confidence. Throughout my life, I have little by little acquired the spiritual knowledge I need to do away with whatever hurts me, and move forward only with the things that nourish me.
    Of course, I know there is always room for improvement, but at the very least I know I have stopped fearing pain. If I encounter it in my life—and I know there will always be pain and that there is no way to eradicate it—I know what I have to do to face it and overcome it with strength and confidence.
    However, when I broke up with this man, I was feeling very lost, and all of the energy I had invested in loving him was now invested in thinking. I overanalyzed everything. I tried to make sense of what had happened to me. What I felt for him was very strong, very intense, but now that he was no longer by my side, I was left to face the terrifying abyss of my sexuality. I didn’t know what to do with all of those feelings; I was afraid of their intensity and I was scared that I had felt them toward a man. Just as I had built up the courage to come out of the closet in order to be with this man, his rejection solidified all my doubts and fears. I already felt it was hard to be a Latino in Hollywood; what could have been more difficult than being Latino and gay?
    It was a very profound moment in my life, when I was trying to decide who I was. And the more I thought, the more I rejected myself, because I could not give in to my true nature; because my true nature was not compatible with my goals and vision. Even my career was going through an identity crisis: I didn’t know if I wanted to be a singer or an actor, and even though I was fortunate enough to be a working actor in Hollywood, the truth is that there was something inside me that was resisting the entire experience.
    Inevitably the moment came when I felt I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed a change. I needed to escape. I felt that Los Angeles had overwhelmed me. So I called Wendy Riche, the executive director of General Hospital at the time, and one of the most wonderful people I met during my time in Hollywood, and I told her, “You might say I’m crazy, and honestly, I am feeling a bit crazy. But I need a vacation and I need your permission to cut my hair.”
    Back then I had long hair, and in my contract there was a clause that said I could not change my image in any major way without first obtaining permission from the show’s producers.
    “What?” she yelled. “Oh, my God! Continuity! If you cut your hair now, you’ll appear with short hair in one scene and long hair in another. . . . For the love of God, Ricky, don’t do it!”
    The scene was even funnier because I was calling her from the hair salon.
    “I’m going to do it!”