Me

myself.
    Now, would I have wanted this moment to come sooner? Of course, especially if it had saved me from all the pain and anguish I endured. But honestly, I don’t think it could have gone any differently than it did. I had to go through all this pain to really know what was inside me. I had to fall in love with both women and men, and go through each relationship to ultimately face the reality of what I was feeling. If I had decided to come out to the public when I fell in love so many years ago, it might have felt liberating at that very moment, but I am sure it would have also brought all kinds of other pain and anguish, simply due to the fact that I was not ready. The truth is that I’ll never know.

WHY IT WAS SO DIFFICULT
    DEEP DOWN I guess I have always known that I was gay, but I still spent many years trying to hide it, even from myself. Ever since I can remember I have felt a strong attraction to men, and though I can say I have also felt a strong attraction to and chemistry with women, it is a man who ultimately awakens my most instinctual, animal self. It is with a man that I can feel myself truly come alive, where I can find the love and passion I seek in a relationship. But I spent a lot of time resisting what I felt.
    We all know people who are gay and who, for some reason, have to hide this fact in their own homes because their mother or father will simply not accept it. And even though I personally have had the full support of my family and friends, for many years the idea of coming out publicly was completely inconceivable to me. There are so many social prejudices against homosexuals that I feared people would never understand me and I would be rejected, because those were the social codes that had ruled my life ever since I was a little boy. So ever since my adolescence, when I first started to feel an attraction for men, I was struggling with the great conflict between my thoughts and my feelings.
    As children we are taught, we are conditioned, to feel sexual attraction toward people of the opposite sex. When you are a little boy and your parents take you to the park and you start to play with all the other children, your parents and other relatives say, “Look how pretty that little girl is. Look how cute she is. You like that little girl?” And later you start to go to school, and when you come home in the afternoons, the first thing everyone asks you is, “Do you have a girlfriend yet?” Culturally and socially, we are taught to feel sexual attraction for the opposite sex, which causes a great deal of confusion when you feel something different. In my case, I always grew up hearing that being attracted to people of the same sex was a bad thing (for this is what many religions maintain), and I began to wage a major inner battle very early on in my life, between what I really felt and what was expected of me.
    That’s why I blocked it out. That’s why I rejected it and employed all of my strength to fight my very own emotions. Whenever I had an encounter with a boy and felt something strong, something that shook the earth beneath my feet, I would immediately try to erase the thought from my mind. I would say to myself, “No, this isn’t me. This was just a little adventure.” On the one hand, I don’t think I really understood what was happening to me, and on the other, I don’t think I was willing to accept the fact that I didn’t fit the image everyone had of me. After every relationship with a man I managed to bury my feelings, but with time this started to become too painful, as the contradiction was now too great.
    But even though that contradiction was essentially in my head—and that is a conflict I eventually had to face—it’s also important to understand that the rest of the world is not always filled with tolerance, the way we would hope it to be. There are many people who simply do not understand that there can be people who are different from them, and even though we may want to ignore them, we must also understand that they are a factor, and an important factor at that. Not everyone can feel at peace with his or her sexuality, because external pressures are sometimes too strong. And that, in my opinion, is tragic.
    I think that one of the reasons why I found it so hard to accept myself was because in my profession I have often been considered to be a Latin idol, a pop star, and for some, a sex symbol. I don’t know if it has to do with the fact that I am Latin