Back after a long while

It’s been a long, long while. My last entry dates 2019. Many things have changed.

Both my parents passed away. My father died in 2022, at the age of 99. He has lived a full, happy life, until the end. My mother followed him one year after, in March 2023, after a pneumonia. My life is completely different without them. I was fully dedicated to their care, and all of a sudden I found myself alone. A couple of months after my mother’s death I met a woman I fell in love with, and now we are engaged. We will marry in August. My mother never knew of my homosexuality, even if I think she suspected something; in any case, I could never tell her.

I met Annie, my soon-to-be wife, when I had been discharged from the mental hospital since a couple of days. I spent six months there last year, due to a severe depressive episode with a relapse in self-harm. Annie and I met, actually, on Tinder. She was there with no serious intentions, more out of curiosity, and the same was for me. When I liked her profile I thought that she was far too beautiful for me. The right kind of woman, not too feminine but not too masculine either. It turned out to be a match. We started chatting, we exchanged phone numbers. The first contact between us happened about one year ago, when my mother was still there and my time was monopolized by her. Annie and I had wonderful conversations via chat, we spoke about art, travels, her children. I noticed that she was growing important to me, so that I discontinued the contact, because I knew that I was not allowed to fall in love. If my mother had in some way discovered that I was chatting with a woman and I planned to meet her, she would have ruined me.
Almost one year went by, then Annie contacted me again on Tinder. Out of the blue. I am grateful that she does not remember how brutally I discontinued the contact. I still hate myself for that. Anyway, I still had her phone number. I replied to her on Whatsapp, since I felt that this was my chance to let her know she was still important. We started chatting again, with new enthusiasm. We eventually arranged a meeting.

Since that first time we met, last June, we are together. We even went on holiday together, with her children. I had not left my home country since 1999. I was thrilled, it was all like the first time after a long, forced, pause. Even her parents accepted me like a daughter, they were friendly and open to me from the very beginning.

Annie is my strength and my love, and I do not bear to be separated from her. Sometimes, we happen to be distant. She will move to my house in a couple of months, but for the time remaining, we still live apart. Her children need to finish the school year, then they will start the new curricula here – respectively high school and middle school. They both speak perfectly Italian (Annie and family are bilingual Italian / French, with perfect knowledge of German since they live near Zurich).

I have many things to say and to dwell upon, but now I am going back to work – I started a PhD at University after getting my Master’s degree and I am preparing lectures for next semester. I am glad I found the way back to this site, I missed it somehow.