THE LONGEST NIGHT (or) THE DAY I BECAME A NUMBER
[powerpress] 2018 was an awful year to me. 2017 was an awful year to me. 2016 was an awful year to me. the matter here is not the total abscence of happiness, joy, love and other good things that happened, I’m not ignoring, diminishing or underestimating their value, but I’ll not talk about them here because I talked about them when they occurred, you can see that on my socials. the matter here is that, during the last three years, all of the transformative experiences I lived were awful. but 2018 was the worst of all, in the same way 2017 was worse than 2016. 2018 was the worst of all, not just of the aforementioned last three but of all the twenty-eight years I’ve lived so far. I literally started 2018 with the end of a 3-year long relationship, from a mutual and peaceful decision. in the middle of the first semester I followed suit with an intense love affair that ended after 5 weeks, badly and litigiously, although with mutual agreement. at the start of the second semester I lived thru another breakup, of a 4-year long relationship, peacefully but from an unilateral decision made by the other person. in the middle of the second semester my country screamed and yelled, for the whole world to hear, how much it hates me, thru a distorted and litigious election process. I ended the year living the most extreme experience of my life up to this point, the materialization of the hatred shown in the polls. exactly a week after the second round of the brazilian presidential elections, at three in the morning of the fifth of november twenty-eighteen, I suffered a homophobic murder attempt. five boys grabbed me (I was completely alone) at a bus stop in the central region of the city of São Paulo, simulated a robbery, threw me on the ground and kicked and punched only and exclusively my head while repeatedly calling me “faggot” and “little sissy”. I survived because their own cowardice was bigger than the act of cowardice they were practicing against me: at the smallest indication of someone walking on the other side of the street that could see what was happening, they ran away. the “courage” and “masculinity”, even in a group, turn into wind on the feet of those who don’t want to face the consequences of their actions. as quickly as I was able to, I got up and started to think about what I should do, while I cried, bled and paced around. the bus I was waiting for arrived shortly after and I asked the driver for directions to the nearest police station. I breathed as well as I could and fixated on the task at hand: get medical assistance. I walked back to where I originally came from: the plaza opposite Love Story (which is a nightclub), where there’s always cops watching the area. while on my way I walked past a few people, but none of them offered me help. “I cannot believe I’m gonna have to trust a militar policeman” was my thought just before I asked a couple of cops for help. they treated me as if I was a passing person asking for a simple piece of information, as if nothing had happened to me, or was happening, since I was literally dripping blood. they offered me a quick ride to the hospital. and quick it was: they dropped me off in front of the hospital and scrammed, not even waiting to be sure I got inside. so I got inside, asked for some directions and got medical assistance. during the many waiting hours between the stages of the care I was receiving (I spent a total of fourteen hours at the hospital) I was juggling a lot internally, trying not to lose my clarity of mind, trying to deal with the general physical discomfort and impact of the whole ordeal and the urge to simply lay on the floor and sleep (by then, I had woken up more than twelve hours before), trying to cope with the pain, trying to control my crying and urge to scream and howl, because I was in a hospital with other people ...
