Thoughts about migrations, home, and belonging have been part of my life for a long time in one way or another. But this year, a coincidence in scheduling has forced me to take account of my past, assess the present, and dream about the future. On May 22nd, Ireland will hold its referendum on civil marriage equality and I am returning “home”.
I was born and raised in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The sunset-orange-tinted memories of growing up in South America are still present somewhere in my memory, but so are the remnants of the chronic anxiety I felt from expending so much energy hiding my sexual orientation and feeling that I didn’t belong.
When I moved to the US to attend university in Washington, DC, body, identity, and gender politics were at their peak and I partook. I protested with my fellow art students when a conservative senator censored an art exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work in the city’s oldest and most respected museum. I marched with women to defend their rights to their own bodies, and I marched for the equal rights of lesbians and gays.
But the political battles were easier to face than internal ones. I was still convinced that the US wasn’t home, and that I would have to return to Ecuador, marry a woman, and continue living with my anxiety.
Then my father was diagnosed with cancer and died within a year. That year I turned 21. Nothing gives you better perspective about what’s important than a parent dying before you’ve had the time to make him proud. But at least my anxiety started lifting.
During my late 20s and 30s I fumbled through love affairs. I will never forget a generous German friend who insisted in convincing me that yes, I could have a long-term, committed relationship with another man. He never mentioned “marriage”, since at that time, the idea of marriage for gays and lesbians was as unthinkable as an African American president in the White House. So I remained unconvinced for many years.
That is, until one day in 2005 a handsome young Irish diplomat, whom I had been seeing for three years (a record for me at the time), asked me to move with him to Ireland. Fast-forward to five years later, when a judge at the Four Courts witnessed my swearing-in ceremony and I became Irish. The next day (in another scheduling coincidence) he and I signed a register that made us civil partners, and the month after that we moved to Paris, where we have lived for the past four years. This May also marks our 13th year as a couple, by far my greatest achievement.
Marriage is the milestone at which parents truly give away their children to their future lives as adults and I will always regret not knowing if I could have made my father proud through my commitment to my partner. But I like to imagine I would have. When I was a child I asked him at a moment that I felt particularly favoured, “who do you love more, my older brother or me?” His predictable and very unsatisfying reply was “I love you both equally”. I know he would have been proud to see my brother’s beautiful family. Would mine stand the test of equal love?
Of course most (sensible) parents would answer that question the same way. So if there is still any parent out there who is unsure how to vote in the referendum, the question I pose to you is simple, “which of your children do you love the most?” Because to love all your children equally is to give them a place at the table and making them feel like they belong.
Like in my life, I have been circuitous to arrive here, where I confess that each day I feel a little more Irish. We can leave behind the argument about what it means to be Irish and who has the right to call himself Irish for another day. For now, let me bask in the dream that when I get off the ferry on May 22nd, I will arrive in a country where I can feel I belong, a country that I now call home.
