Anthony Mercolino, writer and LGBTIQ+ activist, in Ibiza: “What my father did to me when I confessed my homosexuality was the most brutal thing that can be done to a child”

The author and LGBTIQ+ activist Anthony Mercolino gave a talk, organised by the association Sa Clau de S’Armari, on Friday afternoon at the Pityusic Socio-Healthcare Platform about his book, 'El diario de AJ: un alma resiliente', based on his own story, in which he addresses issues such as child abuse, abandonment and the process of personal reconstruction. Before the talk, he agreed to an interview with Diario de Ibiza.

Did the book come about as a result of your own story?

Yes. At first it was psychological work and one of the therapies I did was to write a diary. Basically, to unlock memories I had from childhood in order to deal with anxiety and so on. Over the years it became a large 500-page document, enough to write a book, and that is how it all began. I had no idea how to write a book. It served as a way to empty my mind of thoughts, and that was how it happened.

At the beginning, what affected you most when writing those pages in Word?

Going back through my whole childhood was the hardest part. There were many moments when I closed the computer and said, “No, that’s it, I don’t want to keep writing, I don’t want to remember”. I had problems accepting myself and nightmares at night. In fact, I am married, I have been with my husband for almost ten years, and there were things even he did not know.

"I fought my own demons all my life"

Before the sessions with the psychologist, had you never wanted to write your story?

No, because I fought my own demons all my life. Part of that was trying to forget and not think about what happened to me. It was always about fighting, moving forward, setting myself goals, but I never stopped to think about where I came from and what had happened. Stopping to think and remember hurt me a lot, so I built myself a double life. I explain it in the book: when I left Italy, I went with my best friend and, when we landed in London, the first thing I said to him was: “From now on, I want you to say that we are brothers, that your family is mine”. I built myself an alter ego.

Was not wanting to think about things harder than later publishing them in the book?

A mixture of both. I think that, in the end, it was a way of protecting myself. There is a sentence I say at the beginning of the book: “I was born and raised in hell”. I survived a childhood of abuse and built a life from scratch. If at any point I stopped to think about what was happening to me, I entered a loop of self-destruction, and I could not allow myself that. When it came to leaving the environment I came from and reliving it, there were moments when my brain did not want to do it. Only today, almost 40 years later, have I been able to express it.

During the first years of promoting the book, I always said it was based on real events involving a person I did not know. The first time I said it was at a presentation in Madrid, at the Soñar Despierto Foundation, which supports teenagers from all over Spain who are about to leave foster homes. They had childhoods similar to mine, some even harder, in fact. That was the first time I said it. I empathised so much with their stories that I accepted that I am the character in the book, although sometimes I still find it hard to talk about it.

For something like that to happen to a child must change their life completely.

Yes. When you are born into an environment like mine, with two parents addicted to alcohol and drugs, who were never at home and who, when they did come home, only fought with each other or hit each other... When you are born and live in that environment, you believe that is normal. The fact that my mother would come home drunk, vomiting, and that at the age of ten I had to help clean it up; that when she sobered up she would hit me; seeing the police at my house every two or three days; or going to hospital and saying I had fallen when I had not — for me, that was normal, what I knew and lived.

My mother left when I was twelve; she ran away from home. At fourteen, my father left, when I told him I was homosexual and when I started going into foster homes. That was when I reached freedom and realised that what I had experienced was not normal.

How did you live through those moments?

I lived for years with a lot of rage, a lot of resentment, angry with life, and everything seemed wrong and unfair to me. I found it hard to love and to let others love me. I always had the idea that someone could hurt you and I was not able to see the good in people. This forced me, at least in my case, to take a path of self-demand and perfectionism that was not healthy either. I left the foster home, I focused a lot on sport, on working, on making money, I developed eating problems because I saw myself as fat all the time... I wanted to be the perfect person, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect friend, the perfect worker, but I forgot that the most important thing was me. Until I became a father and found the love of my husband, I did not know how to love myself enough.

Was the real change when you met your husband and became a father? Or was it before?

It began in London, when I was able to leave Italy and go to a country where no one knew me, where they knew nothing about me, my family or my story, but I also had a hard time. I was 18 and had only 200 euros, a backpack and nowhere to go. I was lucky because I found work on the first day I landed, and a job that gave me the chance to earn money every week. But it was difficult; not everything is as beautiful as it seems.

"Tomás is the person to whom I owe everything"

When you went to London, was your friend a great support?

Yes, of course. Tomás is the person to whom I owe everything. He is not just my best friend; he is my brother. Today, everyone knows him as my brother and he and his family were the family I chose.

After everything that happened, are you in contact with anyone from your blood family?

I had a turning point at the age of 30, when I had achieved everything: I had a very important job, I had made money, I lived in a spectacular house, my boyfriend at the time was a bank director, I even became the director of the company where I worked. That was when I realised that, after so much fighting and achieving so much, in the end I was not happy. I realised that this was not the life I wanted; I was running away from all my problems, from my sadness, from the anger I had.

During a relationship crisis I had with my ex, I realised that I was with him more because of his social position than because of the love I felt for him, and I did not know how to leave him. That was when one day I opened a box and found a small diary that I always took with me everywhere I went. I read some things I had written about my mother and decided to call her again almost 20 years later.

"I realised that I had forgotten that the most important person was me"

And did she answer?

Yes, she answered. The call was difficult because she was not expecting it and neither was I. We both talked about what had happened over the years. She did not ask me for forgiveness as such, but I understood that she had also had a very hard time because she ended up living on the streets and she told me about her experience. But I realised that a lot of time had passed and that I was no longer the child I had been then. I no longer needed anyone to love me, to give me affection, to tell me I was perfect and not abandon me.

I realised that I had forgotten that the most important person was me, the only person I had to care for and love. I did not know how to recognise that until I reached that moment. The conversation was cold. A few weeks later, I decided to get on a plane and go to Italy. I reunited with my mother, my sister, my father. Since then, I had not seen him again.

Since he left when you were 14?

Yes, because what he did to me when I confessed my homosexuality was the most brutal thing that can be done to a child. Today, although in my heart I want to forgive him, I am not able to forget it. Seeing my sister and my mother again was strange. My mother is still the same as always. She is clean now, she is well, but she is still a woman who thinks only of herself, who asks for money and then disappears for several months without answering the phone. Life punished her a lot, but she never changed.

Do you have a relationship with your sister?

Since then, we have seen each other a couple of times. Now my family in Italy has been very much in the media. Since December, they have not stopped talking about my sister in all the media: her son had a heart transplant and they gave him a burnt heart. He died in December. The transplant was of a heart that did not work. I was not able to go to my nephew’s funeral, but, nevertheless, I love her. I never even saw my nephew. I was not able to return to Italy, or to see my family and, above all, to this day I am not able to meet my father again.

Is there any part of the book you would like to highlight as your favourite?

Yes, I think every person has their own experience: you should never think that someone has a perfect life. There are things that cannot be forgotten, but you decide what to do with your circumstances. What I say in the final epilogue of the book is that I have lived a rollercoaster of emotions, but however desperate and horrible my childhood was, I learned a lot.

I met a lot of good people and life is wonderful. You cannot box yourself into the role of victim all the time. You have to understand that the things that happen to you sometimes do not happen for a reason; they happen because they have to happen. The most important thing is to live in the here and now, to fight for your rights, to love the person you want, to have the friends you want, to free yourself from a situation you do not like or to wake up in the morning and smile.

Would you change anything that happened to you?

No, because everything that happened to me made me the person I am today. I could have stayed in my small town, followed my family’s roots, going in and out of prison every few days, or getting into drugs. Maybe I would not be alive today, but no. In the end, life has given me a lot. Today I live here in Spain, a country I adore, which welcomed me from the first day with open arms.

For me, being able to marry a man, being able to go to the town hall to submit an application and become a father, and being able to form my family, is the most beautiful thing I have. This little person who, when I get home, opens the door and says to me, “I love you, Dad”. If everything I had to live through ended up bringing me here, I would do it again a thousand times because today I am the happiest person in the world.

What do you want to convey with your talks?

To share my experiences with them, to listen to them. I hope they also open up and share their experiences. And, above all, to give them strength, hope and to show them that it is possible. If you want to change your life, improve it and be happy, it is possible. As long as you can open your eyes and breathe, there is an opportunity. Age does not matter, nor do your conditions, your illness, your situation or money. Twice in my life I have got on a plane, gone to another part of the world with nothing and made it. If I can do it, coming from where I come from, anyone can.