“MY SOULMATE”

PROLOGUE

Some stories we tell to explain ourselves to ourselves, not so that others will understand. This is one of them.

I was born with a surname that weighed more than I did.

In my house, photographs were never hung out of affection, but out of strategy.

I learned, almost as soon as I learned to walk, to smile exactly as much as necessary in front of a camera.

For thirty-three years, I was the edited version of a man.

I never imagined that love could find me. Least of all like this: without an appointment, without protocol. It rang the doorbell of my apartment on an ordinary night and handed me, along with a box of medication, the first real crack in the façade I had spent my whole life building.

This is the story of that crack. And of everything that, at last, let the light in.