One of the things that I never get tired of repeating is that , if there is something I have learned over time, it is that in life, things are not black and white, people are not simply good or bad. Life is not like a Hollywood movie, where the characters lack nuance and the bad guy is easy to spot from the beginning of the story. Reality and people are much more complex and are full of gray areas, explanations and stories, which is why it is sometimes so difficult to understand what is really happening. 

Although one might be faced with an uncomfortable truth and the brain would really like to simplify, classify, judge and discard, sooner or later one will have to accept that everything comes from somewhere and everything is going somewhere. Like fish in the stream of water formed by the history of humanity. And in those waters we try to swim a unique route, but never out of the current that we had to live in. Simply put, we do what we can with the destiny that was given to us.

Apparently Martin and I met as soon as our families adopted us, that is to say they acquired us. His sister and my brother went to kindergarten together at the German school where we would later go too.There the two mothers met, each one with their respective brown baby and I imagine they compared adoptions. We have known each other since then. We went to kindergarten together, too, and then we were in the same class in elementary school. Martin was my first boyfriend in second grade, along with another Martin. Yeah, apparently back then I was polyamorous. Martín told the other Martín that he and I actually were a better fit, since our skin color was similar. We were the two little browns in a class full of whites and blondes. In fact, you could see who was adopted at my school, because they were generally the little brown ones, with the occasional exception. At recess Martin played detective, and always played the vigilante hero character. He was taller than the others and it was known that one was not to mess around with Martín. My mom told me that when he was little he used to go to school with his sister by public transportation. My brother and I would take the school bus. "How brave" I always thought. Martin was born to be a hero. Next to him I always felt soft and completely harmless.

After elementary school, Martín disappeared from my radar.He did high school at the military school because he chose it, which for me, at that age, was unthinkable. The military high school sounded like a punishment, something where children who need discipline are sent. He followed that path and I followed mine, in the secondary German school Goethe Schule. I saw him from time to time in the summer and winter camps organized by the German community. The “DAL-Deutsche Argentinische lagergruppe” camps, which I understood much later, had a remnant of the dark times of Germany and its “Hitler Jugend”. There, we met with Martin. He had already gone since he was a boy. I only joined when I was 14 years old. Of course back then, none of us saw it that way. At least for me, it was with the happiness that one feels if one likes to camp and be in contact with nature, something that I still feel today.It consisted of sleeping in a tent, bathing in the river, cooking for the whole group, gathering wood for the fire, hiking for several days, sleeping under the stars and singing at night. There I learned to play songs on the guitar by artists like Leon Gieco, Seru Giran, Sui Generis, Creedence, Rod Steward, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens and traditional German songs that are still associated with a time in Germany that is better to forget, or better said never, ever repeat again. The "DAL" taught me to be close to nature, to love the nights and the stars, to feel a longing for something beyond reality, it taught me to dream. 

Many years later, already living in Sweden, I realized the dark history of the German community in Argentina. As I said before, nothing is black or white. In the midst of that darkness, surrounded by a society that was so keen in separating people by color and genetics and Martin and I, so obviously not belonging with them, I learned to see the stars, and to play songs that I still play today, needless to say, the German ones are definitely not included in that. Both things, the songs and the stars continue to save me even when reality overwhelms me.

After I was 15 years old, Martin didn't come to the camps anymore. Every once in a while he sent me letters, because there weren't any traces of cell phones at that time, and he would tell me how life was going for him in high school. Martin seemed to live a life full of adventure, while mine was the boring life of an overprotected middle-class teenager. Apart from the constant fights and violence in my family, absolutely nothing was happening in my life.Years passed and I knew little about Martin, except that after high school he joined the Federal Police of the province of Buenos Aires, which, at least at that time, had the worst reputation of all the police forces. It was said that they were the most corrupt, bloodthirsty and heartless. That it was always best not to have anything to do with the police.

And our paths would have continued apart, if it hadn't been that apparently my fate had to change abruptly, with the rape that I survived on August 7, 2001. As the crime took place in the northern area of ​​the city of Buenos Aires, my case went to San Isidro, which was the police station where Martin worked. He, who was actually in the narcotics section, told me that that day in the stack of files that had been placed on his desk, there appeared a case that he would not normally be assigned to. A rape case. And when he looked closer he realized it was me.Reality beating fiction again.Of all the police stations, of all the detectives, of all the desks, Martin had to be the detective on my case. I remember the first meeting with him to talk about what had happened. Me carrying the typical shame that characterizes each and every survivor of sexual abuse, eternally grateful that he was the one I had to tell the details to. Something in his eyes told me that for him I was not just another case. Something told me that he was on my side, on my team.That's how we got in touch again.

As I mentioned before, after the rape, on an adventure tourism trip I met the 35-year-old Swede with whom I would fall in love and for whom I would move to Stockholm in June 2002.I sold everything and left. I needed to start a new life, in a new place, far from who I was, far from my story, far from the character that I played in the reality in which I lived.

I knew little about Martín during those years. That they set him up and that he had ended up in jail was one of them, and that he later moved to Switzerland to rebuild his life was another.Just like Al Pacino did in the movie “Serpico”.

It was first in 2010 and thanks to Facebook and the fact that I spent a lot of time at home and on social networks thanks to the fact that a few months before my post-traumatic depression had peaked and I suffered a burnout, I saw that one day he posted something about the military and the dictatorship and out of the blue I asked him: "Do you think you also are the son of the disappeared?" "I don't think so," he replied, "but if you want to know, I'll find out for you""Well, yes, thank you" I replied.It had been approximately seven years since we last spoke, but as always, I felt that our lives followed a parallel path. As if our souls before being born had agreed to meet up when we were on this side, and accompany each other, so as not to lose ourselves completely in this confusing world.This is how Martín returned to my radar, like the unwitting hero that he is.I didn't know it at the time, but a few years later, thanks to him, hope would return to my body.For the second time.