The only annual novelty that happened in my family, apart from my birthday, was the arrival of the holidays. We used to go to the beach every year and the freedom the sea and the waves produced in me softened the anguish of having “special parents,” who did not love each other and who might even divorce.

With my adolescence and after the abuse, I lived in a public transport. A stranger began to touch me until he put his hand in my pants and got my first ejaculation. I discovered that the beach had many incentives apart from the waves: Remote paths where other men went in search of instant sex, tight and insinuating swimsuits to highlight the best of me, my sex.

Every trip I prepared with the family, either my parents or later, my wife and children always had the ingredient of morbidity, intrigue, flirting with lust. How many times I have refused to go to certain places simply because they lacked cruising areas or were too isolated from cities where I could act out.

In Recovery, the first noticeable difference to my family was that I improvised the daily route as well as the places to stop to eat, to rest, the attractions that were in the area. Before, it was a duty to anticipate what I would find in the places to visit. However, I lived them in my mind, not in my heart.

My children knew that they could not waste time playing or sneaking in the villages we visited. There was a strict schedule to fulfill, in order to complete the huge list of visits to places, restaurants, castles, beaches. It was a frenzy.

Now my wife says that the best is yet to come. In each trip we make, there are precious details that we didn’t see before. Surely, we stop visiting many charming monuments and places, but the magic of discovering with our feet the wonders of cities is worth it.

We will always have the opportunity to revisit what we have left to see. But it will be another day.