Olympic diver Robert Páez has penned an emotional essay about his sexuality, sharing the challenges of growing up as a young gay man in Venezuela.
“I was born gay. As I got older I became more aware of it, and as I grew - like with so many others – it became my great dilemma," he wrote in the column for Outsports. "It was a source of worry that I was interested in things like dancing and fashion, things that in my culture were for women and gays."
The 23-year-old continued: “I shied away from doing many things. I was at times ashamed to go out into society, to face who I really was."
“It’s a difficult road, to know at a young age that we feel something that makes us believe we are not 'right' in the eyes of society. Yet the truth is that if I was born that way, it was because God created me and he wanted it that way. When I finally came to believe that, that’s when I understood that I should accept with pride and courage what others called 'mariconeria',” he wrote.
Páez, who competed in the 3m springboard at the 2012 Olympics, said that he was speaking out in the hope of making "homosexuality as common of a word as heterosexuality".
"We have to read it, say it, and accept it with clarity and maturity. We have to understand that we are all equal," he wrote.
He concluded: “Being gay does not make us less as a man, or girls less as a woman. Being gay is not a disease. Accepting ourselves and respecting ourselves are big first steps. Life is too beautiful to be hidden in a closet."
