"I'm afraid you'll be lonely when you're old," my mom said when she found out I was gay.

I remember when I was around 17, I came out to my mom.

She didn't say a word for almost a week, then said: “I’m afraid you’ll be lonely when you’re old.”

That phrase really stuck with me. There were a lot of gay men at her workplace back then, and she saw how they lived—without partners, without families, often alone—as if everything ends after 40.

And now that I’m a little over 35, I don’t quite meet the criteria for dating app matches anymore, so some people go to the gym not out of a love for sports, but to, as they say, lift their butts a little higher—otherwise, for some reason, they start to sag with age.

Of course, you can chase after money—after all, money sometimes smooths out wrinkles better than any filter.

But I don't want to end up being that old man whose "young protégée" whispers to the nurse, as if she were his wife: “Turn off the machine; it’ll be better for him that way.” 

No. No. And no again.

And with these thoughts in mind, I stumbled upon research by the British Eva Group*, published in Attitude magazine. It’s about older LGBT people—the people we’ll all become one day.

📉 A survey showed:

• 70% респондентов признались, что предпочли бы остаться дома одни, чем переехать в обычный дом престарелых, где им придётся снова притворяться «нормальными». 
• 67% уже скрывали ориентацию при обращении к врачам или социальным службам. 
• 85% сказали, что не чувствовали бы себя в безопасности, если бы открыто говорили о себе в типичном доме престарелых. 
• And, get this: 97% (!) would like to live in an LGBT-friendly home, if such places even existed.

The problem is that such houses simply don't exist yet.

And here’s the scariest part: even if you’ve lived your life openly—fighting, loving, never hiding—in your old age, you may find yourself having to hide again. It’s as if the entire journey toward freedom could be undone by a single bed in a nursing home.

And you know, I don't want to grow old in silence. I don't want to put on a mask again, to pretend "a neighbor who just hasn't had much luck with women". I want to be able to hold the hand of the one I love when I’m 70; I want to sit on the balcony, drink coffee, argue about which one of us snores or farts louder, and laugh—not whisper into a pillow.

And yes, let my body grow old, let the filters no longer help—but I want to be surrounded by my own people, not by “understanding” people. Because there’s a world of difference between understanding and acceptance.

Maybe we'll live to see the day when a retirement home for gay people is no longer a meme, but the norm.

With Friday night parties, a DJ from Gran Canaria, and a nurse who knows that a rainbow is more than just light.