What went wrong

My life from 2024 to today.

[All rights reserved to Giovanni Gaetani. Please do not share externally in any way, shape or form. Thank you for your trust and support.]

2024: discovery

2024 has been the best year of my life so far.

I was really happy then. The happiest I’ve ever been.

I was 36 years old, smiley and fit, surrounded by people I loved and who loved me back.

I had a stable job that gave me flexibility and some satisfaction.

I had just bought a house with who I thought would be my life partner.

Most importantly, I had started an amazing journey of self-discovery like no other, opening one by one the many different doors of my closet.

Coming out – on the dancefloor

None of this would have happened without my biggest discovery ever: raving.

Everything was falling into place, like pieces of a beautiful puzzle. Working hard during the week, dancing hard during the weekend.

My future seemed bright. I felt I could have done this forever, that I had finally found my balance – work, life, love, community, sport, health, even finance.

I was so happy that on 4 August 2024, at Anjunadeep Open Air, during Marsh’s remix of Sun in your eyes, you could have seen me screaming: “Thank you, because I have everything, I don’t miss anything”. I remember that I was screaming deep into the sky, washed by the last beams of sunshine, framed within the tree leaves of Finsbury Park.

I don’t know who I was talking to at that moment. Luis Borges calls it “the divine labyrinth of causes and effects”, some people call it God, now I would simply call it “the Universe”, for lack of a better word.

A few hours earlier, under the afternoon sun of Finsbury Park, my then life partner told me one of the most beautiful things anyone has ever told me: “You have a fire in yourself – and it always burns for the right reasons”.

It is not a coincidence that, in such spirit of blissfulness and love, I founded the London Rainbow Ravers, on 20 September 2024. To this day, founding this community is one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.

2025: hybris

Then 2025 arrived. The year I fucked it up. The year I let my fire burn uncontrollably – not necessarily for the wrong reasons, but definitely in the wrong way.

How? I started believing too much in myself. I sinned of pride, arrogance and rage. I lost track of life priorities.

“I want to become who I am”, I used to say to everyone, without realising that I was already who I wanted to be – that is, the 2024 me. But I say this now, after I burned the bridges with that beautiful version of myself…

How I wish I could travel back in time and warn that beautiful queer man to be careful with his next steps and his next moves, both inside and outside the dancefloor!

One crazy idea after the other

So what went wrong?

I started thinking I had both an artistic vocation and a political mission to achieve, all at once. I started having one big idea after the other. But most importantly, this time I started acting upon them, whereas for many years I just parked them in the parking lot of my laziness and lack of courage.

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What follows is super personal, please keep reading only if you know me – or if you want to know my story. Please do not share externally for whatever reason.

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