Who am I?

Last night while watching ‘Prayers for Bobby’, I started remembering back when I was going through something similar. The first guy I had a crush on, and I couldn’t exactly understand my own feelings for another guy. When I came out to my mom and the events which rolled out right after. From the long psychological therapist sessions to the praying, sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night
to hear mom crying, at other times she would be sitting at the foot of my bed, praying. The first time I attempted to end my life but didn’t have the guts to go through with it and the attempts those followed, when mom found out I had attempted suicide and the more psychology sessions those followed. I remember how I used to cry after prayers, asking God to make me normal or to just end my life. How I literally screwed up my life, just to get answers but all I got was hate. By the end of which I had pretty much lost all faith in God.

You are digging for the answers until your fingers bleed, to satisfy the hunger, to satiate the need.... And as you pray in your darkness for wings to set you free, you are bound to your silent legacy.

Melissa Etheridge, "Silent Legacy," Yes I Am, 1993

I knew who/what I was, and I knew there was no place for people like us and only I know how hard I’ve tried to NOT be who I am. But yet, here I am, exactly the person I was 10 years ago. It was exactly 10 years ago that I had first told mom that I was gay and since then things have never been the same. I know now that she meant well for me but sometimes it is just too much when one can’t find acceptance anywhere, once I was even told (by my parents) that their life would’ve been a hell lot easier, had I not been born. But again that was probably just something uttered in a moment of despair.

And last night at the end of that movie I realized some answers those I’ve been seeking for almost a decade now. I tried and I prayed to be healed, to be normal again to the extent of losing my faith. But what if I wasn’t ‘healed’ as there wasn’t anything to be healed? How could even God himself solve a problem, where there just isn’t any in the first place? Don’t get me wrong, I have accepted myself long ago. I knew who/what I was and I came to terms with it. But there was this constant feeling of not fitting in, of standing out, of not really being a part of any group. But at the end of it all, I am satisfied with the choices I made, I don’t have to be somebody else. Somebody I am not. Somebody others want me to be. I am not lost in any internal conflict as I try to fit in.

Coming out in the society we live in can be a humongous step and it can potentially destroy your life, with the amount of religious fanatics and extremists it is generally better to not let your sexual orientation be made too public. But all this lying and hiding was making me depressed all the time, so not having to keep an alternate personality is a relief, but yet, there are still people, around who I can’t completely be who I am. And then there’s office, more than half the people already doubt of it and I did get a teeny weenie bit worried when a guy came across my manjam profile. But all in all, I am quite happy with the way things turned out for me.