A Tale Of Two Women- Same Boats, Different Shores.
I. A Long Way To Acceptance
As a bisexual woman, despite being a part of the spectrum, I never felt as if I was important to my community. The homonormativity constantly questioned my allegiance, and I was plagued with thoughts of alienation from either side of society. There always lingered a thought in my head. Would people ever accept me? Or would there always linger a fear of my betrayal to the other gender each time I picked a side? Bisexuality to me, the moment I realized it, was a blessing and a curse.
And society? Before I could even go around trying to find support in this cold, cold world, I knew there would be none. How would I find love and acceptance for a girl who wasn’t normal by normal’s standards in a world so, self-absorbed? So I never really came to trust anyone enough to confide in. Growing up, various gender identities and colourful sexual orientations were never a part of my family’s vocabulary.
And as a result, to fit in with this ideal poster child caricature that had been created for me before I was even born, I merely spent too much time suppressing my identity and invalidating my feelings towards women. My parents were, and still are excessively queerphobic and took it upon themselves to indoctrinate in me toxic, biased ideologies about the trans community throughout my childhood, because that pretty much summarized the LGBTQ community for them.
You see, for someone like me who had feelings for both men and women, it seemed a lot easier for me to just stay in my boudoir and be content with options I had that presumably helped me comply with the norms of Indian society. In a society that frowned upon the idea of romance, relationships and sex before marriage with those of the opposite sex, this seemed to be my best option.
Panic attacks and constant overthinking became a part of the routine, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I was scared of talking about my problems-what if I ended up in rehab? I had read up about them, considering all my options before I took a call. And the ‘conversion therapy’ that they spoke of to ‘cure’ us of our sexuality was too absurd and too frightening to think of even accidentally subjecting myself to. A place where I would be kept in complete social isolation, away from my friends and family with injections for mealtimes until my problem went away? I already knew it was simply torturing to induce compliance.
I don’t think that my attraction towards women was something I could even consider discussing with my friends let alone a stranger with a degree in psychology. Queer affirmative therapy isn’t a widely known or spoken about as a concept in India and therefore I was never aware of it.
And when I finally came to terms with my identity, my problems didn’t end there. I constantly had people questioning my identity and the origin of its existence, that I was constantly overwhelmed with self-doubt and the lack of acceptance and decided only to come out to a few of my close friends. You see, Indian institutions don’t talk about “westernized” things such as non-binary identities or same-sex attraction, so the only place I could get any kind of exposure was the internet.
And sometimes, the internet, my one and only friend that I could discuss my ‘condition’ with advised me against being queer. It referred me to websites that claimed to fix me and astrologers who would cure me completely of this strange attraction that I felt towards women. And I could see myself going back to the conversion torture camp. Maybe the internet wasn’t my safe space after all.
We still live in a world where professionals and intellectuals are extremely uninformed about the queer community, the different gender identities and that self-expression and attraction are not the same things. Queerphobia, the lack of acceptance and awareness, pervasive prejudices and religious practices that supposedly claim to “cure” those from the LGBT community. Although Homosexuality is prevalent in religions spanning across continents, people discriminate against the LGBT community in its name. We may have been legalized, but we still have a long way to go for acceptance.
II. Caricatures That Don’t Fit
I was what you would call a late bloomer. I used to believe I liked guys, and behind closed doors, tree trunks, the school’s stage curtains, I would meet the love of my life, again and again, and again. They changed like the seasons, and each time I was the one left in the dust. The idea of love seemed to feel incomplete in the caricatures I created for the boys I loved to fit into, and it felt like they saw it too. I was thirteen and I felt fifteen, and then I was fifteen feeling seventeen and finally, sixteen feeling eighteen.
My caricatures still felt incomplete, and drawing them made me sadder every day. My grades went down, my eyes stuck to the ground, and the space behind the stage’s curtains was filled only by me and my sobs. A lot of what I felt may seem to be teenage angst to you, and I will admit it, it was. But a lot of my sorrow, my depression, also extended from confusion. You see, it was at this time that for once, emotions had trumped logic and I had tried fitting a girl into my caricature. It was a perfect fit. The aftermath of this experiment, however, turned my mind upside down. I was stuck between hating myself for being ‘unnatural’ and embracing myself for finding who or what I was truly looking for.
The internet helped, and made it worse at the same time. The anxiety of hiding this newfound revelation threatened to eat me whole every day. I couldn’t eat in front of my family anymore. The words on the tip of my tongue threatened to push everything out, including themselves.
I have learnt to live my truth today. And I may not have told everyone, but it’s okay. My life is my own, and the people I fall in love with are mine to love and cherish. And I still live in anxiety, but it’s no longer born out of confessions or confusions. They say therapy helps, but I was always too cowardly, too sceptical. Life may have come to a point where it seems all hunky-dory for now, but even now, at nights I lay in bed and ask myself the question, “Would I do it all over again? Would I welcome the demons of my mind back in simply to plague me for being a unique human?”
The answer is always no.
