I Feel Deep Despair (Trigger Warning)…

by | Jun 14, 2021 | LGBT

I wake up most mornings to a few dozen messages on my various social handles. Some of them are simply congratulating me on my Tedx Talk  enquiries to engage me for talks or to put forward my views/opinion pieces and some are deeply personal messages, often painful to read.

“I don’t know what to do anymore. I think the only option is to kill myself”.

“Sometimes, I feel like my life is over and this is how it will be for me. Darkness”

“There are times, I am tempted to kill my family and end it all. For me and them”.

“I am imprisoned by my own husband. I want out. What do I do?’

I talk, chat, mentor, offer support, find them the appropriate help – but it leaves its mark. Deep marks in fact.

It brings me back to my days when it was painfully, tragically hard when I had come out. I felt alone. I felt this was it, and there would be no light in my life ever again. I felt fear. I felt pain. I felt despair. But mostly I felt, hopelessness.

Today, in 2021 as we all celebrate #PrideMonth and celebrate #ally-ship and celebrate the courageous stories of all our journeys, please do not forget to pray for those who are still struggling or are put through very horrible, inhuman emotional, physical, mental abuse, simply because our loved ones do not understand us and are not willing to educate themselves and accept. There are families who put our community through inhuman #conversiontherapy in the name of ‘curing’ us.

Please hold out a hand to those who reach out to you – by supporting a person from #LGBTQ+ community, you will not become ‘gay’ I promise you.

But, you will make a queer person feel loved and accepted and that would be enough for many of us.

Our ‘Coming Out Stories From India’ series was launched to create positive role models of people with lived experiences. Please do subscribe, watch and share. We need to change this narrative. It is our collective responsibility. One story at a time.

I Come Out Every Day!

by | Jun 13, 2021 | LGBT

When did you come out?,is a question often put forward to me!!

Frankly, for us in the #LGB community, we have to ‘come out’ every day. Some times, every moment.

Did this make you wonder?

Think about it! When I lived a ‘straight’ ‘heterosexual’ life, no one ever asked me ‘when did you come out’ or ‘are you straight’? or ‘how does it feel to be straight’.

But, as a queer person, I get asked this all the time.

But, what you don’t know is that every day, when I walk out of my home, I have to ‘come out’ to multiple people. I

f I am with my partner, I have to often explain that she is my ‘life partner’ not a ‘business partner’ as they assume as soon as I say, ‘we are partners’.  Often I have to explain, even over a call, ‘I am queer, I have a female partner‘.  Often, as I stand at the GP practice, for our medical needs, I have to disclose that ‘I am queer, we are partners. I need to be included in our medical conversation’.

Some days, I have to ‘come out’  multiple times as I recollect; at the children’s school, during medical emergencies, just speaking to someone casually. Then they say. “Oh”.

I wonder if this will change some day.

Our ‘Coming out stories from India’ series deals with such lived stories. Do subscribe to my [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/embed?listType=playlist&list=PLZDO6eN4SbZ4sl5qshvy3N5ovaPssirfY[/embedyt]) and follow the beautiful journeys of  queer folks!

Coming out is extremely tough, even that once. To come out, every day, doesn’t get any easier!