They say ignorance is bliss – and well, it was.
Growing up subtly off an airheaded vibe, I was able to delay my herd of drama lamas of coming out to a certain extent.
I remember getting my first butterflies ever towards a girl who shared a chair with me in eighth grade(isn’t that the dream!) and a couple of days later throwing my friends into what seemed like a permanent state of paralysis when I said I might like a girl in a casual girl-talk session of “Who’s your
newest crush?”. Even for a bunch of supposedly judgmental 13-year-olds, all it took them was a couple of minutes to process and start pestering me with the only question they had- “who is she??”.
But as all good things, my ignorant phase too was gradually pushed to a halt as society, media and ‘casual jokes’ passed at other gays brought out the stigma around being queer, making me back down into a closet that was never there before.
I shifted my attention into dating guys, my heart eyes towards chicas remained a closed secret between a few people close to me. After a few, painfully long hetero relationships, I finally decided to quit lying to myself and find out who I really am. In the process of doing so, I had to end a 5-year-old relationship where I had fallen out of love more times than a panda fall off a tree. And it wasn’t pretty. It was a traumatizing breakup- well for one, not only did I have to explain it to my ex (who was a ‘perfect boyfriend’ in societal perspective), I was demanded answers for ending it by my dad of all people – who was constantly proud of calling himself open-minded and social (I see your eye-roll 🙂 ) and me being “unhappy and miserable” in it was not acceptable enough for him. I was bitterly shouted at, called crazy and “ruining my own life” just because I broke it off with a man.
I hadn’t even come out yet!
A while later, with all the built up frustrations and hours and hours of getting yelled at, constantly reminded what a disappointment and worthless child I am by my dad, I finally came out to my mom(who in my dad’s terms were not so openminded as he was – yes eyeroll again) expecting another
breakdown. But to my utter surprise she held me warmly as ever and told me she doesn’t really understand, but if this makes me happy, she will try her best to learn about it. I melted into butter of course.
Both of us agreed to keep it down low until dad settles down with the whole breakup fiasco, but my luck was so damn awesome that a couple of days later I was blackmailed and threatened into coming out to my dad by yours truly- my ‘perfect boy’ ex. Everything I ever worked for to make my
parents happy was thrown out the window. My achievements, my other qualities and everything else I did to be the perfect kid all forgotten and I was constantly screamed at, and reminded worthless to
the point that I couldn’t even get myself to leave my room when my father comes home. I was forced to go into therapy- thankfully the psychologist was a great soul who explained that this was normal and not something to “cure” and the real therapy should be towards my parents to help cope with the
situation better. But as stubborn as he was, even that qualified psychologist was called crazy and I was continuously so emotionally destroyed to the point that I packed up my stuff and moved out.
Dad and I did pick up our bond afterwards, but it was only under the condition that we completely ignore the elephant in the room and never speak of it again. I grew up with my dad being my best friend- he always taught me to be tough. He knew all my stories, he was my biggest supporter and was one of the greatest dads I’ve ever seen growing up.
But as he reached to be a top level military man, he became wrapped up in the idea that giving away his daughter to a man in a big fancy wedding was the ultimate goal of his as a father. 24 years worth of things I did to make him happy disappeared by a mere change in my sexuality.
Sometimes when the both of us hangout on a friday evening pretending that our scarred relationship is all okay- My mind wonders ; “If he knew the whole story- would he understand?”
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