Ever had that painful feeling of a band-aid getting ripped apart from your skin? Now imagine pain hundred times that feeling, and the band-aid is on your heart. A similar feeling I felt a few months ago when I was pulled away from the one place I felt I belonged to, my community, the LGBTQ community.
Although the experience has not come to an end, in fact, it has just barely begun yet it feels as if it should’ve never started. That one moment, that one conversation converted me from an open and happy person to nothing more than an actor. I know it’s not only my life that has had this moment but many, and the arrival of this moment is planned by every closeted person yet when it arrives there is barely time to put anything into action.
My plan was to basically come out after 4 years and, being a procrastinator, I bet that would’ve never happened, but before I could see 4 years from now, I was pulled back to my present and let’s just say it was pretty hard luck.
I had thought that when I would be confronted by one of my many nightmares I would just shake my head in approval and get out of the situation. Well, my plan did succeed, but then I remembered that I had thought nothing more than that and I then realized that the conversation and false approval was the easiest of the problems I was yet to face.
Many people might have faced a similar or even the same situation as I was in and what I did then still feels right when I look at it from the perspective of a child who does everything for their parents. But lately, I’ve been looking at it from a slightly selfish perspective in which my own happiness is what should be my first priority because what I am right now is no where close to where I imagined myself to be. However, I’m rather at the polar opposite. I had a simple goal which was to be happy and as I realised I am not happy anymore, rather just sad and confused.
That conversation was like that one turn on the road that changes your entire destination. My destination went from being happy myself to keeping my whole family happy excluding myself. The one community that accepted me the way I was, did not demand neither which made me sad. That was the very thing I called “shit” just to convince my father that I was, in fact, in complete agreement with him but actually I just had no idea what to do.
That one word from my mouth hurt me worse than most physical injuries do, yet I chose to bear it rather than fight. The same community who came to my rescue when I was a confused and depressed mess, the same community that was always with me that brought me closer to so many people had now been abandoned by the one who it did so much for. It felt much more than a betrayal, it felt as if someone dug their nails into my skin and ripped it off from my flesh and rather than fighting back, I just lay there letting them rip me into pieces.
Right now, as I am writing this, I’m in a mess. It is taking me my best to keep my family happy but at the same time, I am losing a part of myself in the process. I have maybe even lost who I was. Or maybe I haven’t really looked back at who I was.
All I know is that who I am is not me, I feel like a wrong soul, in the wrong body and at the wrong time but there is really not much I can do about it right now. Maybe one day I’ll become the ‘ideal child’ and maybe even the ‘ideal actor.’