My Unfinished Story

From: Apartment 1313,

Nightmare villa,

Nowhere-at-all.

To: Office of Dead Letters

Subject: My Unfinished Story

Dear netizens,

My name is Sneha. I was born in the body of a female human and use the pronouns she/her. I am currently in high school and have not reached the supposed pinnacle of my maturity, or so I am told. My deep, not-so-dark secret is that I am bisexual.

I suppose I should begin from the starting. My story started in a small, overcrowded place within the confines of Uttar Pradesh, India. I was barely ten and had just reached fifth grade. I had a peculiar best friend who believed in the existence of ghosts and such. Now, since I don’t mean to infringe on her right to privacy, we will assume her name to be Ace. She was my, unfortunate, first kiss. Who knew at that moment that this one contact of a lips on another would spiral one into an abyss of anxiety and stress and lead to questioning of everything they had EVER learned in their whole life up until that moment?

In India, the LGBTQ+ community is seen as a taboo topic, sinc, the laws made against homosexuality were removed not so long ago (Section 377 of the Indian Penal Court was struck down in 6th September 2018). Homosexuality was seen as a ‘mental disease’ which needed to be cured. It still is, in some places. The population was supposed to be born straight, live straight and die straight! (If that makes sense}. No other sexual orientation was recognized. In fact, in many places it wasn’t even recognized that men could be raped (it’s called sodomy). Men, women and non-binary individuals were shunned by society for so much as holding same sex partners or showing interest in anyone besides the opposite sex.

Anyway, continuing with my story. The one kiss was what triggered my homophobia. Now, I know what you’re thinking while reading this, but let me explain. Imagine yourself in my shoes , having just had your first kiss, but it with someone of the same gender as you! For a kid, it pretty much border-lined on absolute disgust. Keep in mind, I grew up reading about princes kissing princesses and that is what I thought was natural and acceptable. Moreover, watching movies where the guy always falls in love with the girl was kind of the only romance I had seen in my life. So, my homophobia was probably a mechanism for me to cope up with society and its socially acceptable norms. Let me tell you though, I was dead scared.

Fast forward a few years, my family ,with me in tow, moved to Gurgaon. I was eight months into seventh grade when I had my first crush on a guy. Now I was a bit of a loner at that point and was struggling with a lot of pressure from my family’s side. I had to project a ‘perfect’ image of myself at home and school so as to be a role model for my younger sisters. I had picked up an extremely horrible obsession of reading fiction novels and had just started to have an unnatural fascination with death. My poetry ranged from topics like murder to sins committed by mankind. But that should come as no surprise, after all, us females weren’t even given the right to voice our opinions and were seen as property to be owned until quite recently. I don’t think ‘property’ can cause war and such vicious climatic conditions. This is all your fault mankind! {and maybe, some of our fault. But, whatever.} Either ways, I was depressed. I had to go through extreme emotional and sometimes physical abuse from family {it was termed as disciplining me} as well as from some people I considered to be my true friends. I guess, I was pretty naïve.

Then one day my ‘friend’ told everyone about my crush. At the same time, a girl spread a rumor about me being a lesbian. I was horrified when I came to know that. That day at home I researched about the rainbow community and finally came to know what all these terms stood for. Now, to a lot of you out there, this might seem a little dramatic and false but to me my supposed attraction towards different sexes was a very important issue. For a lot of people, trying to find stability in discovering one’s self’s sexuality might seem a little bonkers, I mean, come on, I was in seventh. But age doesn’t really matter when one starts to discover and question one’s identity as an individual. I was transitioning at that point, changing and evolving.

Fast forward a few more years to me in freshman year of high school. I had moved to USA for a year and then came back to India. My time in eighth grade was great. I enjoyed my stay in the States. I found a group of friends who were as ditsy as me and cheered me on whenever I was even remotely sad. I even faced a bully, who had been bullying me for two months due to me not being able to keep my mouth shut. When I returned in ninth grade, I became popular. I was called ‘Florida’ by almost every student in my school and let me tell you, it was ANNOYING!! The best thing about ninth was that I started accepting myself as not straight. I researched about bisexuality, bicuriosity and pansexuality. And I also developed a crush on this girl (To those of you interested, I got rejected…she was straight). Now, I started to make this a part of my life. I came out to my school.

In tenth, I found a group of people with similar interests to me and I also got into a club where I could speak freely and let my ideas shine. I became a confident person. The best part was that barely anyone reacted badly to this news. Of course, Some homophobic and biphobic comments came my way but it just reminded me of myself when I was younger. Moreover, my greeting question to everyone always includes me asking them their preferred pronouns and whether they have a different sexuality. In this sense, tenth was the greatest year of my education this far.

In conclusion, don’t be scared. When you question your ideologies, personality and belief, only then can you truly blossom into a level-headed individual, otherwise, whether you are six or eighty-six, you will remain a child forevermore.

Yours faithfully,

Sneha Choudhury

[unfortunate teenager, future writer and poet]

Written by Sneha Choudhury

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