home?

TW: Domestic Violence

To talk about my queer relationship, it’s essential to talk about my relationship with queerness itself. Relating to queerness as a kid was scary because I experienced repeated sexual assault by girls then. That’s how I figured I was gay. Or, at least, that’s why I denied my queerness. My identity had always felt like a matter of shame. While finishing school, my suppressed past would haunt me. I was going to go to an ‘all girls college’ and I dreaded the idea of a potential ‘college romance’.

My first month there, I looked at a girl’s hands and felt like they looked as beautiful as ocean waves. I cried my eyes out that day; it was a moment of catharsis. I gradually felt more secure to open up. Another turning point was falling in love with my best friend and being oblivious to this fact, which was so visible to everyone else. We were in denial but I’d never felt safer, in my skin, with her. I think a reason we don’t go for our best friends is our belief that they deserve the best and we perhaps hate ourselves too much.

I mean, perhaps this self-hatred landed me in a relationship with someone I now regret ever letting in. It was warm and poetic also, but all the good parts got eclipsed for me because of the bad experiences I faced. I felt trapped in their words but hurt by their actions. It was a loop. The love felt intense but useless. 

I feel like there's already this issue with falling in love with the idea of love. With us, the idea of romanticizing queerness can add another harmful layer to it. Falling in love with the idea of someone. Someone queer. The experimentality, the rush, the validation it gives. It's like rosy glasses but with 7 colors this time. More disillusionment and more lack of ability to see things for what they are. At least that’s what happened to me. It fell out poorly.

I decided to give it a second chance because they proposed going to couple’s therapy. We started living together but I still felt like I couldn’t breathe. Now I know that I was only trying to escape my abusive household only to find it again in disguise, in the form of this relationship. I faced narcissistic abuse and abuse of all kinds, and domestic violence living with this long-term partner. I wanted us to do better, I wanted to be different, but you have to have your partner also feel ready for that growth, for that change and that work on themselves so we let go of the therapist. I had been trying to get better and kept going to therapy but I did not receive the reciprocity. My partner hadn’t just not been trying to get better but continuously kept making worse choices with me. Love had become synonymous with fear, power, and unhappiness. 

I finally moved out in Apr-2022 and now, I keep questioning the idea of love. Maybe because I don't know how I accepted this form of love. Maybe because I still feel empty. I did not feel free for the longest time. I thought I would feel like myself again but I never did. Now I just feel more regretful of walking that extra mile, I’m processing a lot of loss. It gave me lessons I was better off not learning about.  I have felt disillusioned and have felt like giving up on being queer, if not life. You know, we say love is not a crime, but what about crimes in the name of love? My queer love story had become everything my idea of queerness had stood against. It seemed like we're falling back into the cycles of unhealthy relationships that we hated our heteronormative parents for. Love is love took a whole new meaning. It should make sense, our ideals for love are derived from them but I refuse to make sense of it because of the injustice I faced. Because then how are we any different, how are we doing any better? We can’t just blame them for the choices we make. We need to take responsibility for our actions. 

While processing all of this I got the chance to sing for and act in a film. Aadha Kamra, is the title of my original song that came out in August. When the lyricist first read it to me, I cried. It is a song about an alternative imagination. It’s about the infinity of a room that is built on dreams. And this is why I felt more heartbroken singing it. I had seen hopelessness and my dreams had become my worst nightmares while sharing a room with my lover. This was in contrast to my past. How could I see hope in the hateful world when the one closest to me hurt me within the promised walls of safety. Aadha Kamra is a part of a film I acted in. I do wish sometimes that life was a movie. 

We face disappointments before seeing hope.

When the lockdown got lifted this past year, I found myself back in the Delhi queer circle. It is something I had never felt belonged to as such. The open mic events were just people from upper caste, upper class that would appropriate struggles and form echo chambers with their ‘wokeness’. I also feel like the queer circle, collectively, is stuck in a teenage phase. There aren't many dialogues, there doesn't seem to be a social aspect to political activism. It's all boiling blood, creativity, performativity, but little responsibility.It was all too pretentious and incestuous for me to deal with. 

I've seen queer activists defend abusers and influencers make casteist comments, I’ve been cheated on in the name of polyamory, I’ve seen people look down upon recognizing themselves as feminine or simply discarding any feminine attributes with disgust, and I've seen non-binary people behave like cis men so, it’s been pretty disheartening. Sometimes I wonder if they’re aware that sexism, classism, casteism, is all seeping into their queer ideology. Our young adult life is so dominated by teenage tendencies, perhaps because it was a time we had lost to pretending to be heterosexual, that now we slip into that idea of love while loving queerly. I guess, destroying comes easy and inventing love is difficult. A new kind of love, a better kind of love, a healthier kind of love. 

We learn about death before we live life.  

This is not to point fingers or put pressure, I feel like queer people have very different life trajectories because we tend to live parts of our life now that we couldn't live before, but this tendency holds a lot of potential to be harmful. I've always felt that I don't have grown-up queer people to look at. I don't know how non-heteronormative lives turn out. Is it the same job, marriage, house, kids, retirement, death? Death is a sensitive matter. We see more young queer people around us not making it to maybe think so far ahead. I think as a community and as individuals we need to do different and better than what we preach and stand against. I think it’s now time to self-reflect and think of what we stand for.

I faced a lack of social mechanisms, a lack of legal mechanisms in my circles. I couldn’t go to any institution or person to address what I went through. So, while we fight for gay marriage legalities there needs to be a parallel fight to recognise wrongdoings and violence within our relationships and more. I am all for pride and celebrating queerness in public spaces but within our community and within our “private” affairs there needs to be better intervention. Support mechanisms that not just save us from the homophobia on the outside but the internalized one that is potentially more dangerous - to ourselves and the ones we love. We need to do more than just painting ourselves in rainbows. A psycho-social and legal awareness. It’s a long shot, but writing about it helps for now. 

I hope to meet better people and hold better spaces. A room is not enough, a society that supports and uplifts is important and we don’t need to look outside for help. We need to first accept ourselves and build our own culture and society within the community first.

Speaking about myself…. 

I had never had a room of my own, all to myself, until I returned from that place. I’m trying to make space for myself at my home- with my family who listens to me more now, and I speak up more now. I’m putting in some work in bettering our bonds. I’m still going to therapy, seeking help. As cliche as it may sound, but I’m building a home within myself. Working on myself and bettering my relationship with myself has actually helped me find more mature, communicative relationships/friendships in my life now. For the longest time I’ve been trying to figure out what love is. I still don't know, but I guess I have my whole life to figure it out.

For now, I’m trying to make my peace with where this path is taking me. I'm less alone with a few people who make me feel safe and loved. Amidst these complexities, my chosen family doesn't fail to call me out and help me grow. I'm grateful for that. We make plans to move to Auroville someday and settle there haha! 

Oh and, I also see my abusers with a little bit more empathy and neutrality sometimes now. It’s still a long long long way to go. Our heteronormative parents and us don’t have a lot in common but I guess the commonground i think is that we both are humans. But since I’m queer I know the lesson I learnt on day one. The answer is love, never hatred.

I’m learning to accept my identity and all the intersectionalities that it stands at. I’m learning about self-love, boundaries, and building safety. I just want us all to live. truly live. a better life. Safer, reliable communities with more accountability and dialogue. More psychoeducation, awareness. Maybe I sound too utopian, but I'm coming out of a lot of dystopia so this is me hoping to make better spaces for the gaybies, and perhaps also creating hope I wish I had had before. Maybe in future I won’t deny safer love when it knocks on my door.