Coming Out (of a glass closet)
This is a slightly different post than normal, mostly to get this off my chest.
Until fairly recently, I'd spent all my life in India. A country that... isn't too well known for it queer rights. Legally, being queer had been criminalized in a rather roundabout way--an act that was only struck down in 2018. Only a couple months after I'd begun to come to terms with my own (non-het) sexuality. Societally, there are still gargantuan strides to be made in terms of acceptance. We're still miles away from queer people being seen as 'normal' and acceptable, and the idea of queer rights seems light years away. Politically, debates around legalising same-sex marriages still somehow revolve around religion (and this nifty little thing they call 'culture' and 'tradition'), under a religious framework that never really admonishes (and in some cases, even positively portrays) the queer community. All this in a country whose first constitutional claim is secularity. But I digress.
In somewhat of an unconventional turn of events, venturing into adulthood also saw me becoming far closer to my dad than I'd ever been. He'd made it clear to me that while I was ultimately responsible for the choices I made, he'd always be the best safety net he could reasonably be--but he needed to be kept somewhat in the loop with respect to my life. And thus started a pretty open dialogue around who my friends were, who I was dating, if I planned on being out late, being around alcohol, and general updates on anything that might need him to keep an eye out for me. I still couldn't bring myself to tell him about being queer. I'd known for a long time my mum was... not the most receptive towards homosexuality. I'd known, at least to her, I could never come out. Or bring a girl home and hope to be accepted for it. It was just too weird to bring up something as sensitive as this to my dad.
High school was addled with juggling my "bisexual awakening", and trying to figure out what it meant, or trying to talk to someone about it under the constant fear of my parent snooping through my phone and finding out. There began somewhat of a pattern, of having feelings for women around me, and immediately quelling them, because I knew I wasn't allowed to be queer. At best, it would lead nowhere. At worst, I'd be in a pretty damn bad place, and could probably forget any chance of a decent relationship with my parents. Having a boyfriend soon after meant I could stop thinking about what my bisexuality meant, but that would only last until the end of college.
Entering university brought with it a group of (mostly queer) friends, with identities all across the spectrum. It was also the first time I started to view my sexuality as something that defined me beyond just my relationships, a part of my identity. Along with this came more guilt, shame, confusion, exploration, and a crush that was once again stomped out by a mixture of fear and cold-blooded pragmaticism. The realisation of my queerness also making up my identity, and the support I got from my friends, meant it now became a facet of me I could explore far more than just a cycle of crushes and guilt.
A couple years passed before I allowed myself a (very, very shortlived) queer 'relationship' (if one could call it that). I now had a partner I couldn't tell my dad about, the guilt of which ate me up inside. I wasn't necessarily used to hiding something this impactful, certainly not after we'd agreed to and established a relationship that did not sneak around this way. For this and a trunkload of other reasons, the relationship ended just as soon as it had begun, and life moved on. A couple more years passed and I moved to the UK, and I was greeted with an unprecedented level of... normalisation. The idea that you could be any brand of queer and largely just... exist in society without most people batting an eye was, well, foreign. I was bisexual. Nobody cared. A girl at a queer mixer gave me a bunch of gay stickers, which I promptly plastered all over my laptop. Nobody cared. Of course, this isn't some sort of an LGBTQIA+ utopia, where everyone lives in acceptance and peace and harmony, but it was a stark difference from the country I called home. For the first time, I could find comfort in my identity. All aspects of it. I was out of the closet.
Fast forward to today, to my daily calls with my dad. In the midst of some wanton banter, I told him how same sex marriages were legal in the UK. My family were aware I was progressive, and somewhat of a queer rights activist, but not that I was bisexual myself. As tongue in cheek as I could, I asked dad what he felt about queer people, how he'd react if I said I was gay, or bi. This was pretty up there for the most scared I'd been asking him something. I don't think I even had the time to process the words that left my mouth, the question I'd actually gathered every fibre of courage in my being to ask him, before he immediately replied "I wouldn't care. I would hope you were normal. But I wouldn't care. This is a choice that's up to you."
It's taken me a few hours to process what that meant. How much that meant. It wasn't until I went to bed I realised what a weight that had been off my chest, before I broke down into a heap of tears. I'm still not sure if he's figured it wasn't exactly a hypothetical. I'm not sure I'd realised until now how much I needed my family to see me for who I was. At least one of them does now. And he's... okay with it. Oog see you. Big jump.