“The first time I saw her was at a mutual cousin’s wedding, about 10 years ago. She says it was love at first sight for her. For me, I did notice her, but didn’t think too much. A year later, we met again because of the same cousin and that’s when we started talking. It wasn’t awkward in the beginning but we did take time to open up. She knew ‘I was the one’, but I was dating a boy and that really disturbed her. We slowly became distant and stopped talking! I couldn’t take that. I kept wanting to meet her and spend time together. Meanwhile, my boyfriend and I had a horrible phase and we broke up. That’s when I started talking to her again and things got better gradually. She used to flirt with me, quite a lot! And I enjoyed it. I loved the compliments, the appreciation and respect she had for me. Between the long conversations, fun times and the laughs we shared, we fell in love. She always knew she was into girls, she had girlfriends earlier, but it was all very different to me.
It’s been eight years since then. I haven’t opened up to my family yet. Her parents know but have not shown any support. They blamed me for “turning her homosexual”. Her father disrespected her and even told her mother to stay away from her as she is attracted to women. It is disheartening to see parents still refusing their own children because they have a different sexual/ gender orientation. It’s as though section 377 was decriminalized only in the papers. It becomes hard for members of the community to come out, if our own families threaten or emotionally blackmail us, especially when we still live with them. Probably if our film and television industry along with our political leaders did something about normalizing the LGBTQIA+ community, our parents and older generations would accept us more easily and stand strong with us as an ally too!
For the first five years, I didn’t tell anybody. Nobody! It wasn’t because I thought it was wrong, but because I didn’t want to deal with people’s opinions or answer their questions. With time, of course, we had to tell a few friends. It’s been lovely – this whole bond. We’ve had a long distance relationship but now we live together. From different cities and different time zones to different opinions and different choices, we’ve seen it all and we’ve grown through it all, together.
We do fight a lot, but we love each other so much that it just gets us back together and we know that we’d never hurt one another intentionally. We’re glad we found each other at such a young age and intend to stick by each other for the rest of our lives!”
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