The price to be me

I’ve been gay before I even knew that such a word was present to describe my sub species. I’ve spent my whole life tracing down the chronology of events leading to this day. I’ve concocted theories to explain my condition and delved into the finer aspects of why men give me a hard-on. I’ve employed philosophy and logic with just the right amount of spirituality and morality to reason out and support my feelings for the members of the same gender as mine. I’ve prayed to my God, for hours on end, begging to be cured of my dreadful disease only to realise that it wasn’t an illness, when no cure came. Still torn by the scourge of life, I attempt to take each day as it comes… With every lesson I can learn, every song I can sing, everything that I can dream…

When it all boils down to the true meaning of my life, I have this most amazing debate with myself – Why am I a faggot? Was it not enough for the Almighty to make me stand apart from everyone else because of my Chinese genes, that he had to make me homosexual too? I don’t think there is anyone else who harbours the belief that God’s plans are always for the best, more than me, but I still like to question his grand design and look for the significance of the pattern that he has weaved of my life? The old me prayed for healing and tried everything from post-hypnotic suggestions to the law of attraction to ‘cure’ me of my state. But there passes another guy with a pretty face and there goes all the effort, down the drain!

Hypocrites turn me off. Period. I guess when it comes to my own hypocrisy, I am unable to take it and break down ever so often. My life’s journey has been a roller coaster ride from being the average, artistic kid in school, with no real friends to this multi-talented, cool college guy, ambushed by friends all the time to this no-care-in-the-world, laidback, lame ass punk at work! In all these years, I’ve searched for the real me, but never found him… And when I did find him, I buried him in the depths of the earth where no one could find him because I couldn’t face him. I hate looking into the mirror because the feeling is alien to me. It’s like I’m staring into the eyes of a stranger; I barely even recognise this person who looks back at me. And I ask myself the same question each time – when will my reflection show who I am inside?

Am I ready to break my mother’s heart at the price of being true to my own? Am I ready to lose the hordes of friends and admirers by embracing who I really am? Am I prepared to hear ‘homo’, ‘gudve’ and ‘fag’ along with words like ‘Nepali’ and ‘Hakka Noodles’ that people generally ridicule me with? Have I the courage to look people straight in the eye and tell them that I am gay and I’m proud it? The answer to all those questions is a pitiful no. And so I subdue the pain with delusions of grandeur; what people do not know cannot hurt them, right? Why would anyone want to be true to themselves when, by being someone they’re not, gets them everything that they want? That’s logic, right? That’s what people call life, right? You can never have your cake and eat it too!

But what does one do when the shallowness of everything else creeps in and you are left but with that one person that you do not wish to be with? – Your own self. I was the only one who was there when I came forth from my mother’s womb, I’m the only one who felt every emotion at its very core and understood the reason why I did the things I did and I will be the only one to enter the grave when I die and cross over to the other side. Why then do I fear and deny myself when I am the only one who has and will always be there in my good and not so good times? No one can feel the emotions that I would feel with the same intensity, except me! Why then do I treat my reflection like a stranger? Why then do I treat my shadow like an enemy?

A voice inside my head screams for freedom as several other voices howl louder to subdue the sound of its painful and unbearable moans. Day after day, I pretend to be someone I am not and get so lost in playing that part that a little of the real me dies each day only to be reborn in the silence of my heart. And finally I accept that I’m what I was meant to be. I never asked for it to happen nor do I remember taking any classes to turn gay. It is who I am. I cannot change it… Will not change it for anything in the world. Then, maybe someday, I’ll be ready to pay the price to truly be me.

It’s only words…

A: Je veux vivre avec vous pour toujours
B: Je ne te quitterai jamais - and you know it.

For those of you familiar with the French language, you need to read no further… They’re just two lines from a conversation between two people; the most beautiful words used in any prose, poem, song or language…

Never have I come across a love so beautiful – Gay or straight. I’ve searched the entirety of my existence; reading books and listening to songs that immortalise love. The kind of love that I found in 2 lines from 2 people I don’t even know.

I always took pride in the fact that I was a master with words and it fuelled my pride and ego greatly to receive praise for how effortlessly I made language and expression dance to my tune like the Pied Piper of lore. Today I’ve met sweet defeat.

With all my skill at wielding words, I can find no word, sentence or phrase that can substitute these 2 sentences. It has the implication of that mythical love that people no longer believe in or think of it as true only in fairy tales. Love as sweet as wine, heard of only in stories and legends, captured in stone and passed from generation to generation… A love before time!

And just when you feel that such a love cannot be expressed, let alone exist, 2 simple lines render the heart helpless. A love so beautiful, all want it and envy it. A love so pure, like something a child would say to its mother. A love so magical, you don’t need to see it to believe it.

I would give up a thousand suns to share these lines with someone. To know that finally I have found the love of a lifetime. To feel that flame and passion that words cannot describe. Love – untainted by the winds of time, splendid as the brilliance of the stars in the cosmos.

Love, in its purity and rarity – unscathed, unfathomable and unimaginable.


P.S.: I’m sure you’re dying to know what ‘A’ and ‘B’ said to each other… Am not going to put you through the pain that I went through to figure that out so here’s the translation (courtesy Google language tools) –

A: I want to live with you forever
B: I can never leave you - and you know it.