If Tomorrow, My Partner and I Decide to Get Married, I’m Not Absolutely Sure My Parents Would Attend the Ceremony"

 

“I didn’t know what I was excited about more. That I was visiting a lesbian bar for the first time, or that I was on a date with a woman who I had met on the Guardian Soulmates dating website. I had just moved to London in 2011, and was still finding my way around the city and my sexual orientation. While I remember very little about my date, the memory of being in a space for girls, run by girls, was both thrilling and assuring. The next day, I called my friend, a lesbian Londoner, to relive my experience. Five minutes into my prattling, she interrupted, ‘But, how did the date go?’. At that exact moment, I realised how naïve I must sound. I was a ‘late-blooming lesbian’, who was slipping into a new identity but had no clue about its rules of engagement—what is the right etiquette when you ask someone out, who holds the door, who pays the bill, who makes the first move, what happens in bed, where do lesbians hang out, what do they talk about...

‘Come over, I’ll lend you my set of The L Word. It might help you with some answers,’ my friend offered. I binge-watched the lesbian drama—six seasons, 70 episodes—over the next six days. About a close-knit group of lesbian friends in LA, the show tackled it all through its wildly varying stories and then some. Did it change my life? Um, not really, but I did discover myself through the show’s characters. The L Word had become a necessary rite of passage for the community, and after watching it, I felt like I was part of the Sapphic sorority...I felt validated, seen.

‘Did you know The L Word is returning with a brand new series on December 8? We have to watch it together!’ my partner announced the news over dinner recently, and a strange sense of reckoning came over me. As if life had come a full circle.

The show had ended in 2009, around the same time that my life, as I know and live it today, had begun. An adventurous personal journey that stretches a span of a decade of self-questioning; exhausting emotional struggles; and heartbreaking chapters of coming out to myself, to my parents, to my friends. I am not the person today who’d reveal her authentic self only in the presence of co-lesbians or at gay bars. I’m a full-time lesbian, in a full-time same-sex relationship, and that, for me, is liberating.

The great thing about coming out in your mid-30s is that you’ve already been through the rough-and-tumble wringer of digging (into) your sexuality; you know whose lips you like kissing, which gender you prefer going to bed with, and who makes your soul blush. And there’s no going back. But being honest carries a hefty price tag, I’ve learnt. If tomorrow, my partner and I decide to get married, I’m not absolutely sure my parents would attend the ceremony. They’re okay with my preference as long as they don’t have to speak or participate in my decision. And every decision of mine, big or small, is made ensuring that I don’t invite too much attention. Not take a byline with this column, for instance...my last name belongs to my parents. For them, it’s not so much about shame, but a deep-seated reluctance towards adjusting their lifestyle to who their daughter is: a lesbian. While I respect their hesitation, it’s also my crushing truth, which I live with grudgingly each day. In these moments I remind myself of the lines I read in Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, Eat, Love And Pray: ‘It’s still two human beings trying to get along, so it’s going to be complicated. And love is always complicated.’ And I happen to love another woman.

Today, I’m signing off, but before I go, I’d like to thank Cosmopolitan for allocating a space for my little column. As I continue to navigate through the heartache and joy of my chosen sexual identity, and living in a country that holds a schizophrenic stance towards my individual rights, these last few months have been a pleasure to share my escapades with you, dear readers. Thank you for stopping by on this page.”