I began to struggle with my inner self and thinking perhaps I was having a mid-life crisis. 'This is shit!' I told myself. No one has a mid-life crisis in their mid 20s! I needed to start anew.
Up until then, I have to say that I was not interested in men and never had any boyfriends, but thinking that I should conform to the society, I found myself going out with them. I tried to create interests and give plenty of attention. Time and again, I forced myself but it never went any further. The interest just wasn't there and as soon as I got home from the dates I forgot all about them. It never crossed my mind to even think of them in a romantic way.
I enjoy being friends with men and having them as good company but attracted to them? No. Envisioning the rest of my life spent with any of them? No. Putting up with their behaviors and the typical manly characteristics? No, thank you! Married with white picket fences and 2.5 kids? Definitely a no no. I do not want to conform to what the society deems as the right thing to do. I don't want to get married just because that is expected of me. I was fucking miserable, and I don't think it was fair to make other people's life as painful as mine.
Yes, I've tried to be what I thought was expected of me, lived the life that had been modeled to me by those I knew. But deep down I knew it didn't fit. In 2004 I went through the bleakest and most difficult time of my life. I was depressed, suffering from anxiety attacks, had zero confidence, low self-esteem and suicidal.
Since I arrived in the UK, I kept to myself. I didn't feel like befriending new people and only knew the people I used to work with. To be brutally frank, I hated the narrow-minded and judgmental people especially the Malays. The angst in me was at full blown, even a few bloggers I met could sense the vibe at that time. Yet, I can't avoid my family even though I tried to keep minimal contacts with them. My sister tried to introduce me to a few of her friends' brothers and I even had a marriage proposal, which I turned down. Oh how I dreaded thinking about the subject!
There was a couple of times The Mentor mentioned about me finding a man, but with her I could just shrugged away and pushed it to the back of my mind. There was not too much pressure from her. However, after gentle and persistent prodding and genuine interest in my life, slowly, I was able to talk and open up bits and pieces of me. I found myself telling her the things that were on my mind, which I couldn't express and never uttered to anyone before.
For some odd reason I wanted to be perfect and invisible. I didn't want people to see me as weak and needy, and as a wimp but somehow I knew there's nothing I could do about it. I don't have what other people have, so I thought my life was shit and not complete.
To be honest, I didn't understand what I was going through. How odd it was that some parts of me were still green and naive. Yet, at the back of my mind I knew it had something to do with my sexual orientation. I felt so depressed, guilty, scared and angry all the time, but most of all I felt very lonely. The loneliness was devastating; sometimes I curled up in bed and didn't move for hours or didn't go out for days.
In the midst of all these, I struggled with how to reconcile the reality with a faith that totally rejected and shunned people like me. In my mind, I failed myself and I was a disgrace to the family. Only God knows how I survived and lived with that thought.
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