The word “family” is a real challenge for me. I was disowned by my family of origin when I came out to them 12 years ago. I’d been with my girlfriend for about two and a half years at that point and we were talking about getting married, which seems kind of crazy to me now. If you’d asked the ive-year-old me, “What’s one thing you’ll never do?”, I’d have said “get married”. I’d grown up with arranged marriage being the norm in my family and I didn’t see many happy examples of it, so it didn’t make sense to me.
As I grew and learned about “love marriage” – as we call it – not only was it entirely taboo, but my parents were insanely strict, so the chances of me having a boyfriend were slim to none. In fact, the irst time I came close I was about 12 and we held hands and walked around the school grounds one lunchtime. By the time I got home that day, my dad already knew about it and I got a serious talking to about how we were different. We weren’t like these white people. One day, I would have a marriage to someone my parents had chosen for me, as was our custom.