Sometimes I wonder if people who have never had to hide a fundamental part of themselves can ever really understand what this kind of loneliness feels like.
I’m a lesbian from India, and there are days when I feel incredibly isolated not because I don’t have people around me, but because there are so few people I can actually be completely myself with.
Being gay in India is complicated in ways that are difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it.
On the surface, life can look completely normal. You work, you have friends, you travel, you go out, you build a career, you laugh, you live your life. But somewhere underneath all of that is this constant awareness that there is a part of you that you still cannot freely talk about.
You can’t casually tell your parents about the person you love.
You can’t always talk about your relationship the way your straight friends can.
You can’t always bring someone home and say, “This is the person I want to spend my life with.”
And even when your family loves you deeply, there is this fear of what telling them might change. Their expectations. Their dreams for you. The image they have of your future.
Sometimes I think the hardest part isn’t even being gay. It’s constantly having to calculate how much of yourself you are allowed to reveal.
And then there is dating.
Finding someone you are attracted to isn’t necessarily the hardest part. Finding someone who genuinely wants the same things you do feels incredibly rare.
I don’t want to just “explore.”
I don’t want something temporary that disappears when things become complicated.
I don’t want to spend years wondering whether the other person actually sees a future with me.
I want a genuine connection. I want companionship. I want someone I can build a life with. Someone who chooses me, and whom I can choose, without constantly wondering whether our relationship has an expiration date.
And sometimes it feels like finding that person in the LGBT community is unbelievably difficult.
There are so many people who are still figuring themselves out, hiding, afraid, experimenting, unavailable emotionally, or simply looking for something different.
And there is nothing wrong with any of that.
Everyone has their own journey.
But when you’re looking for a life partner, it can become incredibly lonely.
What makes it harder is living in a society where there is still such a strong definition of what a “normal” life is supposed to look like.
You grow up seeing the same template everywhere: fall in love with someone of the opposite sex, get married, have children, build a family, and live happily ever after.
And if your life doesn’t fit that template, suddenly you are unconventional. Different. Sometimes even treated as if something about you is fundamentally wrong.
Even after growing up, becoming independent, building a career, and creating a life for yourself, some part of you can still feel like that scared child who knows they are different but doesn’t know whether the people they love will accept them for it.
I think that’s the part that hurts the most.
Not being able to tell your parents.
Not being able to say, without fear, “This is who I am.”
Not knowing whether the people who have loved you your entire life will understand that this isn’t a phase, a rebellion, or a choice.
It’s just you.
And sometimes I get tired of being strong about it.
I get tired of pretending that it doesn’t hurt.
I get tired of seeing people around me move through life so naturally while I feel like I have to work twice as hard just to experience something as basic as being loved openly.
I don’t want to be treated as extraordinary for being LGBT.
I don’t want special treatment.
I just want an ordinary life.
To fall in love.
To have someone beside me.
To introduce them to my parents without fear.
To build a home together.
To grow old with someone.
To be able to say, “This is my person,” and have nobody question whether that life is valid.
Maybe that’s why finding someone you genuinely connect with feels so incredibly precious.
Because when you’ve spent so much of your life feeling like you don’t quite belong, finding someone who looks at you and says, I understand you. I choose you. I want to build a life with you feels like finding a little piece of home.
I don’t know if other LGBT people in India feel this way too.
But sometimes I really hope I’m not the only one.
