A Box of Pictures in Ma's Attic

//@desi-lgbt-fest // Day 18 Fest Submission

Sometimes when I look back at my childhood photos I wonder how such a sweet little girl could ever become someone like me. It’s not a feeling that’s purely negative, though. It’s just a thought. I see the little me holding dolls and hugging her family and then I wonder just when did I stop feeling the joy of existing and start worrying about the space I occupy in this world. Every person stands at their own crossroads, yet mine feels like standing right in the middle of a roundabout of identities. A Muslim girl that isn’t particularly devout, a Bengali who’s lived in America more than her own homeland, the eldest daughter that disappoints her family more than makes them proud, a fraud in her educational institution and workplace, a fat girl (really that’s just the reality of it), just a general person who is easier to let go of then to hold on to. Most importantly, however, a person who doesn’t understand all these identities she grapples with. 

When I do ponder on this, I remember that little girl in the picture, so sweet and so innocent, somehow knew back then that something about her was different from what she has known her whole life so far. There was never a dawning horror or a sudden shift of the universe, but something more quiet and sure…almost as if it was just a truth born within her. Now, innate acceptance is different from the reality of seeing it. Truth be told, learning about the queer community at 11 years old was absolutely overwhelming. Queer culture in 2014 was far from the progressive as it is today, and the passing of the Marriage Equality Act began a sort of Rennaissance of new identities, definitions, and cultures. Yeah…quite overwhelming. 

Eleven-year-old me didn’t know what to do with all of it. Neopronouns? Nonbinary? Genderqueer? Asexual? All I know is that I like to kiss girls sometimes. Maybe I liked boys too, but the more I get to know boys my age the less I like them to be honest. The more I learned new things, the more questions I had, and the more I felt like a failure because I didn’t understand it right away. The quiet acceptance was gone, instead replaced with new verbiage and cultural politics. Absurdly, I wondered if I was even doing this gay thing right. Should I be thinking about defying societal norms and change my pronouns? Should I hate sex? Love it?  Should I discard my religion and Bengali identity because it is not as progressive and denies my existence? For the first time in my life, I began to question myself. 

The best thing about being gay in the early 2010s is that you can shove yourself back in the closet as many times as you want since being open about it was so new. And that’s exactly what I did. Up until my senior year of high school, I didn’t bother thinking about any of it (other than consuming an insane amount of gay content because hey a girl’s gotta have an outlet somewhere). Perhaps it was a blessing rather than a curse that the pandemic made us experts in introspection because the next round of reformation felt akin to psychological warfare on my younger self. 

I look at the younger photo of me and I look at the me right now and wonder how, after all that, I still come back to a full circle to the place I once was: quiet and innate acceptance. I am not out to my family (I tried with my mom but that was a complete disaster). It doesn’t really mix well with me being Muslim-Bengali. However, I am out to myself. In other words, I gave up caring about definitions and what should or should not be, instead focusing on the painful, joyful, simple existence I lead, making a difference when I can wherever I can. I am still on that roundabout of identities, continuously faced with unprecedented uncertainties, but now, I take that little girl’s hand, and we face the future forward together.