Venting on a Thursday

If you know me well, then you'll know that I don't really get along all that well with my family. At all. In spite of my glittery, rainbow-like personality (or maybe because of it, because rainbow = teh gay), I'm the black sheep of the family. No jokes. Everyone loves my kid brother. Loves. I don't have that sort of luck. Yes, my family loves me, but it's in a different sort of way. They love my brother not just because he's family, but because of who he is as well. As for me, I'm loved because I am family. 

And that's about it.

They don't like me as a person. Not that I blame them. I might not like me as a person either if I were in their shoes. 

There was a time when my family did love me in that sort of way. But that was before I began to fight the suppression, before I started to form my own opinions and come to terms with my own personal beliefs and choices. My family, in spite of believing that they are completely open-minded, free-thinking, and modern, are sadly not. Yes, they can dress well, but sadly, that's about it. No, really. 

I discovered this back when I was eighteen and we were discussing homosexuality in Bollywood at a local Indian restaurant that my family and I used to frequent until their food went completely downhill. I mean, the moment someone brought up the fact that one of the actors was gay, everyone started making gagging sounds and going on about how gross and unnatural it all was.

Excuse me? 

Gross and unnatural? 

There was a point in time when homosexuality was considered to be the highest, purest form of love. There was a point in time when, in India, we were okay with homosexuality.

But no. Times change, and as it does, so society does change too.

Clearly for the worse. 

My point in all this? I don't know. I'm not even sure why I started typing this up this morning. I just needed to vent, I think. My little brother returned from his first visit to India as an adult on Monday, and the entire family's doting on him. Doting. Doting in a way that I was never doted on, in spite of having lived there from the ages of 14-18. 

Am I jealous? Perhaps a little. A part of me wants that love, that doting that he gets. But I'll never have it, because I'm gay.

Not that anyone besides my mom and one of her cousins knows that yet.

But as the days progress, I'm finding it harder and harder to stay back and chain myself in a closet. 

I love superheroes, yes, but I don't love secret identities.