“Dear Ma,
I knew, one
day sooner than later, your monologue had to end. You stopped speaking and
writing to me and I let it happen. Instead of listening to you, I heard your
favorite songs. Instead of reading your letters, I read the books you bought for
me. At this point, I wish you had forced me to live in your life. I wish you
had caged me. But it has been ten years and my wishing it is not going to turn
time back. I am going to have to live with the fact that I haven’t really
talked to you in ten years, haven’t really shared my life with you for a long
time. I don’t know if I would have done it today either if I weren’t going
through surgery and if there wasn’t a possibility of me dying without telling
you the truth.
I believe
you gave me a lot of space growing up, for living a life that was mine as much
as it was as yours. However, there was an empty space in my life. The space
that should have belonged to a spouse or a partner. You tried your best to
address it, introducing me to eligible men, talking about my wedding
constantly, planning your life around my married life. Somehow, it never deterred
you that I did not show any interest. For a while, it did not bother me as
well. I was focused on my job and career. I spent all my waking minutes
thinking about work. But as time passed, I realized more and more people around
me were getting into relationships, getting married and having children. I, on
the other hand, could not even begin to think of any of it.
See, growing
up I had assumed that I would grow up, get a job and you will find me a man to
marry. I will not question it, and live through it, no matter whether it was a
good marriage or not. After all, you lived through a difficult marriage all
your life. I had expected the same of myself. But then I grew up and instead of
telling me to start my life with a man you had chosen for me, you gave me the
independence to choose and when I didn’t, you tried to set me up. Having never
thought of the choices, I had never given my sexuality a thought. But you gave
me the choice, and then I had to think of my sexuality. I had to think of who I
liked, who I was attracted and that took me on a journey of self-discovery.
This was the time I stopped communicating with you.
It was a
difficult and weird phase of my life. As I discovered more about myself, it became
clear that something was wrong with me. Now, ten years later I don’t think of
it as wrong, but at that moment I did. My path of self-discovery first led me
to realize that I was biromantic, I realized that I needed my male and female
friends equally. I was physically attracted to both genders. I was ready to
label myself as bisexual. Unknown to you, I almost went to a date with a woman.
And this is when something else hit me.
While I could
be physically and mentally attracted to someone, I had no interest in sex. I
know, you are reading this and wondering where is this heading. After all of
this time, I decided to talk and dive straight to my sex life. But believe me,
there is nothing about sex life here, because I realized soon enough that I
could label myself as asexual. Yes, that is true. It took me a while to accept
it, took me a while to not think of myself as a freak. Took me a while to
accept that I was going to live my life alone as a lonely person forever. Even
having discovered that, I tried to force myself to go on dates for a few years,
on and off, hoping that this time something will change. Society led me to
believe that I just hadn’t met the right person. When I meet the right man or
woman, my juices will start flowing or something. And I bought into that idea.
For years I lived in that space, hoping and wishing one day things will change.
Now all of
it seems like such a huge waste of time. Of course, I was not going to turn
sexual any more than a gay man was going to turn straight. But it was a
difficult concept to get used to.
I, finally,
came to terms with it and decided that I should come out and talk to you about
it. At this time, all we ever talked about was me getting married and how I was
missing out on normal life. One week, about five years ago I was building
courage to come out to you with the hope that after few tearful conversations,
we would go back to our former relationship or even begin a new and better one.
And that is when life decided to have its laugh. I went to the doctor for a
normal visit and the doctor asked me to go on birth control because I was
losing too much blood on a monthly basis. Irony, I had the best and natural birth
control plan, and nature just smirked and put me on a hormonal high. Let’s just
go ahead and call it a low. Somehow, it didn’t seem the right time to talk
about any of this to you anymore. I was hormonal, clinically depressed.
And no, that
wasn’t the last laugh life had on me. I am now in the hospital about to go
through surgery because my birth control did not agree with me and gave me a clot
and almost gave me a life-threatening stroke. And now, I sit here waiting for
the clot to be removed, lamenting the years of self-pity and self-loathing. And
through all these years, I have lamented not talking to you the most. I know
you could have helped me, made me feel better about myself, but I couldn’t draw
the courage to say anything to you. I couldn’t tell you I was asexual, because I
kept feeling that I was letting you down. You deserved my happy life, not my depressed life. You deserved grandchildren,
not my lonely existence. Yes, you deserved those, but I now realize that you
deserved to be in your daughter’s life more than the other things.
It took me
ten years to come to this realization. You accepted my silence as rejection, and
I accepted yours as my punishment. If you don’t see me again, know that I
always loved you and will continue loving you no matter where after life takes
me. If you do see me, I will try my best to break the silence and if you don’t
talk to me, I will begin my monologue….”
