Solitary Speaker... (the end)

“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….”