“I wanted to commit suicide for being gay and being discriminated against”

“Since childhood, all what I had heard about being gay, lesbian and transgender was very negative and disturbing.

Since my behaviour was different from other students in my school, I was bullied. Whenever I behaved freely, I have always felt humiliation. According to typical social beliefs, boys should be mischievous and girls should be innocent. If a boy is innocent, people think there should be something wrong with him.

When others always talk of how memorable their school lives were and that they want to return to that time, I don’t even want to think about it. I did not have a happy school life. School was always a miserable place where I faced humiliation and discrimination.

I was rejected by my friends because I was not a stereotype. In grades 6 and 7 in my school, I was branded with different names.

My school was a place where teachers promoted Victorian values which specified how men and women should be. Since I was behaving as neither, I was bullied.

From morning till afternoon, I faced very bad experiences within my classroom. It was very upsetting.

When I was in grade 10, I was contemplating suicide due to being bullied. I looked for options to kill myself because I could not take it anymore. But, at the same time, I was praying to my God. Meanwhile, I somehow got an opportunity to read about psychology. I was able to learn many things and stabilize my mind.

For my higher studies I came to Colombo, a place where I could find many people like me. There was a special person among them to whom I got very much attached to.

When I was in grade 10, I was contemplating suicide due to being bullied. I looked for options to kill myself because I could not take it anymore. But, at the same time, I was praying to my God

He was an extremely nice person and a good listener. I clearly identified myself as gay only when I started falling for him. I could not believe myself having a relationship with another guy. Being surrounded by role models presented by the media since the day we were born, it was a shock to me to stand as someone who is different from those stereotypes. Although he was a nice person, the pressure of having that relationship doubled my stress.

We used to communicate as best friends and share our problems with each other. He was under medication for depression for a long time. I remember him calling me and crying. Every time he called me, he told me how lonely he felt because he had been rejected by his family and his friends for being gay. He committed suicide last year. The society refers to our feelings as addiction. No one is able to get into our shoes and understand our feelings. Teachers in school only promote toxic masculine ideas and feminine ideas.”