LGBTQIAP+ Milestones: Book 4

Don't Stop Believing

By J

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Living in a country in West Africa so backwards in its ways, so set on its conservative and traditional ideals, it's no wonder I decided so early on in my life I'd take the secret of my sexuality to the literal grave. I'm a Christian, Nigerian female, and even considering thinking about not being straight is the work of the devil and the problem of the Americans, or so I'm told. It's an illness and we are immune.

But on the eve of a new year, the night we'd say our final farewells to 2016, my two sisters and I were alone in the house and had a sit down to talk openly about the challenges we'd faced as young Nigerian women.

My oldest sister said to myself and the youngest, tears in her eyes, "There is nothing the two of you could ever do that would make me stop loving you." Needless to say I burst into tears at that. And then I told them I was bisexual.

That when I looked at boys in my secondary school and thought some of them were cute when they weren't being idiots, I looked at girls the exact same way. I admired their figures, their lips, their mannerisms, and I'd done so for more years than I could admit without feeling shame. I had no idea what a 'bisexual' even was until I stumbled across the actress Evan Rachel Wood's account of coming into her own sexuality when she too discovered the label, and I thought, shit. That's me.

My sisters accepted me with open arms, and soon I felt comfortable enough to tell two of my close friends from school and that was that. I'd post the Bi pride flag on my Instagram and use it as my profile picture on many social media apps, though most didn't know what it was and what it meant. For a while, I felt comfortable in my own skin, and I contemplated telling my only parent, my mother, about this new season in the TV series that was my life. Until that experience.

I'll never forget it — my youngest sister, my mother and I were watching an episode of Project Runway Junior and Tim Gunn in all his fabulous, trendsetting glory came on-screen to advise one of the designers. My mother gestured with her head to the screen and asked, "He's gay, isn't he?"

Tentative, I answered yes. A look of utter disgust passed over her face and she called him an idiot. I waited a few minutes before I retreated to the bathroom where I sat on the edge of the bathtub and wept bitterly for the first time in my life. I sobbed. I couldn't breathe. I asked God why He would do this to me when He knew I wasn't strong enough to shoulder it. Why He give me this challenge and what He expected me to do now.

My little sister found me drowning in my sorrow and alerted my older sister. She didn't say a word. Just got me out of the bathroom so our mother wouldn't see, took me to her room and made me lay with her on her bed while she watched an episode of Glee on the laptop. A few minutes in, and I was laughing hysterically. I felt better, and I know it doesn't seem like a big thing, what she did for me that day, but I will never forget it. Or how my mother made me feel.

Till now I still don't know if I'll ever tell my mother I like girls just as much as I like boys. I don't know if I'll ever tell my brother, my other friends, or my cousins and aunts. I don't know if it will ever get better for me, but I do know I'm not alone.

I read other milestones and I see other LGBTQ+ youths telling me that that light at the end of the tunnel does exist, and one day, things will be so much better. And oddly enough, I believe them.