unfettered thoughts

for a long time i thought i am a hater. i complained about things. everything. i would pick fight with people. if you’re thinking me as an adult, no! me as a pre-teen.

i was full of questions. i wanted answers, if i didn’t get them i’d have a breakdown. but as i grew up, i soon realised adults do not have answers. not only that, most adults do not even wants to know. i have tried to see whether they know already so they don’t care, but that is not true. they just do not care about knowing.

i was also a problem child. food and sleep both were extremely deregulated for me. nobody in the village cared. it is normal, it gets okay when they’re an adult. takes time, for some it takes longer time.

i think neurodivergence is common in our villages, in that lifestyle, neurodivergent people always find their places. i mean, nobody really cares if the kid who goes with the goats to the meadows is autistic or not. that kid will be taken care of. if that’s all they can do, they will do that all their life. i think there is safety in that lifestyle. safety some neurodivergent people badly seek. something i desperately seek.

this however did not fit with an urban lifestyle. so i struggled. i had to wake up early. my grandma would shout for waking up at 8, but here i had to wake up at 6 or so. we went to sleep by 10 pm.

when i went to the hostel, i had some amazing teachers. but i had a problem with authority. i would reject whatever they taught and i wrote whatever i thought of the works. write how this name is perfect for the story: and i would write how it is far from perfect. this was never punished, but encouraged. even if i wrote shit stuff. this got quite a bit of attention and i got to participate in shit like recitation, oratory, theatre etc.

however, in 2007 i got outed as gay in front of the whole junior high. that made me not get selected for these events. and others would come over to my bed at night, regardless of i’m sleeping or not. i even got a very bad case eczema owing to this. i was so out of my fucking mind, i would put salicylic acid all over my genitals and later peel the burnt skin off. it didn’t prevent anything, just the itching.

i hated myself too. i embodied the hater. this hatred stayed with me. i was not a good fighter, i can’t fight, but i learnt to hurt people with my words. and i got very good at it.

i did get a lot of creative freedom here. not all directors would allow someone with my surname to be cast, so i learned technical things of the theatre at this point. light, audio, etc. i made wall magazines, i made audio dramas before podcasts were cool. back in 2008/2009.

i returned home one month into class ten with my parents. my mother had a surgery. i handled all homemaking and also caregiving for others in this time. we eventually got a cook, but that cook was so bad, we had to cook anyway. it is at this point i started learning cooking, feeding, taking care of a bed-ridden person. something that i had to do again for my grandfather in class 12 again. he needed intense physiotherapy. we used bricks as weight for that shoulder pull.

home was full of hatred. i have tried to run away, i have been put on meds to force puberty out of me, i was having an emo phase and smoking black cigarettes in the bathroom. we had constant fights. it is at this point i got very badly manipulated by a married woman. my parents got to know, they blamed me, and took away any access to phones and computers. i was using my father’s nokia, mostly for songs and videos. but yeah. i wanted to apply to isi calcutta. she said she’s a professor, who knew people. anyway, this woman would play with my time and make me question my worth. i did not know what boundaries are, i experienced things i never thought was possible. no one prepared me for that. it felt like hell.

i went to college as hater but without boundaries. i did not care about interpersonal boundaries, but i was snarkier. i’d insult people and they wouldn’t even realise. but college was another kinda hell. in my previous schools, they have discriminated against me, yes, but they didn’t fuck up with the marks. college did. i haven’t really faced discrimination like this before. it took years to realise what was going on.

nobody told me about sc-st-obc-general categories. nobody prepared me for anti caste atrocities. nobody prepared me how colleges are hell for both queer and neurodivergent people.

i got assaulted two weeks into the first semester in a room full of people. some dude came and kept grinding on me and wouldn’t leave me alone. i got assaulted more later, but that’s after i came out as a tranny.

i hated here also, questioned authority, tried to went out of the prescribed notion, and i was promptly punished. it was not that i was ever wrong, to be honest, my profs preferred me early for external no-mark reviews because that would generally be praised, yet i kept receiving the lowest marks in the class. snarky wasn’t helping me. they didn’t get it in the first place. i started asking for answers and eventually write a letter asking to show reason, and that’s when i’m told i'll never be allowed to pass here.

i tried to fight, but i wasn’t prepared. my shit has been stolen before, i was jobless. i had to quit uni, went back home, get support from parents. they unwillingly provided, but that soured our relationship further. me coming out as a tranny didn’t have much effect. i did some work, and then left before the pandemic.

just before the pandemic i got into a relationship with this person who only wanted to keep me as an entertainment. the token tranny. it was a roller coaster. he broke up with me and hooked up with this then cis person who was transphobic towards me.

that fucked me up. but it is then i decided i will love. when i came out as non binary in 2017, i had a hoe phase that ended with surprise surprise, assault again. but i met some wonderful people with big hearts. it is then i decided to be kinder. but in 2020 i realised i love people by caring for them. that is how i love. that is the only way i know how to love. i also give my body. as a token of my love. i do not know what else to do.

so i decided i will give love. i have the capacity to. i do not wanna love one person as a partner, but i wanna share my love, in different ways, via different connections. i of course want a partner and i knew i would devote to them.

i know how to take care of others. i don’t know how to take care of myself. but that is okay. i will learn. i am only 29.

my love is mine to give. my hate is consuming. i want to learn to love myself so that the hate doesn’t come out all the time i feel threatened.