Accepting alternative sexuality is a tough battle because people not only fight from society but themselves too. In this feud, sometimes they lose their family, friends, and a bit of themselves. The process of acceptance is really tiring. However, if you have found the right motivation to reach the end of the tunnel, the journey will become fruitful. Sujan Vishwanath had a similar experience.
Sujan Vishwanath is a graphic designer working for a big American company. He completed his studies at Mysore. Sujan comes from a nuclear middle-class family.
Sujan’s story starts from the time he accepted he was gay and confronted everyone about it. Let’s hear this story further from Sujan himself:
Sujan Vishwanath – My Story
I’ve always felt that I was different from others. In my teenage years, I had discovered my interest in men. However, during my pre-college days, I started questioning my identity. The realization of no knowledge about my identity left me bewildered. I wanted to figure out what and how I actually felt about men. I knew I liked men, but I had not dated anyone.
Then, I met a guy online on Facebook. We started talking, and he told me that he liked men too. We used to go to the same gym. One day when I was in the gym shower, he came from behind and tried to sexually assault me.
That one incident left me baffled because I was already warned against it. I had sensed it even before it came. After that, I tried to play safely. Then I moved to Mysore for my college studies.
In that city, I met a boy. We fell in love. After meeting him, I realized the true meaning of love. I had discovered that two men can be in love without hurting each other. We were in a relationship for almost two and a half years. I came out and talked about my relationship with my parents. I told them I liked men and I have no intentions of marrying a woman.
Obviously, they were shocked. It was expected because it took 19 years to accept my identity. I didn’t expect them to understand it in a day. My dad was in utter silence and shocked. My mom blurted out some harsh words and started crying. When I came out to my relatives, they felt it was disgusting. I lost my family’s attention, and I was left out of almost every family occasion. Nobody supported me in my family except my cousin sister and her husband.
After knowing, she was also disappointed, but her husband made her understand that men falling for men is not something wrong. It is a natural process that is beyond our control. He insisted that I should be what I actually wanted to be. She took her time, but she understood. After that, they became my biggest supporters.
Both of them used to come to my house to try to make my parents understand that being gay is not weird. It is normal and natural. However, things weren’t going right in my relationship. After dating him for three years, I felt that it was becoming toxic. I was constantly body-shamed by him. Being a gay person, one is too much concerned about his body image issues.
You start overthinking every little detail of your body. And the fact that my boyfriend used to talk ill about my body after coming out didn’t feel right to me. He told me that we needed to break up because he had a good reputation, and he did not want his brother to not know about our relationship.
By that time, my mother had accepted me. We used to talk about everything as friends. She advised me that I should start loving myself first. The relationship had ended because of society, and I would never be able to unlove him. But I should move on and start accepting myself.
In 2020 when everything was in lockdown, I started thinking about the mental pain I have been through, and I decided to seek therapy. Before therapy, I had kept my personal life limited to my family and friends. I wasn’t open about it on any social media sites.
But when I went to therapy and started talking about sexual assault and childhood trauma, the fear went away. I realized that I don’t need to hide from anyone. There is no need to bury the truth in a box and lock it away. I wasn’t afraid anymore as I had accepted who I was, and I feel comfortable about it. It no longer pinched me.
So I opened up about my sexual identity on social media. My story was featured on the Humans of Bombay Instagram page. Many people supported me, but many of them thought I was doing it only to gain popularity and attention.
It’s so tragic to see people, who try to be “cool” on social media, find it abnormal when a guy posts a picture with another guy. I also got rape threats on social media, which often traumatized me.
Now, I have learned to overcome such people and threats with the help of therapy. I am happy that I am in a much better space than earlier. I completed a movie-making and designing course in college, and currently, I am working as a designer at J.C.Penny. Furthermore, I have already designed over 20 book covers. I also got a chance to do volunteer work in an NGO working for non-binary people.
I dream of becoming an actor and directing movies. Furthermore, I have come a long way in my life. I was a little boy who had kept his identity hidden from the world for years. Who waited for someone to come and love him. But now I’m a fearless man who doesn’t care about judgment and social norms, but his happiness and wellbeing.
So, to everyone who is reading my story, I want to say, “Do not wait for anyone. You can defeat your strongest demons alone. Trust me, loving yourself is far better than waiting for somebody to love you.”
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