Know your AIQA – Sneha Singh

Hi, I’m Sneha Singh, 20, Bisexual. About to be an engineer. Social Worker.

I was just  14 when I realized I was into girls. But it didn’t took me long enough to realize that it was not really acceptable in the society, that I wasn’t allowed to love girls. That it was not what they called “normal”.

So I stayed in the closet while dropping subtle hints and preparing people I loved for “something they didn’t know about me.” I came out of the closet last year, to my family and few close friends, started dating girls.

And finally I met a girl I fell in love with, and simultaneously announced the news to my family. Luckily, they have been supportive. Or at least un-bothered because they don’t believe it’s something real. People give strange reactions when they get to know I’m dating a girl. Some say “You’ll still need a man for*ahem ahem*”. Some people support. Some tell me about how they have a friend who’s like me!

Coming out of the closet has been more of a process, rather than an event. You keep meeting people, some are a**holes and you need to hide the *fact* from them, some support you. There have been incidents, lots actually, where I had to deal with the homophobia, listen to people call my very sexuality a “mental disease”, my relationship to be discredited as ‘unreal’, ‘such things aren’t serious’, and many other things. Or having to explain to people why we queers need to fight, educate them about the crimes and discrimination done to the queers just because who we are.

Its not easy. But what matters is, this process has made it easier for me to embrace myself, to accept who I’m as a person.
Sneha Singh