TW: Mention of violence, queerphobia
Things went extremely haywire this time and, I really, really, don’t know how to fix any of it. There is no poetry in what happened some days ago, and I have never been more scared for my friend – the same friend who likes the color purple as much as I do. It hasn’t been easy for them. Hell, is it ever easy for people like us? After all, we are pieces of paper meant to be crushed and torn by the whims of men who lurk in the darkest corners of society. I don’t know how to put it so I will be blunt and honest – my friend survived a hate crime.
It happened some days ago, and all my friend dared to do was walk down a certain street. The rest is too gruesome to be put down into sentences. Too brutal to be actually narrated. My words can never do any justice to everything that my friend went through. To everything every other person like my friend or me goes through. My words can never do justice to the bruises on my friend’s body and mind.
When they called me and managed to tell me the entire ordeal through tears and stammers, I asked them to come over to my place and stay here for as many days as they wanted. I don’t know if anything I do would be remotely helpful, but I couldn’t just stand by and watch my friend tremble in fear alone. All I can do is listen to them and hope it provides some semblance of comfort. My friend had nowhere to go. Their partner was not in the city and they haven’t spoken to their family ever since the latter had cut them off. I wish I could take away their pain and feel all of it myself. I wish to have my friend back, whom I lost to fists and blood and cheap threats – the same friend who came into my life at my loneliest hour. It has just been a couple of days since that and their bruises will heal eventually. But what about the scars? How many years would it take for them to disappear? How many years would it take for people like us to be human enough and not be looked down upon as vermin? Because that’s all that we are right? Vermin. Disappointments. Mistakes that need to be corrected like a tongue that utters profanity and needs to be rubbed thoroughly with soap and water. An illness that needs to be cured and if it isn’t cured, it needs to be eradicated irrespective of the price. After all, the price that is to be paid is just a life that wouldn’t matter eventually. No father wants an ‘embarrassment’ for a child and no mother wants her son to see the ‘obscenity’ we are.
My friend just sat there, numb and afraid. I had no words to offer but I just sat by their side and held them as closely as possible. The same thing that happened to me a year ago now happened to my friend. I had nowhere to go and no one to tell. There aren’t many who take us seriously. After all, people like us ask to be violated right? How many bruises are we supposed to carry until we find some kind of love in the most deranged of places? My scars remain and so will my friend’s. And if we can’t take these scars to our graves, we might as well carve them into broken mirrors so one day when the world awakens, they can look at us and catch us looking back. We might be bruised, but we are not slaughtered. We are still here, fighting wars that have been shoved into history’s shadow.
It has almost been a week and my friend has gotten better. But, you can’t expect a flower to bloom right after you have planted the seeds of healing. I am here for as long as they need me. I know they will be okay and they will learn to laugh and smile and caress themselves without being reminded of their scars. They will wake up tomorrow morning and I will be making breakfast for the two of us in the kitchen. I will wait for them to get ready as I add a bit of cinnamon to their coffee. We will spend hours talking and few others remaining quiet. We will be here, in a place where no one can lay an eye on us; where we will laugh and cry and hold hands and laugh again until tears return to our eyes. Yes, the world is cruel to us and for that reason, we will build a home for ourselves where the world is a little more quiet and little less haunting. We will be here for each other and create the love that the world has taken away from us again and again. After all, that is the one thing that the men in those streets lack – love. And fortunately we will never run out of it.
