I was a girl who collected seashells from the shore and sent them back to the mother sea. I would leave the last potato wedge for my sister, just to see that smile play on her lips. I adored the littlest of things and found great value in it because as I replayed memories, ’tis what makes life life; the sparkle of the green summer leaves that differentiates it from autumn’s.

Life allows space for queer things and as they say, beautiful things don’t ask for attention, yet our eyes certainly look out for them in queerness. Perception here plays an important role. I knew I was queer since grade 10 and my life hasn’t been authentic ever since. I’ve put a great load of thought into naming this piece of writing and used this statistical term—boxplot, which gives a graphical representation of data, while highlighting the outliers in the distribution. The box contains the ‘normal’ people who follow societal norms and outside the plotted box contains the outliers that pretty much define me. It almost aches to be a part of that group.

Being an outlier never seemed like a problem to me during high school, but things took a turn in college. I felt like an imposter, a black-faced guy with a ‘normal’ people mask on. I thought I’d maneuver through it just like high school but exploring my sexuality flung me into the limelight. I was a kid roaming around looking for kindness and warm love, but I had never seen such stone-cold hearts. It was painful to belong to such a system that undermined individuality and I was stuck in a loop trying to define myself to practically insentient people.

I’d sit in anticipation
Toying with my words, almost mumbling to leave my mouth
To give them their own identity
To strain through the dense suffocating air
Windows crying to be opened, hearts crying out of apathy
I feel this fear, fear that numbs me to choose silence over some gimmicky comforting words To stay in a heated shelter
Where it always has shown love for you “Why do you go there?”
I feel safe, away from the arrows of words piercing my heart.

This was my conflict—the conflict of identity. Dodie, an English singer-songwriter knows how to put it in words and it makes me shed a tear each time.