I’ve written this essay many times. Sometimes, it’s just a line or two. Sometimes, it’s an entire three hundred and fifty-page manuscript. There are times it’s a litany that never leaves my lips, times when I whisper it feverishly until the agitation in my spirit is reduced to a barely discernible murmur. 

Every time I turn on the radio and some “qualified panel” is discussing the “naturalness” of my love for a woman, I write this essay. Frankly, why such hate speech is allowed on air baffles me. Whenever I read about people being discriminated against because of their sexuality, I write this essay. Every damn time I’m going to the washroom and get redirected to the gents, I scream this essay out loud. I want to drum it into their skulls that I’m a woman, and the fact that I am male presenting doesn’t make me any less a woman than those who wear makeup and frilly dresses. Could I please, for just once, use the damn bathroom without being asked to authenticate my femininity. Each time I write this essay, however, it’s in my mind. I scream and rant and rave, but only within me. Why speak if all they’re going to hear is noise? I have come to believe, or rather, I was taught to believe that as long as I am not straight or married to a man, none of what I want to say matters. 

My mother tells me this, whenever she starts to nag about the way I dress, which is every time she sets eyes on me. Just yesterday, she told me that I dishonor God every day by the way I dress. She then referred me to the sermon of the day, which had been deeply homophobic, the priest loudly declaring, “There is no place for homosexuality here!” I had to leave the house. With each second, I wanted to yell right in her face, “Ma, I’m gay! I’m gay too! Yes, I do all those things you think are disgusting. I am gay!”

Thankfully, I didn’t. If I had, I would be dead and this long rant would exist only in my head. My mum tells me all the time how as a woman, no matter how many degrees I obtained, or achievements I clocked in life, I am still nothing without a man. Then she refers me to a friend of the family who always takes up the expenses of family events but is never consulted when major decisions are to be made because she is unmarried. I tell her I wouldn’t mind if it were me, and then would come the part of her spiel that irks me the most, society:

“Whether you mind it or not, you have to understand that you live within a society. You have to conform. Whether you like it or not, a woman’s place is next to a man. You just can’t get up and say you don’t want to get married. You don’t know what spirits are lurking around and are hearing your words. Whether you like it or not, a woman must marry.” 

Telling a friend about my mum and her beliefs, she said to me, “I just realized that your mum is going to literally kill you when she finds out about your sexuality. I mean, given how you said she beat you growing up.” She had been telling me about the first and only time her mother had beaten her. I was surprised by her story, because I received a beating regularly, mixed in with a lot of verbal abuse and emotionally disparaging moments. I couldn’t disagree with her, and it hurt me. Because despite everything she has done to me and I have done to her, my mother is the one person on this planet for whom I cannot feel anything but love. Recent introspection has led me to realize that I make every major decision in my life putting her feelings into consideration, even if the repercussions of the decision would affect only me. My mother is the major reason I won’t come out.

In my country right now, there is a bill being debated in parliament. If this bill is passed, being queer becomes illegal. Any and all LGBTQI activities would be criminalized, even if it is merely talking about it on social media. A few days before the bill went to parliament, I was at a work conference, being held in a hotel. I had already attracted a lot of stares because people were trying to figure out if I was a man or a woman, as if it was any of their business. People had already said things to me. I have grown past letting it bother me. I need to use the washroom and as I step into the ladies, I think of all the times I have been waved towards the gents or physically prevented from entering the ladies. In a retrospectively foolish act of defiance, I used the men’s room instead.

I stepped out, feeling a strange sense of victory when my bosses made me open my trousers and drop my pants. One of them put her hands inside and felt around my boxers to be sure I didn’t have a penis. Right there, in one of the conference halls of a large hotel. I have worked with these women for nearly a year. I have helped them clip stray bra hooks in. I have offered an extra sanitary pad when necessary. We have talked about situations only women would relate to and exclaimed sis! Many times. Working with them in itself hadn’t been a breeze. The homophobia is insane. The stories I have lived will leave you deciding what emotion it is you’re trying to feel. Shock at their myopia, amusement at how wrong they are in their assumptions, disgust at the things they would let themselves do to someone else because they don’t love in the prescribed fashion. Who put their hand in another woman’s pants and look for a penis, for crying out loud?

I know I have been harassed and I should report it. A few days later, the bill starts to cause an uproar. If the bill is passed, dressing like me is illegal. Being male presenting, being effeminate, is illegal. A man shares a story of being refused service at the passport office because he has dreadlocks. I know I have been sexually harassed and I should say something. My friends advise me to sue. I think of the media circus it would generate, all for a justice I wouldn’t receive. My country is the other reason I won’t come out.

In the past, happenings like these would have put me down. I would have made a flurry of bad decisions, descending into a dark and lonely existence of depression, self-loathing and self-destruction. The things I have done to myself appall me sometimes, and I wonder how I was ever able to forgive myself. The thing about descending into an existence of misery, especially if you didn’t put yourself there by your own actions, is that you cannot survive there for very long. I literally got tired of people telling me how to feel, of my mother’s voice in my ear telling me how my worth was tied to some man who contributed nothing to the woman I am today, of my boss’ voice warning me to change the way I dress else I would be hit on by lesbians. It’s a very exhausting state of being; the life of the person who doesn’t live for themselves. You don’t even remember how to be happy anymore, because the standard you are living up to isn’t yours.

All that self-loathing and self-destructive energy I put into myself, into finding out who I was, who I am, outside of the influence and benchmarks of people who aren’t me. The side effect of this is everything lining up perfectly for me. It’s as if the universe is looking out for me. Problems I’d anticipate would get solved even before they had time to arrive. It’s making steadfast my belief in serendipity, in the fact that everything is right and everything is wrong. It’s the energy you put out there that comes back to you magnified, having fed off similar vibes. Of course, there are those exceptions, as when your asshole boss still has everything going for him, when the evil and mean seem to triumph, seem to never get paid for all the bad they do.

There are anomalies in every system, and even the universe, with all her glory and omniscience, cannot always grab those little ones that slip in through the cracks. It’s hurtful to think that not everyone gets what’s coming to them. What can we do? Put our vibes out there and hope for them in return.  Everything is aligning for me, and sometimes, in my soberer moods, in those times when I become introspective, bordering on self-loathing, but not quite getting there, I wonder if it just isn’t the devil facilitating my journey to his fiery abode, both his kingdom and condemnation.

Yes, I’m nearly Christian sometimes. I was brought up Christian, and there are times when I admit to myself that the beliefs I have today, no matter how non-religious I claim they are, have firm roots in religion. I still believe in a supreme deity. I still pray, even if it isn’t to God. And there are days I catch myself making the Sign of the Cross when I am waiting for something to fall through or am a little frightened. And so, thanks to these roots, my introspective journeys sometimes tend to take a religious detour. If Satan is real and condemnation awaits sinners and God despises that I love another woman, then perhaps things lining up for me isn’t the universe responding to my positive vibes, but simply the devil ensuring I stay on the path to condemnation.

It’s all quite vexing, isn’t it? That there are no absolute truths and we can’t tell what actually is certain. God could actually exist and the Bible could really be the manual to having a pleasing eternity, because eternity exists. But then again, we could have actually just come into being because of some big bang and some bigger bang would obliterate the entire memory of existence. We like to be sure. I have become a little more comfortable with not knowing. Of course, I’m still afraid of death because I don’t know what will happen after we’re gone. I’m still a little wary of the future because I have no idea if I’ll survive it, or if it will survive me. Perhaps, this is why I’m a retrophile. The past is certain. We already know what the past holds and while recent events may put it into better perspective, the past isn’t changing for anyone. 

The religious detours in my introspective journeys always lead me to one destination; I traded my God – no, the god I was taught – for love. I exchanged my religion for happiness, and I bartered my salvation for the deep sense of home I feel, when I am spending time with the woman I love. Sounds damning. I literally shudder, as I type these words. I know I’m forgiven, though I don’t know how I know. I feel that loving someone cannot be a sin. I know that sharing a bond that transcends the reaches society sets isn’t criminal. People refuse to understand me, but people aren’t the one I’m in love with. People don’t smile at me and make me feel like I have been punched in the gut with all the joy there is in the world, permeating my being until every fiber of my existence is saturated in happiness.

I have found my tribe, in accepting myself. Sure, my closet is still firmly shut and I have no idea where the keys are. However, I’m not alone in the closet and for the moment. That’s enough. It’s more than enough, actually. I have reliable support systems, and as a result, I have also learned to be a reliable support system. It’s not everything but at the moment, it is enough. This story no longer exists only in my head. You have come to the end of it. Wherever you are, imagine a tall, dark-skinned woman patting herself on the back for finally getting the courage to speak her truth. If you have learned nothing from this tirade, please learn this: speak, even if all they hear is noise.

This story is published with the permission of the editor, and is one of the award winning stories from the forthcoming anthology, Wedged Between Man and God: a Collection of Queer West African Women’s Story.