I said, “you are a very good friend to me, I know, but I’m interested in her for a different reason. Do you understand?”
He wasn’t happy with what I just said, he nodded without any reaction.
I didn’t understand why he was constantly interfering in my personal life even though he has been my genuine friend for the last 7 plus years.
I needed some personal space, some privacy, and some lonely time to plan my future life.
I wanted to go to dinner with her but he wanted to join us. How could I say don’t join the dinner with us? He’d been one of my best friends through all my undergraduate and graduate school.
When he said that he wanted to join us for dinner with the two of us, me and the girl of my choice, I felt that he’s no common sense. I told myself, “why don’t you understand?” For the first time in my life, something different was going to happen. I was going for dinner with a girl of my thoughts, I needed to go alone with her for some breakthrough talks.
I couldn’t understand my friend’s behaviour, I was quite confused.
“What’s wrong with you?” I screamed to myself in my room.
For a long time he’d said that he would help me in various junctures of my life because we’d fighted many causes together.
Later I felt that he was quite unusual, I couldn’t clearly understand his motive, I was only thinking whether he was doing this knowingly or unknowingly. I needed some private time to settle my life but his action was creating trouble for my plan.
Why did he always want to associate with me everytime?
Was he crossing the fine line of friendship?
I never understood.
I remembered, 2 years ago, he told me, “I’m 28 years old now, I feel very awkward, and insecure. I don’t know why I’m not happy with my existence.”
“There is something wrong inside me, I never told you about this awkwardness, insecurity and suffering. I’ve been having this insecurity for the last several years, I’m being weaker and weaker every single day.” he added.
Being one of his close friends, I told him, “you’re strong, you’ve an Ivy league MBA, you’ve just started a corporate job, your life has just started, but your problem is you take everything very seriously.”
“You think a lot, I would say, you do unnecessary thinking, designed thinking is good but excessive unnecessary thinking 24/7 isn’t good for our healthy body and healthy mind, that’s your problem, you’ve to fix it.”
“You have to make things a little bit easier in life so that our body and mind communicates, life takes its shape the same way as every other living thing does, life matures itself with time, everything takes time to reshape.” I showed positive vibes.
I remembered his response, he said, “Sometimes I feel more rebellious with my family and society, I’ve this scary feeling all the time, I don’t know why?”
When I heard the news that he is in hospital, I couldn’t move, what happend, and later knew that he attempted to committ suicide.
“That’s beyond my imagination, what’s going on in his life” I screamed.
I couldn’t believe this. I helped him in so many ways to see things in life and he helped me in the same way.
We used to share a lot of things, both good and bad. But why this time I’m in the corner and he made such a horrible decision to abandon everything including his own life.
Anyway, I knew that he survived, he is recovering well gradually. I’m happy.
I talked to his family members but nobody knew anything on how and why he took such an unthinkable terrifying step.
My mind was bogging me all the time to know why he attempted such a heinous crime.
I decided that I will go deeper and will find it out.
He was in a hospital bed, he was recovering gradually, and the doctor said that he would be fine after 2 to 3 weeks, he needs a lot of physical and mental rest.
I went to the hospital and told him, “if you think I’m your good friend then you can’t hide it from me. Please tell me what is inside you that is eating you everyday all the time.”
Please tell me.
I saw tears in his eyes.
He said in one sentence, “I’m gay, but I want to live.”
Silence.
No words.
I filled the gap of silence, “so what?”
“I have gay friends, I occasionally chat with them in social media. They are very genuine and responsible, they are living happy lives, they’ve contributed a lot for society.” I said.
“Is this the only reason that led you to take in such a heinous crime to kill yourself?” I asked.
“I would say this, my friend, you attempted to escape from your own suffering but you’re about to give incurable long-lasting suffering to your family, you didn’t do justice here by not sharing with me about your suffering, I knew you were in pain but you chose to fight alone and wanted to have a trophy of suffering.” I further added.
He grabbed a napkin and wiped his tears.
My friend, we all will die one day so we need to plan our death, then only we live this life freely.
If we don’t plan our death or if we forget that we will die one day in future then we are not living.
You are gay, you accepted it, but I don’t know what bothered you so much to let the world know about this?
This your gay life isn’t your choice.
God made you gay, so where is your fault here?
You cannot change your genes, you cannot change your hormones, and you cannot change your brain.
You have no power to change the complexity of interconnectedness between your genes and hormonal biology.
Biology is a natural force which is beyond our control, but culture, religion, and other beliefs are human-made myths so they keep changing.
My friend, we still have a caste system in hindu community, we still have untouchable humans in this world, we still have a race system in American society.
We still cannot prosecute husbands in more than 50 countries of the world even if they rape their wives because they don’t have such legal mechanism, husbands still think wives are their properties, things, they own them.
These above facts are only ‘tip of the iceberg’ of human myths but sexuality is pure biology, it’s not a myth.
Eventually biology always wins, it’s only a matter of time.
My friend, you and I had the same biology until puberty but after that, god gave you a different path to go and me a different path.
Though we say all humans are created equal, in reality, we are born with different genes and we gradually evolve unequally based on those different genes, hormones, brain, and external environment. But I am sure we both can live our lives in our own way.
Why don’t you accept who you are and show the world who you can become and what you can offer to the world?
You might be depressed because you are not like me. You want to be like others, you want to be like the majority of us. My friend, this is BS. Your biological identity is your authenticity.
The meaning of life is unconditional but you are making it conditional by attempting to commit suicide.
If somebody is killed by some external factor then death has some justification but if we kill ourselves then our death has no meaning, no justification.
Suffering and dying are inevitable in our lives but if we kill ourselves by our own weak thoughts then we’ve not understood death.
My friend, you don’t know what you can offer personally to this society yet, but if you become weak to fight against the social myths then you’ve not learnt anything from Tim Cook, who leads one of the most powerful companies, Apple, as a CEO on the planet.
He is a gay.
If you become weak, what do you learn from Anderson Cooper? He is a gay.
Every aspiring journalist on the planet wants to be like Anderson Cooper in the field of journalism.
What do you learn from Tammy Baldwin, she is a US senator, one of the highest public offices of the most powerful country on earth.
She happened to be a lesbian.
My friend, this world has given to all of us a special quality in a special form. In this world there are many buildings, they all have unequal size doors. If you are stuck in one door and can’t go through then you have to go around to find another door through which you can go. But this is your job to keep looking at various doors.
This also applies at your home and if you can’t go through then you might have to take the initiative to modify the doors at your home.
In fact, your house is your home, remember all houses may not be homes, you stayed there for 28 years, that place isn’t only home for you, it should be a heaven for you.
We are Homo Sapiens, this means we are social animals. All of our social features including happiness and suffering originate from family.
Our biological identity should not be characterized by hostility and mockery.
My friend, you must start the conversation about your biological identity with your dad or mom or sister or brother about who you really are, and what you really can offer to this world.
I request you to start the conversation with one person first whom you trust the most and move ahead in life.
Once you start the conversation in your family as who you really are, they start to make space for you, this is how our identity revolution begins.
Remember, Claudette Colvin was 15 years old when she refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus but this incident led Rosa Parks to revolt again and now we all know the history of the 1950s civil rights movement in the USA.
Any movement needs space to wiggle and it also needs time to wiggle but somebody should start somewhere to make a move.
Life shouldn’t be complicated but it doesn’t mean it has through road-signs all the way to the end.
My conversation with my friend suddenly stopped once I saw his dad entering the hospital room.
His dad sat next to him and comforted his son’s forehead with his hand.
His son closed his eyes but I saw tear droplets in his eyes.
I greeted ‘goodbye’ to both dad and son and assured my friend to come tomorrow again in the evening.
My whole life with him from high school to this day was revolving in my mind. I reflected back, I saw so many things correlated now, every single incident is making sense now which I couldn’t understand then.
I felt bad for what I said and did for him in the past, what other friends did and said to him, and what society did for him. Of course, it’s past now, it’s gone, nothing can be done. I learnt, realized and murmured to myself why God offers life so mysteriously.
I promised myself that I will do whatever I can, I won’t let my friend die again.
I used to read books randomly when I was undergrad, I wasn’t a systematic and aggressive reader then, but when I started my graduate career, I became very interested in reading books far from my core expertise of chemical science.
I became an aggressive reader. I joined book clubs. I knew that I developed my mental faculties broadly to understand human values and society by reading diverse books written by priceless minds.
After returning from the hospital I was looking at something in one of my old boxes but my eyes caught a book on the shelf by Dr Viktor Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
I remembered that this book I had received from one of my friends as a birthday gift.
I’d also discussed this book in the book club in the past.
Inside the book, there was a written note from my friend who gave me the book “this would be a nice companion when you are suffering in life.”
I reread a few pages from Viktor Frankl’ book. I read, “The meaning of life always changes, but it never ends. The meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than search within oneself.”
I realized that probably my friend searched the meaning of life within himself but never tried to discover, as a result, he chose a route to committe suicide.
Viktor has a vivid explanation of an individual’s experience in a book as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. The most important aspect I like in the book is the view of an author, who is a doctor, for love, hope, responsibility, freedom, and beauty. These all can be found in both nature and art as tools in suffering and depression.
I told my friend that you are gay but this shouldn’t be the reason of your suffering.
There is nothing wrong with it, and it is given to you by another force, nature or God whatever you can say.
When you were a child, your dad made everything for you, he made a roof for you, he provided food on the table, he managed clothes to wear, you received all the love and care but now why do you think that your dad won’t accept you as a gay son?
Ultimately, your gay gene is an extension from your dad. Isn’t it?
Next day I handed him the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl and said to him that this book could be a nice friend to you while recovering in the hospital bed.
I asked him a series of questions intentionally, I thought this might help him to reveal more who he really is.
Why are you afraid to open up your identity now?
What is the worst that can happen if you open up your identity?
Why are you depressed now?
Who do you think is the most helpful person in your life now?
What is the meaning of your life?
These might be difficult questions to answer for him but I’m sure he can tackle all of these hurdles one by one.
When we remain depressed we always feel like we are not being treated fairly in this world. We always think that this world has done something wrong with us.
We always assume that we don’t understand things even after taking a long time of study but other people will understand things quickly.
If we start to think this way then what happens to those tens of thousands of others who are gay who have no education, no jobs, but struggling in society every single day?
My friend, this world is neutral, this world isn’t biased, this world doesn’t recognize rich and poor, strong and weak, educated and uneducated, gay and straight.
This is our duty to find out which role we are playing and where we fit. This understanding is critical to lower depression in our life.
Once we become depressed, we not only become unhappy ourselves, we make so many people unhappy around us.
Depression is like gas in an empty room, it doesn’t matter how much gas flows inside the room, it will eventually fill the room.
If we are depressed for any reason, it doesn’t stay only with us, it ultimately spreads like a virus all over our family, our relatives, and our close friends.
We have to understand that suffering and happiness both are byproducts of our life journey. They are basically not the targeted end products. These both must occur during our lifetime. We cannot keep only happiness and exclude the suffering or vice-versa, this is not going to happen at any time.
Think of this way, our body loves good and nutritious food but our body also stores feces until it can be defecated.
Mostly, we remain depressed because we have fear in our mind, fear of not becoming somebody, fear of not achieving something, fear of chronic disease which we don’t have yet, fear of the future which we don’t know yet what it looks like, fear of losing something which we actually don’t possess yet, and most importantly, fear of not being accepted by society.
Fear prevents us from living in many many ways.
But if we really want to see the other side of the fear, there is nothing, it’s a clean slot but we cannot see it until we jump on fear first.
Fear is such a brutal and chronic emotion that we completely forget that we can live by eating only rice and beans in this life.
We completely forget that we can live by eating only oatmeal, by drinking only water throughout our lifetime if we want.
We completely forget that we can live by wearing two jeans and two shirts for many many years to come.
We always remain depressed thinking of something negative in our lives but our mind actually stores nothing negative if we practice only positive in it.
Last year, my friend sent me a birthday card via email, he’d written on the card, “God broke my power of love for opposite sex but I always strengthened my power of love for the same sex. I’m happily married, a mom now with two wonderful kids. Thank you so much for everything that you did for me. Happy Birthday to You”
Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina
Progress for valued society