THEY ARE THEM

I am Neon. I am non-binary, and my pronouns are they and them. I am proud to be a lesbian and couldn’t be any happier to be a part of the LGBTQIA+ family. But it hasn’t always been this way. My journey has been bumpy to say the least.

I wasn’t born knowing who I was. I spent countless years growing up as a puppet being pulled by strings without a sense of identity. I was known by another name that no longer lives within me. I went through pain in order to heal. I struggled through treacherous and rocky terrain but eventually I found myself. My identity was being formed. I know who I am now, and this is my story.

Growing up as the “daughter” in a traditional Asian household was already hard enough. Being the eldest child and being constantly reminded of the need to be a ‘role model’ for my brother wasn’t enough to satisfy those who pulled the strings on my back. Naturally, meeting the standard set by those who brought me into this world was a war against myself. I didn’t know that the childhood I went through wasn’t normal, I didn’t know what was happening to my identity. The child I was . . . was disappearing.

Coming out as either a lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual or any other queer person was seldom to be received well in my culture. Knowing this before my teens made me realise how conservative society was. I was constantly afraid to show my true colours, to be myself and express my inner self freely. Instead, I had these so-called “standards” I had to fulfil for others. Yes, there was a period where I was confused and didn’t know my sexuality, identity or how I would like to be addressed by other people. Although I spent my life playing the piano, this time I was the one being played; over time, I experienced challenges which furthered my understanding of my own mind and soul. It wasn’t an easy time for me, constantly being pulled in different directions of my persona. I struggled quite a bit to figure out who I was at the time and who I wanted to become in a decade.

In 2018, I came out as bisexual to my best friend. At that time, he loved and accepted me for who I was. Coming out to my birth mother on Christmas Day was tough as I didn’t know how she would react and let alone know how she would treat me after “the talk”. I was a fool to think she would understand and accept me when she said that it’s okay.

She quickly started to ‘blame’ my sexuality on the bullying I faced at school. She said that I was just confused and didn’t know anything about what my body desired. The discrimination and threats I received from my predators at school and home were apparently my fault for not putting the other person’s feelings as priority and being selfish to want to live as myself. I was manipulated into thinking that she was accepting. There were red flags everywhere from that day onwards, but I was too blind to see any of the warning signs of lies, coercive control and toxic grooming. How I was treated in the household that I once called home, slowly became even tougher than what I endured in high school. I had no help in school to deal with those who bullied me and it’s sad, but the reality is, a lot of educational institutions don’t provide the training required to adequately deal with the verbal and hidden social abuse that so many kids go through every day. As bad as that was, the life under the roof of my birth parents felt like a prison. I hardly had any sort of privacy or freedom of speech. I could never express myself in my own skin, I was constantly told “My body belongs to her, not me, because she gave me life”. So, I often asked myself, who am I? Why am I here? Was I brought up to be an object? To train and show off?

I won’t deny that there were great times growing up. I definitely had my happy moments, with success, friends, coming of age and being able to be financially independent. However, the traumatic moments overshadowed any good moments over those twenty years. I’ve always known that I am a lesbian, and I knew that my family wouldn’t take it very well when I told them. I was right. Even though my mother said she accepted me for who I was, when she found out about my relationship with my ex-girlfriend in 2019, she was enraged. She got so emotional and cried as if it was so wrong. She almost suggested that I had done something illegal. The idea of dating a girl was so foreign to her. I could feel the weights on me getting heavier the more she screamed at me telling me to not be a lesbian, telling me to date a boy, telling me to be “normal”. Now, let me ask you, what is “normal”?

Living under the same roof as my former family was hard. They made me feel like I was suffocating. I couldn’t breathe me. I was breathing them. Constantly monitored 24/7, privacy didn’t exist for me and friends began to leave me in fear of the people who raised me.

No one should have to experience what I went through. The damage it did to me, affecting me mentally and physically in the long-term, leaves me still trying so hard to fight through the healing battle. My identity became so compressed by my parents that I literally became a robot. I had no way of expressing my emotions, I didn’t have a natural personality, I was groomed artificially. The way I treated my friends, the way I approached life, the way I expressed myself in public and on my face, were all pre-planned by my parents. They told me how I was supposed to act. I was not a human; I was just a life-form with no soul attached.

I spent so many years unable to form a smile naturally. Now, when I look back at my photos from late 2019 and early 2020 compared to photos of me now, I see a huge difference. Not in my appearance, but in my smile. I was forced to be happy in the past, knowing that I didn’t know how to be happy for being alive. Now, I am happy on my own, happy with who I am and where I am.

In late 2020, I spent the summer focusing on my mental health, focusing on self-healing, and discovering who I am. Finding my identity was a hectic journey, but it was a journey that I will remember forever, because in those few months I spent away from the trauma house, I was able to sit quietly with my mind and actually process the dark history ingrained in me. I was able to understand what I had been through, was unnatural shaping of a person’s soul.

I was able to discover that there was so much more about me that I didn’t know. I mean imagine growing up for 19 years without knowing anything about yourself. Having been told who you are, what your purpose in this world is and that you are to have the expectations they set for you, and that anything else is completely unacceptable. Yet, I thought they were doing it out of love and care for me only to discover that they were just pushing their deepest desire to have a trophy to wave around to people.

That summer was a critical period for me. It was the significant moment of my life where I actually began to write my own story. I began to know who I was and who I am, and it wasn’t easy as I became more and more self-aware and confused with my identity, not knowing if the gender I was assigned at birth was how I represented myself or whether I responded to the name I was given at birth. People should know that gender is optional, sexuality will forever be fluid and how a person represents themselves is not something that should be judged. We are all the same. There should be no discrimination, because we are not a plague, we are just like everyone else. We are not harming anyone and not pushing our representation onto the world. We just want to be able to freely express our identity without issues. I am not only saying this as a LGBTQIA+ representative, but I am saying this for everyone; we are all the same.

It pains me to see how educational systems, governments, and full-grown adults target LGBTQIA+ youth, discriminating them in class or excluding them from school and not providing options for those who identify as gender neutral. What pains me the most is the fact that the government is excluding transgender youth. They don’t see an issue in targeting growing children who are discovering themselves, trying to figure out their identity, sexuality, and body. Why would grown adults point fingers at defenceless youth, telling them they can’t be themselves?

Mental health issues are on the rise and it is clear what the cause is. Having been through it myself, being discriminated against and treated like an outcast for being comfortable with my identity and sexuality added another layer of scars onto me. Children shouldn’t be treated differently if they introduce themselves with different pronouns, have a preferred name or identify as a gender that speaks to them. It is disappointing that many educational institutions still do not allow the youth to express themselves. Like the house I grew up in, schools are becoming a prison for those who cannot be themselves. It’s time for something to change.

The year spent away from the hell I lived in has allowed me to be myself, to smile again and to openly be the true me. As I said before, I don’t resonate with the name I was given at birth anymore, so I spent many months trying to find a name that truly screamed ME. 2021 hasn’t been the greatest of years for us as a species, but in the world of self-growth and discovery, it has been incredible to finally be able to show people who I really am. It is forever rewarding to be reminded that I was able to get out of my shell and be able to stand on my own feet to walk my own path in life. It was a long process, but I am very happy and proud to say that the day I turned 20; was the day I announced who I really am to everyone I loved and to the world.

I am Neon. I am non-binary, and my pronouns are they and them. I am proud to be a lesbian and couldn’t be any happier to be a part of the LGBTQIA+ family. We support, care, and love each other for who we are. We don’t judge someone by how they represent themselves. That is not important in our world, what is important is the family we create. What matters most, is being able to live as our true selves.

I am me. She is her. He is him. They are them.