Seeing Colours

The joy of turning a new leaf has now become old. It’s one of the first silent, pensive nights of 2022. I’ve noticed that awareness becomes easier during these moments of external quiet. These dark and silent nights are truthful, they reveal how singular your existence is; no matter how many people you surround yourself with during the day, you will always be alone in your nightmares.

The cold wind brings news of the all too familiar restrictions’ resurrection. Lockdown is looming close and even the possibility of that slight impingement of personal freedom is infuriating. The choice to move about freely is such an overlooked luxury. I always considered imprisonment to be the more lenient punishment but the last couple of years completely changed my mind. This was only one of the many instances that proved I’m not as empathetic as I previously believed.

A very close friend of mine belongs to the LGBTQ community. When he first gathered the courage to come out to me (a long time ago), I was ignorantly unempathetic. My naive defence then was that sexual orientation should never be a differentiating factor. I found him every bit as irritating, defensive, headstrong, charming, helpful and loyal as anyone I’d ever let in my inner circle. So, why look beyond that?

I argued that I was being fair to my friend because that is literally what he asked for – to be unseen in a society where they stare daggers at you if you don’t fit the mould. I helped him live his facade too easily. He was afraid of being judged, so I refused to remove my blindfold – all in an alleged attempt to make him feel more comfortable.

John Boyne’s incredible book “The heart’s invisible furies” gave me insight into the matter, albeit much later. The book is essentially the life story of Cyril Avery, a gay man growing up in Ireland in the 60s, a time and place that was devoutly catholic and violently homophobic. John Boyne brilliantly manages to describe the history and context of the era, the struggles of the LGBT movement and the journey of a gay man trying to find his home and identity. It is equally hilarious and heart-wrenching at times. Most importantly, the book vividly described the struggles of a man whose existence itself was considered abhorrent. A dialogue from Cyril that puts his life into perspective:

“The belief that I would spend the rest of my time on earth lying to people weighed heavily on me and at such times I gave serious consideration to taking my own life.”

Cyril’s story helped solidify what I had already pieced together by then. Being different in a regressive society can be excruciating. That pain forces a person to repress a huge part of themself to feel safe and “normal”.

I knew that I could not just feign ignorance at my friend’s fake display of happiness and belongingness. It became clear to me that in the chaos of his life, the few friends that knew him should create a forgiving space as an anchor: A space where he doesn’t have to believe his lies and behave how the outside world wants him to – where he could act out and find his own identity.

Still, in the beginning, I was struggling to open up.

Every person is a product of their circumstance and yet gets judged individually. I didn’t know what biases I was conditioned to have.

My circumstances didn’t teach me how to treat someone different and I was terrified of seeing my friend in a different light. I knew the faults, if any, lay within me. What if I was unknowingly discriminative? What if I stereotyped his temperament? What if I did expect certain things from him that I didn’t from anyone else?

He had already trusted me with one of the biggest secrets of his life. A secret that once made him hate himself and everyone around him. A secret that defines not only his abrasive defensiveness but also his limitless optimism. A secret that he will forever keep from his parents because he believes letting them know (and therefore inflicting suffering) just so he can live freely is selfish. I didn’t know if I was worthy of that trust.

Thankfully, you don’t have to solve every riddle yourself.

Turns out, freedom is like water: It is not missed where it is abundant and where it is not, it consumes every thought.

As I exercised my granted freedom to be unapologetically me, I found him gradually seizing the same. Time and friendship break down a lot of boundaries. He yearned to be free of his defence mechanisms and it was understood that exposure was the true cure for my biases.

I couldn’t help being shocked when his mask occasionally slipped away. I saw that he was a different person underneath it all. I glimpsed a calming presence, untainted by a need to be liked and accepted; a quirky and ambitious person looking for success, love and peace.

To this day, he cannot ease into that person around any of his friends in the know – we have to bring it out of him. I found that acting like you would to everyone else provides negative affirmation and only adds to the problem. There is a moral responsibility here to undo some of the damage inflicted by our society. I vowed to encourage him. In return, he went on and introduced me to his vibrant community hidden right under my nose.

I now recognise that society constantly repaints the world in black and white, reshapes it into cookie-cutter ideas of what human experience should be. There is a spirited section of civilization right in front of us – standing with pride, wanting to be seen, struggling to get their voices heard, representing their experience and helping lost young individuals find a home.

We all have strong biases that polarise our view of life – into right and wrong, good and evil, normal and abnormal. We label anything out of the ordinary and we struggle to accept outliers. Regardless, our shared human experience is undeniably rich and diverse. I learned that seeing and embracing the spectrum of colours in human lives is a choice. Choosing to be blind to it is missing out on life.