“Leaving was the only way I could breathe again.” (part 1)
My girlfriend and I first met each other on a lesbian website back at the beginning of 2013. I was working in Sài Gòn at that time, and she was a student in Hà Nội. I honestly went on the site out of curiosity; I didn’t think I was there to find a girlfriend. We had been talking for a while till mid-year, then I started to feel the pressures of the gossips surrounding my life in Sài Gòn. My roommate was looking for trouble and shit talked me to my parents back in my hometown. She even brought up the fact that I was dating a girl to my workplace. I couldn’t handle the frustration, so I left home and moved all the way up North.
I decided to leave and tell nobody because if someone had known, they would’ve stopped me. I left, first off, because I wasn’t ready to come out then, partly due to the fact that I was too young. There was no weight to my voice. I also had nothing to show for it, because my girlfriend wasn’t by my side. The second reason was that I was a sensitive person, especially when facing the family. So I left, I picked the path of no return, quietly booking a train ticket to the North straight to Hà Nội. Leaving was the only way I could breathe again.
The day I left was honestly horrible. The trip took two days and one night, and that one night, it was storming so badly that the train had to stop for fear of going off the rails. I didn’t dare to use my phone much since I was trying to save the battery. I had to text my girlfriend and told her not to call or else my phone might die, and then I wouldn’t be able to keep her in the loop. Things got even worse when it got dark. I was trying to save money by avoiding the cushioned seats, so the hard seats made it impossible to sleep. The sound of the storm surrounded me, along with the train engine, and then there was the sound of crying children. It was pretty much chaos.
When I finally arrived and got settled, after two months, I worked up the nerves to tell my family that I was in Hà Nội, not Sài Gòn. My mom, my older sister, and my friends were furious. My family kept trying to call, but I told myself not to pick up since I might be swayed to go home. That Mid-autumn Festival, my mom and sister had been calling nonstop, so I decided to text home and come out… (to be continued)
**********
Rồi Sẽ Ổn Thôi (“Gonna Be Alright”) is a project that collects coming out stories from the LGBTIQ+ community and their loved ones in Việt Nam. To find out more details or to read more stories from the project, please visit our official social media site on Instagram at ComingOutVN.
