Being gay is a curse when the homophobia you grew up with was so bad that you're homophobic yourself. Especially when you're into unavailable guys like your roommate, whose girlfriend is everything you're not (though appearances can be deceiving). S...
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Flying was the absolute worst. Every time the holidays came around, I dreaded nothing more than traveling across the world to visit my family in Europe because the flight was horrible and long and left me feeling like an insomniac for a good week and I didn't really like visiting them in the first place.
The thing is, I didn't hate my family—they weren't inherently bad or unpleasant people—but I'd been so distanced from them and their lifestyle and it had become so exhausting to pretend that I wasn't... That I was this perfect, holy, rule-abiding daughter. I was sick of lying about how and with whom I was spending my time at college, but I had no other option, really. Not anymore. It was a deceived family or no family at all.
The first day of my vacation was spent sleeping, because time zones were a bitch.
Then, I had to find a way to communicate with my boyfriend without giving anyone any clues to his existence, so I tiptoed through the house in the middle of the night, shivering violently due to the sub-zero temperature of December in Norway, until I found a way. Texting was relatively safe so long as my phone was password-protected and the content of my messages on the notification pop-ups was hidden, but if I wanted to call Jackson, I had to find a place where they couldn't hear me.
Eventually, I settled on the garage. It was literally freezing in there so I had to find some blankets to keep myself warm, but it was a good spot, because there was WiFi, which meant I didn't have to murder my entire data plan.
Essentially, that was the only way I could get through the holidays.
Christmas passed by unnoticed.
Nobody celebrated it here. They didn't even mention it. The only reason why I knew which day it was (apart from the date itself) was because of social media. Everyone was posting pictures and videos to their snapchat stories and whatnot. It looked like they were having a lot of fun.
While everyone was sitting around the Christmas tree getting drunk, we were performing wudu, thoroughly washing ourselves in the correct order, and getting ready to pray. I walked over to my aunt and uncle's room and grabbed the prayer mats and laid them out on the ground in a straight line.
These days, I often did this only once a day rather than five times a day, if not a few times per week, and it was both weird and nice to be praying with my family again. It was always so hard to get myself to do it without my parents there to remind me—especially with all my classes and everything... As I sat there on my knees and prayed to Allah, I realized that I honestly felt a little bad about the fact that I had lost interest so much.
It went like this every time.
Every time I went back home, I felt consumed by guilt, but when I went back to campus, I did absolutely nothing to change it. I wasn't sure if I should.
After we were done praying, I went back to my appointed guest room and started reading messages on my phone again, crawling under the covers with a relieved sigh.
