An open letter:

Dear Babu,

I created this fake account long, long ago. As you already know at that time, my young, naive 21-year-old self had my heart broken. I felt completely and utterly lost in melancholy. I had settled with the idea that I was meant to be alone. I had convinced myself that I was destined to live a life meddled with despair interspersed with misery. I considered myself to be emotionally damaged, worthless and totally undeserving of love. I frankly felt a little stupid that I let my younger self believe that I, too, shall have a great love story, and “live happily ever after”. I regretted letting my teenage self indulge in delusions of love and fairy tales. As I grew older, I started to believe firmly that love doesn’t exist, that love is something only meant to be projected in books and movies, that the love described in Shakespeare’s poems or the love sung about in Rabindranath’s melodies were just pure and fascinating works of fiction. Clearly, all thoughts of love had evaporated from my heart. This chronic and preconceived notion of repulsiveness towards love had pushed me down a deep, dark hole.

Babu, I admit I created this fake account solely for one purpose: to get laid, to hook up, to have sex.

Sex was enough to satisfy my heartless soul; it was just enough to extinguish the fire and soothe the burns of loneliness I felt since I was a child; it was perhaps enough to fill the deep dark hole that the lack of love had created in my life, and I was content with all of it. However, with every boy that I brought home, every stranger that I had sex with, made me feel filthy and I truly felt disgusted with myself. It lowered my self-esteem and self-dignity even further, and thus I pushed myself deeper and deeper into that deep, dark hole.

Over the years I had built these walls around myself. Low self-esteem and self-hatred had caused me to isolate myself to the extent that even I failed to recognize who I was. I never realized that within these walls, deep within my core, deep within that dark hole a part of my brain still yearned for something; it yearned to be wanted; it yearned to be cared for; it yearned to wake up with a smile and be acknowledged; Babu, my heart yearned to be loved and my brain yearned to be happy.

Babu, never did I consider the marginal possibility that I will ever fall in love with anyone that I met through this fake account, I considered everyone I met to be just as filthy as me but everything changed on [date removed for privacy & safety reasons]. On that day, a pure soul sat next to me at Dhanmondi Lake, held my hand, looked into my eyes and told me stories about his life. We spent hours and hours just sitting and talking. It was that day that I knew that it was the start of something new. It was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. This chapter that would not only change all the preconceived notions I had about love, but it also changed the way I look at myself. This chapter is why I find myself smiling to myself, why I stare at the phone for a message to come, why I wake up in the morning feeling completely elated that I have someone to send a lovely morning message to and why I sleep at night feeling content because I wished someone goodnight. This chapter is the reason why I find myself crawling out of that deep, dark hole.

Babu, do you know why this chapter is able to do that? Why this chapter is so special? Because you are writring it.

You’ve changed my life, Babu. You’ve single-handedly changed one person from a miserable, pessimistic one to the happiest person alive. You have single-handedly changed that way I look at myself – I no longer hate myself. You have single-handedly pulled me out of the deep, dark hole. And most importantly, Babu, you have single-handedly changed my opinion on love.

Thank you, Babu.

I love you.

From your lover,

[nickname removed for privacy & safety reasons]

Source: BAH ( Bangladesh Against Homophobia)