This is the final post of the series that examines topics from the perspective of the characters in the upcoming novel, The Paths of Marriage which will be for sale starting 1 October 2014.
“A Straight Coming Out Story” is written from the perspective of the character, Alpa Deva.
Greetings!
I have been following the character series posts for a few months now; I can’t believe the end is finally here, and I am equally stunned that it has fallen on me to close it all out! In my professional consulting world, having the last word is a powerful tool. Likewise, it took awhile for me to settle on a topic, as I wanted to make sure the readers of this fine post are left with something worthwhile to mull over ahead of our story being released.
Credit should be given when earned, and I have to pass the torch of ‘Best Idea’ to my husband, Amir, for this one.
Amir and I met back when we were in grad school. Him being an attractive Persian man with a British accent boded well in courting the third-life crisis of women who populated our program; however, Amir and I connected on a far deeper level. One such deeper level was our respective older sibling breaking down many of our life barriers with our parents.
Growing up, I couldn’t help notice that the way my parents treated me was remarkably different than they way they treated my older sister, Pooja. It wasn’t that Pooja was a bad child; by all traditional accounts, she was the model Indian-American girl. She got good grades, she didn’t talk back to our parents, she was modest, and she (mostly) did exactly as she was told. The difference was simply this – first child syndrome. Like most Indian parents raising their children abroad, my parents’ reaction to anything American was predictable – they were scared sh*tless.
“If Pooja goes to that prom, she will become pregnant.”
“If Pooja does an after school activity, she will fail her classes.”
“If Pooja goes away to university, someone will kill her.”
At least that’s what my parents thought.
Fortunately, in both Amir’s and my cases, our siblings were enough years our senior that our parents tried their Iranian/Indian ways in their new country and watched as the results backfired. Amir’s older brother, Hamed, literally almost died at 16 when his father made him pose as a fictitious Persian prince on an English horse that was clearly not meant for riding. The horse catapulted poor Hamed 15 feet onto the side of the road. It took an older sibling for our parents to realize they could not immigrate to another country and raise their children as they would back home.
In both Amir and my cases, there was one exception to the already broken barrier: love.
For very different reasons, Pooja and Hamed were not able to break down the parental barrier to matrimonial happiness. So when Amir and I met in grad school, we both quickly realized that if we were going to make a relationship work, we’d both have to eventually tell our parents about the other. In other words, we’d both have to have our own Straight Coming Out.
I have to admit Amir and I were lucky to find the other. Every other guy I had ever dated was American. While they’d casually tell their parents of their exotic-looking new girlfriend a few months into our relationship, my mother heard about precisely zero of my pre-Amir boyfriends. And there were quite a few. So when I met Amir, when I met this amazing guy who could totally relate to being a neurotic wreck in confessing our relationship, I fell in love.
Though I waited until the last possible minute, I did finally have the courage to have my Straight Coming Out. Amir proposed shortly after we finished grad school, and a few weeks later, I “came out” using the best straightforward logic and emphatic appeal I could possibly muster. Thankfully, both Amir and my efforts worked, and we got married the next year. We sometimes drive each other nuts, but it has been a happy, healthy marriage since. We even have two (exhausting) kids of our own.
I sometimes look back on my life and cringe at the thought of being born first in my family; as the older child, Pooja went through so much more than me. My Straight Coming Out was exhausting as an adult in my mid-20s. I can’t imagine the pressure having to endure multiple Coming Outs – for education, for personal interests, for a social life, for a sense of style, for a sense of self – from the tender teenage years. It’s no wonder our lives took very different courses. As Pooja once said,
“Alpa is four calendar years and one lifetime apart from me.”
As a conclusion to this character post series, I want to leave you all with one thought. When evaluating anything in life, our choices are so often wrought in much more than our own situation. Our decisions are a result of the generations that precede us; our decisions will affect the decisions of the generations that follow us. In my case, in my sister’s case, in my mother’s case and in my niece’s case, our story is not simply due to our paths; our story is due to The Paths of Marriage.
Buy the book on 1 October 2014. This is one powerful story you will never forget.
The complete The Paths of Marriage character series:
Deepa Deva – Implicit Outings on Facebook
Pooja Deva – The Narrative of Marriage
Lakshmi Deva – Pacing Oneself was not an Immigrant Option
Audrey Girard – How to Start a Conversation, American vs France
Anand Suresh – We all Spoke English, just not the Same Language
Alpa Deva – A Straight Coming Out Story
