Chapter Seven – I’m Not The Only One

Living in a small community had its advantages and disadvantages. My biggest disadvantage was when whispers about me liking girls threatened to approach elders and my family. I was terrified of what they’d say. So before they did I told everyone I had a boyfriend.

They were happy, and I somehow managed to put on a face because I wasn’t happy at all. I had to do this so that I could be safe and fit in. Even if it meant taking away my happiness.

One time we were watching news at home with my family and another lesbian woman was reported to have been killed brutally, this one was also raped. Sooner after that the raping reports went up for homosexual women, then emerged a new term ‘corrective rape’. Where these women would be raped by perpetrators claiming to turn them heterosexual.

I didn’t know people would rape women and claim to be fixing them. Were relationships to them only about sex? Because I remember very well when I had a crush on my friend I wasn’t thinking about sex. So why did they feel the need to take our womanhood away in claim of fixing us and turning us to women when we didn’t even need fixing? We were still women who just liked other women.

It made me sad because I didn’t remember even one point in my life where I claimed I wasn’t a woman.

Just as I was astonished by that, the words that came out of my uncle’s mouth killed a little part of me. I remember them very well. He was sitting not far from me and looking at the TV. He shook his head a little bit and said, “it serves them right, they should know that they are women, and they need to act like women and be with men.”

That broke my heart into so many pieces and I wondered if he’d think that if he knew I was one of them.

It was so sad, how I found out that there were more people I could relate to, more people who felt the way I did but my way of finding out was that they were being killed like flies.

Still keeping my fake image and making my boyfriend a prop so that I wouldn’t fall victim to the people claiming to fix us, I decided to join the football team at school and that’s when I saw her.

At first glance you wouldn’t notice her because she fit right with the guys. She had some shorts on, the best shoes and even the shortest cut I have ever seen on a girl. The only thing that gave her away was the fact that she was wearing a sports bra while the guys were half naked above.

I watched her in awe as a girl approached her and they hugged each other. She kissed her and I waited for it… I waited for the guys to call her names and tell her how disgusting she was and how sick she was, but none of that happened.

They all just smiled and waved at her girlfriend then kept on playing. I was so shocked.