Writer | Samiha Islam

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

My name is Samiha Islam. I am a 25-year-old Bangladeshi-born queer engineer. I want to use my leadership skills and experience to make an impact on those with a similar background as me, whether that’s the immigrant story, the queer story, the female struggle, or just being an oddball in the crowd. 

I have been going to therapy since my senior year of college, in 2018. In the past three years, I have been through four therapists. Each therapist has helped me unveil a different component about myself, but each has had its limitations.

My first therapist was the exact opposite of me. A straight white male with a solid family, I actually spent most of my time explaining to him and bringing him up to par with South Asian-Muslim culture. But little did I know 2.5 years later, I would reflect back on the question he asked and the response I gave, “What is keeping you from coming out to your parents.” I told him I needed to be financially free and safe, have a job, a car, and a house. As I moved onto my next therapist, was a female white woman, she helped me unravel my hardships as a female and explained to me that a lot of my anxiety comes from PTSD from childhood, from the abuse in my household. With this information, I moved to my third therapist, a woman of color, to who I did not have to explain my cultural background. She taught me to ground myself, gave me a lot of practical self-care advice, always reminded me of my worth. The only thing was, she never thought I was in a safe enough state to come out to my parents and she urged the importance of family and establishing a relationship with them. 

At this point, I was getting tired of my parents finding suitors, tired of having to reject them off the basis that they were not American enough, or fit enough, or as successful career-wise. My mom told me not to think so highly of myself, and I responded to my mother at the time, “Then stop introducing me to them, stop having me converse with these guys, if you don’t have me converse with them, these thoughts won’t become words.” At this point, I was tired of hiding; I was tired of living this double life of being the ideal desi poster child; it didn’t help that every day I had to be reminded that I had to become something because I was the only kid between my mother and dad’s family to be able to grow up in America. 

The pandemic started a month after I moved to a new city, Greenville, South Carolina. I was in a whole new state, an entirely different region. I didn’t know anybody, was here to start a new job for a large defense contractor. I tried to hustle through work, buying furniture, buying tidbits to make myself comfy in a shared little studio, got another kitten, tried to make it home. Three months into the pandemic was my birthday month. 11:59 of June 2nd, I had never felt lonelier in my life, my thoughts suffocated me that if my parents were to die during the pandemic or if I were to die from the lack of covid precautions, my parents would never know the truth about me and I thought back to my response that I had given my first counselor…I had checked off the list of items to be financially free.  

Additionally, my best friend introduced me to an inclusive mosque based in Toronto. With these open-minded practicing individuals, I regained my trust in the Muslim community; we read the Quran, we did Friday prayers, and virtually broke out fast together. I felt safe. I wasn’t about to live the next quarter-century hiding from my dad, so I called him told him exactly that, and I told him, “Hey, I’m different.” My dad said, “I think I know what you are about to say, and I have been suspicious of it for a while.” He then blamed my best friend for changing me, and it went into a downhill spiral. He talked about how my love shifted from him to these queer folks. I told him no, my love shifted ever since I was nine years old. My childhood was stripped off of me, and my best friend at the time was him, and he turned on me! He became abusive, became angry, became a tyrant over me, a child, who did nothing wrong. At this point, we stopped talking… 

Fourth of July, I decided I would mask up and visit my parents; I saw so many people get creative and socially distant hang out with their families. In that effort, I happily bought naan, kebabs, biryanis, and nihari. Which I then took to my mom. I told her, “Hey, eat inside as I sit on the porch and eat outside.” She was shocked. She couldn’t take this in nor understand it. When my dad came home, he’s like, “Oh, what are you doing here? Get inside, stop putting on a show.” I said out loud that I had missed my mom, that I wanted to remain socially distant, I had driven all the way from South Carolina to New York City and didn’t want to put them at risk. With my mask on, my dad started hovering over me in anger, “Oh, guess you don’t have a father.” We broke out into an hour-long argument, my mom was bawling, my dad went inside and came back out to say out loud, “Tell your mom the truth, tell her what you told me,” and my mom was sitting there upset and confused. 

Wondering what to say… I told her, “I respect you a lot, I would do anything for you, but I cannot marry a man. I cannot. I don’t work that way.” My mom started telling me the story of Lot. It says homosexuality is haraam at this point; I told her calmly that her interpretation is biased; I told her it was more about how the story is shared to condemn aggressive abuse of strangers, not homosexuality. She didn’t take it; she had gone to Hajj, took classes with Islamic scholars for months at this point. There was no point in arguing; I was showered with pleas to get mental help and come back home, to leave my job. I stood my ground. I reminded my mother I love and respect her. I left knowing my childhood home was no longer a safe nor welcoming environment for me and reminded myself why I had left seven years prior. 

This began my journey to finding my chosen family. As I started to establish my chosen family and opened up to my friends and colleagues about my situation, my mother started cooling down as well. She finally called me the week before Thanksgiving, still refusing to believe I was queer, but this began a whole new dynamic, one where I could end the call with, no matter the vibe or tension, with an I love you. One empowering thought is that I think I started living when I became most vulnerable, I started growing, I knew keeping my sexuality a secret hindered me from a lot even in my career, but once I came out to my parents, I knew no one could ever use this as a secret or threat against me, and that was freeing. 

My best friend introduced me to my current therapist; she is South Asian, she is queer-friendly, understands my sorrows and pain with feeling alone, and feels like not having a supportive family. She always roots me on and always reminds me to keep living, keep being my authentic self, do it for future generations. So here I am, sharing this story for future generations.