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When I think about how best to express what drives me, I am often reminded of a story my Ammamah (grandmother) told me as a child - the story of Peter Pan, by novelist J. M. Barrie:

by Senthorun Sunil Raj

Come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will y on wings, forever, in Never Never Land.
So why begin with a fairytale? One of my earliest memories is lying in bed with my Ammamah, as she told me stories of distant places amazing characters. In making me long for Never Never Land, the story of Peter Pan taught me about the importance of having dreams and being vulnerable to the world. While growing up, trying to preserve these hopes was difcult; particularly when it came to sustaining the imagination and creativity that they had inspired. Unlike the freedom of fairytales and nursery rhymes that animated me as a child, the maturing expectations to be dutiful, successful, and hardworking began to shape a much more normal vision of the future. Negotiating my bourgeoning sexuality as an adolescent with these expectations began with a little curious questioning. Why did I like to pretend I was Xena, Warrior Princess? Why was I attracted to boys? Was it normal? What did this mean for my future? Did it even matter? Rather than run from or repress such questions, I started asking more. I soon came to realise how little I knew about being attracted to persons of the same-sex. But I chose not to obsess about it: whether it was what I thought I knew, or ought to know, I allowed myself the personal space to be open to something different.

In a society that continues to naturalise heterosexuality, or at the very least assume it as the norm, disclosing that you are gay is both a personal and political struggle.
Despite accepting my sexual and intimate orientation, the public demand to come out and label my sexual identity became increasingly burdensome. Like an anxious object to be claimed. My family had no openly out gay or lesbian people. In fact, the issue was never even mentioned.

Could I be Tamil, Australian and gay? Did I have to choose? Where could I belong? While the feeling of invisibility gradually began to grate on me, like the shallow cuts of a razor, I slowly began to question why it was so important to be to t in and be like everybody else? Challenging the illusion of normalcy was difcult, but oddly relieving. Once I left school, I confronted some of these unanswered personal and political frictions. In a fated last minute subject change at university, I found myself immersed in a world of gender studies, politics and law. I soon came to realise that you do not need magic to change the world. Reading the words of Audre Lorde and Michel Foucault, I became entranced by theories of emotion, power and politics. Queer words became queer worlds and my mind began to inhabit new spaces of thought I had never been compelled to reach. One quote by Audre Lorde from her book Sister Outsider, in particular, continues to resonate with me:

communicate to diverse communities was a most welcome gift.

However, no matter how much visibility I was able to claim, I was never really nished coming out.
Despite working in an area where my professional and personal life is indexed around my intimacies and politics, the constant demand for sexual visibility means I place both my sexual and cultural orientations on the proverbial table. In doing so, I have become consistently preoccupied with nding ways to enable them to coexist. Undeniably, such emotional labour is taxing. However, I continue to persevere: optimistic about the possibilities for both personal and political transformation. I want to close my reections by returning to where I began, using words of one of my favourite fairies, the sassy Tinkerbell: !You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? Thats where Ill always love you... Thats where Ill be waiting. From the spaces of dreaming to social action, realising my passions, both political and personal, began by embracing curiosity.

I began to wonder if the term gay even existed in Tamil.

With this in mind, I felt I had a duty to be honest, and to express my sexuality with pride. Coming out, though, was anticlimactic. I distinctly remember the mix of relief and trepidation embedding into my skin numbing me to the consequences of disclosure. Any preconceptions I had about how my parents would react were dissipated in the moment of saying, Yes, I am gay. By uttering a small, but innitely complex phrase, I was no longer in control of my desires. They had become dispossessed, something for others to gaze upon and judge. When I reect on this moment, I am reminded how as a young Sri Lankan Tamil-Australian teenager growing up in Sydney, I could never isolate my sexuality from the other parts of my identity. I was not simply different because of who I was attracted to, but the colour of my skin also marked me as Other in many conversations about Australian nationhood and citizenship.

How do you deal with things you believe, live them not as theory, not even as emotion, but right on the line of action and effect and change?
Captivated by the power and poetry of such words, I began to realise the importance of speaking up and following your passions. I joined Amnesty International, and began to nurture the passion I had for the future I had imagined. From voluntary activism, to professional lobbying, discovering new capacities to engage in social justice and

Like the inimitable Tinkerbell, I too am committed to pursuing my passions for future where difference is celebrated, not homogenised or hated.
We just need to nd our muses to do it.