Here is the story of my very good friend, a story of her fight for the right to be happy openly and proudly and being lesbian, to be happy her own way. She doesn’t know enough English, so I’m glad that I can help her to express her thoughts and pain. She prefers to stay anonymous and made up name Neyro for her story.
I completely agree with her opinion about Georgian society as I’ve personally witnessed enough of its bigotry and hypocrisy. I also don’t have emotions and feelings for Georgia any more and besides I’m very concerned about my 2 years old child’s future in this bloody country.

From the bottom of my heart I wish the heroine of the story happiness, which she really deserves.

You’ll make it, Neyro!

Erekle Grigolia,

translator of the text

Born in the claws

Do you know what it means to be in hell?

I can tell you – It means to be born and to grow up in Georgia when you are born different. It means that you think you’re surrounded by loyal friends, relatives and family members who you’re absolutely sure you can rely on and when it matters most, when you need them vitally, these very people simply reject and abandon you and you become an outcast in your own family and country.

And your whole ’’crime’’ is that you’re just born different, that you, girl, are attracted by girls and not boys.

I was about 6 years old as I remember and that girl was probably little older. We started to play. I chose to play a family after war when husband returns and wife meets him. So we laid and caressed each other. Then she as if dressed my wounds, she was kissing me (on the cheek, of course)…

I remember that moment very well. I haven’t seen that girl since then and don’t remember her name. I had no idea then that I was facing huge problem and nobody would understand me. I realized that I liked such play very much. Later I also understood that I preferred to hug and caress the girls, than to play with them. As for boys, I enjoyed playing ball and riding bicycle with them.

This was the beginning of learning my own personality. I had no bad or disturbing feeling because of this. I became interested in myself. When other kids around me were asked who they loved, the girls were pointing at the boys and opposite but I liked the girls. Once on such question I frankly answered that I loved Sophie.

Here the notations started that it was improper, that I had to like boys and so on…

Though still nobody paid big attention to this fact as I was very little. But I realized for myself that there was something off limit and I asked myself for the first time – why? I still ask this to myself and there still is no answer – it’s so and that’s it.

It was hard for me to do so but when I was older, I told my best friend about my orientation. Then it started. She couldn’t accept this, ‘’ Neyro, why do you need this?’’ – she asked me as if we’re talking about bread and butter. Then she told other friends, they also told others as it happens and people started to gossip around.

The parents also heard about it and they tried to keep their children away from me. So I’d gone through the very hard times. Once I was surrounded by the group of boys from my school, who bullied me, trying to put my pants off and to check, whether I had testicles there or not and once was almost raped but somehow escaped, fortunately.

So I was living like a hermit, was strongly depressed and wanted nothing but death.

I grew up in a small town of Georgia, where everybody knows each other and it was especially hard to live here with my identity, so after finishing the school I moved to Tbilisi to study, thinking that it would be easier for me in a big city.

But I was wrong.

The attitude towards the LGBT community in Georgia was generally the same everywhere.

I had several conversations with my neighbors (who didn’t know about my orientation) in Tbilisi on LGBTQ people, about their rights and I always heard one – that they represent evil for Georgia and Georgians and should be treated correspondingly.

Well, I had relationship in Tbilisi, but because of such atmosphere felt constant fear all the time.

As for my family, my parents divorced when I was a child, my father took no part in bringing me up, so I didn’t remember my father in childhood. Later we tried to settle relationships but it didn’t work, now he has new family and doesn’t care much about me.

‘’Neyro, we’ll kick you out if you won’t change!’’ – used to threaten me my mother and grandmother. They attacked me all the time, being ashamed of me because of the gossips. They also threatened to tell this to my uncle (mother’s brother), who didn’t know about my orientation and who would have killed me because of it, as they said (my grandmother and uncle aren’t alive now).

My uncle was traditional Georgian man, ordinary tyrant in the family (in traditional Georgian families men command and women are totally rightless and such type of men are widely respected in Georgia, while LGBT people are harshly condemned and oppressed for their different orientation only by such ‘’men’’).

That’s Georgia.

But I was willful, I never cared about what ‘’people say’’.

Well, my mother finally, after years accepted my orientation but she still wishes me not to be ‘’this way’’.

I hoped to find console and peace in church, but they made it even worse there, telling me that I was a sinner and could never gain the paradise. In fact, my attempt was very naïve as Georgian Orthodox Church, as an institution feeds the homophobic hysteria in the country.

Now couple of words and examples about Georgia in this context:

As the vast majority of modern Georgians are hypocrites and bigots, the Georgian Orthodox Church is extremely popular here and years ago it started real crusades against LGBTQ people.

In 2013, may seventeen (the international day against homo, trans and bi-phobia), couple of dozens of LGBTQ activists were almost stoned by thousands of religious fanatics, openly led by local priests and hierarchs and none of them was punished, as all Georgian governments more or less (especially current, ‘’The Georgian dream’’) are flirting with the church to get votes and it’s untouchable here.

In July 5, 2021 during the international week of LGBT Pride the crowd of homophobes, encouraged and lead by the priests and hierarchs again, severely beat and publicly hurt dozens of journalists and reporters who were simply going to broadcast the event (while police did nothing to prevent the violence), so it didn’t take place and all this later ended with death of one of the hurt journalists.

Church also strongly supports anti-vaccine movement in Georgia, actively agitating against the vaccination and this causes dozens of dead and hundreds and thousands of infected people daily.

Well, the current government passed the anti-homophobic law (it was obliged to do so), but in fact it exists on the paper only.

So unpunished abusing and hurting of LGBTQ people is very common in Georgia (by the way, I completely lost emotional ties with Georgian nation long time ago and it’s final, I’m sure), it’s considered the good tone, the ’’patriotic’’ behavior.

I thought that moving to Russia, Moscow, huge city, where nobody knew me, would finally change situation and my mother and I moved there (she couldn’t accept my orientation then, but was with me as was constantly afraid that something bad might happen to me).

But I was wrong again. I found Russia was not a place for the people like me, the Russians had already passed the anti-LGBT propaganda law, which in fact was anti-LGBT law, so the queer people were pursued by the law in court, as well as by the unpunished groups of homophobes in the streets.

In Russia (where I had few relationships) I went through everything, starting with spitting in my direction and hitting me in the face because of my orientation and police was totally inactive after I applied to them (as I was told later, the lesbians were often even raped in police departments in such cases, so I was even ‘’lucky’’).

Finally I was intentionally hit by car by my partner’s jealousy former boyfriend (who wrongly thought that I was the reason of their split-up) so seriously, that I had to recover physically and mentally for months. But I couldn’t gain the justice again, as the investigation and the court weren’t fair and objective and this person was charged with careless driving and not attempted murder and his whole ‘’punishment’’ was just one year of probation.

This man threatened me later again, so I understood that I had to move from Russia too.

Now I’m in the USA (my mom stays in Georgia). It’s the country, where I feel safe for the first time in my life, protected by state and law, where I can be myself and be happy openly the same time, where I found a lot of compassion.

But Georgians create problems for us, people who try to legalize and survive here, in States, too. I married a Georgian girl here but soon I found that she was planning to use me and my case to legalize herself through marriage with me. So I broke up with her.

Georgians also try to make pressure on you here, in US but after all they don’t dare to harm you physically, as you are strictly protected here by low, unlike Georgia, so it’s mostly psychological pressure.

I hope the USA will be the turning point in my life, let’s see.

.
P.S. At some point of all these struggles I started to educate. I asked myself – who am I and why do I exist, was I born only to suffer? I went far with these questions and realized that I had to deal with very ignorant and unformed people.

I read a lot of works of philosophers, psychiatrists and psychologists related to this topic and finally found East, particularly Osho.

Everything started here, I entered the existential and spiritual world.

I decided to change my life, started from the food and ‘’cleaned’’ my body – became a vegetarian and surprisingly for me it worked, little by little everything changed inside and around me and what’s most important, I managed to come to peace and harmony with myself. The internal conflict disappeared and I accepted myself as different.

That was it.

People don’t have to be all the same, right?

Neyro

Translated by Erekle Grigolia