Schrodinger's Cat

by Warm Pixels

For me to live life in a place as suffocating as the Maldives is sheer torture, and I bet most Maldivians wouldn't understand, not even my closest friends or even Firefly.

I'm not talking about the lack of entertainment, like theaters, malls, bowling alleys and rinks. Do we have any of those? Nope. Not even the only three theaters in the entire country are working.

I want to be able to hold hands with Firefly. 

You see, it's not possible here. Nor would my friends understand, even though they're okay with it, nor would Firefly, because they're just not into holding hands and such things.

I miss him, terribly, even when he's right here in the room. Lately, he's been very distant with me... we can sure talk, and laugh, but what about communicating our dreams and destinies and all that? 

It's like as if this whole relationship is a pretense.

Should I blame him? Am I to blame? Or is any kind of romance impossible as we're living in a farce of a country that's marketed as the "most romantic place on earth"? 

Are gay relationships doomed to fail in the Maldives? I think this is my 15th relationship, and by far the only that almost impossibly had lasted this long. I don't know any other couple that had lasted beyond a couple of years, so I guess I'm charting unfamiliar waters here.

Will it run into a treacherous reef and we'd be a couple of casualties in the bloody ocean of rising Islamic extremism, before we find a way to relocate to a friendlier community?

I'm scared to walk down to the corner store in broad daylight because of the number of breaded fanatics and "women" in face veils walking about the streets, and for weeks since the murder of the Lawyer, the particularly violent killing of a police officer and the mind numbing way a Member of Parliament was killed, I was paranoid about people walking behind me, any kind of loud and rowdy gang and making every 'Goodbye' count.

My fears of dark streets and closed spaces came back worse than ever, and I get hours late to work nearly every day because by the time I'm satisfied that the door is indeed locked, would be about now. Half past 3 in the morning.

Dammit.

How many mangled corpses does it take for the police and the government to realize that these religious assholes are mocking God by their power over God's judgement?

I feel bound and gagged, and it's starting to wear thin. I weep in mute frustration every time I take a shower, because for some reason, cold water on the face is a wake up call from an alternate reality, the soft, fragile little world I built for us to live in.

The few moments every day that I'm under a constant splash of cold water is the time that I feel alive, and an increasing urgency to leave this sterile land of hate and death.

Posted in: True Stories