Ding. The screen of my phone lit up against the dark backdrop. Yet another notification. I sighed, thumbing through the lists of insults that had gathered in the groups I was in: insults about who I am, my sexuality, my race, my personality, my hobbies…

My name is Low Xin Yi, and I am an aroace lesbian living in Malaysia. This sentence on its own is a recipe for disaster, a one-way ticket to whatever dark prison that laid in wait for me should I wish to embark on a journey to find love. And I suffered for it; I suffered not because I was weak, but because of who I truly am. The odd one out in a heteronormative society where we were all expected to be cisgender and heterosexual. It was unfair, but it was reality. It was my reality and it was all I had against all the queerphobia circulating around me every day for years. In school, I would gaze at the openly gay couples enviously, envisioning a day when I too could be as brave as them, yet my attempts to defend them backpedaled. I was once again pushed into the closet: a shadow watching from afar. Try as I might, it was always this: I would try to call out my homophobic classmates, only to be singled out and mocked at for being a killjoy. I'd claim that I was questioning my sexuality, only to be told by multiple different people ranging from my peers to adults I used to respect that gays were disgusting and unnatural. A spectacle to be ogled at.

For years, I tried to convince myself that I was straight. I blamed myself for being different; I hated being different. Because being different was what cost my friendships, my confidence, my everything. I mean, why couldn't I just be straight like my peers? Why couldn't I just be an average student instead of the quirky valedictorian who defied all nerdy stereotypes? Why couldn't I just spend my free time staring at cute guys instead of reading and writing? Why couldn't I just be normal for once?

But the fact remains: I am different. That's just who I am. And suppressing that part of me was difficult. It was suffocating and I yearned to be free.

That was when I started fighting back because I was tired of being the one constantly on the run.

I was tired of letting myself be the one to be picked at, the only one to suffer for my non-existent crimes against humanity.

I started embracing the parts of myself I used to be ashamed about.

It wasn't easy: I did a ton of research along the way. For a while, my search history was full of ‘Am I really gay?’ quizzes and LGBTQIA+ websites. I scoured through thousands of resources and articles on my own journey of self-discovery, watched a bunch of aroace and lesbian videos on YouTube, and even talked to several other queer teenagers from all over the world. My own friends made me feel bad for being a queer writer, but as I found other queer writers on Instagram, I began to realize that I might be alone after all.

That perhaps, there was a whole online community out there who supported and cheered me on, just like they did every time a new queer writer joined.

Needless to say, I joined the community. And it was the turning point of my entire life. It felt like the first clue of a mathematical problem I could solve by substituting it into the next equation and the next until I could finally denote x = 3.

The facts are there: I’m a STEM nerd with a flair for writing and the more abstract forms of art. I enjoy graphic designing and watching the different elements arrange themselves in completion. I love the meticulous brush strokes of Chinese calligraphy, the straightforwardness of logic, the vastness and intricacy of biology… I love learning about the world, and I love loving the world: the pure, undisturbed parts of it untainted by hate and anger and discrimination. When life attempts to bring me down, I bounce back because I’ve been in worse places. I’ve seen worse. I’m not saying that life isn’t crappy right now — in fact, it very much is, and if I had a magical artifact that could bring me to an alternate universe where I was truly happy, I would jump at the chance without hesitation. My point is I knew a whole lot more about myself than I used to, and I’m not particularly unhappy at what I learned. I’m hopeful. Curious. Stressed. I’m a lot of things, but I don’t think they really matter because at the end of the day, nothing changes who I am. Not my family. Not the world. And certainly not my toxic friends and the other toxic people who attempt to undermine my value.

Today, I am a rebel and proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community. I speak about my experiences online through an ever-growing platform of around 2000 followers. I embrace the rainbow in me by educating others about what it's like to be queer in a country that attempts to repress our attempts at self-expression. I speak freely and host workshops virtually during the pandemic through The Curae — an organization that advocates for positive mental health — where I teach teenagers how to accept themselves and think positively when the world seems to be against them. I create LGBTQIA+ content on Instagram and shed light on the various gender and sexual orientations as well as share ways to support the community better as an ally. I volunteered as a verified listener and community leader on an anonymous online platform, counseling queer teenagers and victims of bullying with my own experience. But most importantly, I learned to defend myself, to speak up for the other discriminated members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and to love myself for who I am, not who I was pressured into becoming.

I have been in impossibly dark places. I have questioned the point of my existence and contemplated disappearing forever to a place where I no longer had to suffer. I have been lost before, but at the end of the day, I found my way again. I found the people who genuinely cared about me, people who would keep on fighting for me, for their rights, and people who were proud allies, cheering us on every step of the way. I found a family out there: a group of people who helped me realize that my passions were valid and precious and powerful.

Powerful — I've never thought of myself that way.

Being queer in Malaysia isn't easy; it is a crime and an insult. It is never truly safe for me to openly admit my sexuality in my country, but I have my ways. I rebelled in my own insignificant ways, advocating for my rights while protecting myself from persecution: supporting movies that feature queer characters, writing and completing my very first contemporary romance novel that features queer characters, adding rainbows and the colors of the lesbian flag into my profile pictures. With technology dominating our society today, it isn't hard to access information from the other side of the globe; it helped me know myself better, and it helped me find a place I was free to be myself. And I think it could truly help more people if we all worked together against all forms of discrimination, hate, and bullying.

For one, social media platforms could integrate machine learning and AI to detect words and phrases associated with negative intent and bullying. Homophobic language should be screened by the improved algorithm of various sites and any content suspected to be of ill-intent should be removed without hesitation. If we, as responsible site users, work together to report profiles spreading hate and negativity, bullying could be decreased a whole lot, not to mention the way we could spread information on bullying and seeking help by broadcasting authentic messages to our own communities.

The pandemic has pushed our world towards embracing a culture built upon technological advancements. More and more of us are gravitating towards social media, online news sites, and virtual learning platforms. I can't say it's an entirely negative phenomenon; life is in fact a lot easier with the help of online tools, but it also opens another realm for more problems, cyberbullying being one of many. Of course, there are many ways to reduce this through education and raising awareness among students, but I feel like if we had a better monitoring and surveillance system set up in school systems and computers, we could make a significant impact in our battle against bullying and harassment. Not only that, organizations should also set up free, accessible, and anonymous venting platforms that promote positive mental health and fight against all forms of bullying to provide a safe space for teenagers and adults alike to seek professional help.

Life is hard, and bullies make it harder. We're in this together, whether you like it or not. Regardless of your experience, we've all set foot in the online space at least once, which is why we all have the responsibility to keep this new space that is bound to be a large part of our futures safe. While technology and in-built algorithms can censor a number of triggering content, I firmly believe that a larger part of the fight lies within us: the users. If everyone refrained from spreading hate, who knows how many more people we could save together? Who knows how many other people out there we could salvage from being swallowed whole by darkness?

I used to be ashamed of my name; it’s a pretty name. A common one, but the way the strokes align to form the two words that define me… it baffles me. But I guess unknowingly, I’ve never thought I deserved that name. Somehow, it never seems to be entirely mine. I never really grasped the concept of how complex my own being actually is when allowed to develop on its own and being molded into this perfect version of a student and a daughter made it even more difficult to connect with the two syllables that were supposed to be me. Because I don’t fit into the regular old boxes. And also because ever since I knew how to speak, I’ve been carrying around this burden I suppose. This expectation from my parents and the people around me to be the smartest student who gets involved in a bunch of competitions, wins a bunch of awards, emerges as the top one student every single year, gets straight As, nods and obeys everything asked of her, grows up to marry a successful man and have 1298373747643829 children… you get the idea. I’ve been pushed to recognize what’s asked of me, what I’m allowed to and not allowed to do, what’s realistically possible and what isn’t that I lost the sense of who I am deep down. I lost myself along the way; that’s why I’ve never actually felt connected to my name. That’s why I’ve never felt that surety and confidence whenever I tell someone my name.

But now? Now, I stand in front of a crowd I barely know with a small smile. It’s the first day of college and I’m nervous and fidgeting, but I hear myself say: “Hi, my name is Low Xin Yi. It’s very nice to meet you.”

I don’t feel the jolt of embarrassment I loathed since young but couldn't seem to get rid of.

I don't feel that sense of being in my body yet never truly being myself.

So I smile—albeit to myself. Goodness knows what an idiot I’d look like if my new classmates saw that grin hidden underneath my sage green mask.

I smile, because all things considered, finding myself after all this while is a huge accomplishment. I smile because if past me were here, she too would be smiling.

I just wish I had a way to tell her everything was going to be alright. That even when the world was twice as cruel and ten times as obsessed with differentiating between black and white as it used to be, there would always be a new horizon existing in me. A world where gray existed, proud and bold deep inside me.

Eternal.

Blazing.

Undiminishable.