Growing Through: How coming out transformed my life

Copyright © 2020 Nerissa Trindade

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, stored in, distributed, or utilised in any form or by any electronical, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Published in 2020

Contact the author: www.NerissaTrindade.com

ISBN 978-0-6450649-2-6 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-0-6450649-1-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-0-6450649-0-2 (E-book)

Editing by Madhulika Banerjee

Cover design by Rosalyn Ng

Photography by Christian Cicchini

Book layout by Marvin Tojos

I am, because they are.

All that I am today and everything that I have been able to achieve has been made possible by the constant, consistent and unconditional love, support and encouragement of the three strongest and most important women in my life

— my wife, my mum and my sister.

This book is dedicated to them, with all my love.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness

That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves

Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small

Does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking

So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,

As children do.

We were born to make manifest

The glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us;

It’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we’re liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others."

—

Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

Chapter 1

I was the happiest kid on the block. I would wake up at the crack of dawn every day, climb up on my window sill, and belt out all my nursery rhymes at the top of my voice. It’s like I was in charge of waking up my family and the entire neighbourhood so they’d sing along to my happy tune all day. You would be hard-pressed to find a kid who was more carefree, confident, and outgoing than me.

I grew up in India in the early 1980s. In a bustling, vibrant, urban city called Calcutta, located on the banks of the Hooghly River in eastern India. I was born into a middle-class Anglo-Indian family. The Anglo-Indians are a community that share both British and Indian heritage. So our culture and family traditions were mixed; not typically Indian but then not entirely British either.

It was a traditional family structure. My parents and me. Well, mostly my mum and me. My father was in the merchant navy and spent most of the year away, out at sea. My mum worked too — she had a regular nine-to-five office job. She worked as the Executive Assistant to the Managing Director of a large steel manufacturing company in Calcutta. This meant that I spent most of my early years at my nanna’s house. My mum would drop me off each morning on her way to work.

My nanna was my mum’s mum and she lived on the third floor of a red brick building. It was called ‘laal kotti’ in Hindi, which means ‘Red House’. She had five children. Four daughters, of whom my mum was the youngest and then a son. She lived with her two oldest daughters in that red brick building I remember so well. My aunties too looked after me when they were home. I remember my nan would allow me to take whatever I wanted from her house, even if it was something of great value. I only had to ask, Nanna can I have this? and she would say, Sure, my darling. Everything here is yours. Much to my aunties’ dismay. But they always gave in eventually.

These are the earliest memories I have of my family. I was later told that I was a strong-willed kid with a mind of my own. I gave a lot of trouble to eat. My nan would carry me around the house, singing and turning the lights on and off, putting on a performance to entertain me and get me to eat. I was her pride and joy and she was my biggest fan.

I remember my mum finishing work and coming to pick me up. We would often have dinner at my nan’s place and then the two of us would take a rickshaw ride home. This was a little one-bedroom apartment, perfect for the two of us. During the ride back home, I’d talk non-stop about every single thing that had happened during my day. Mum often reminds me of how I always had so many questions for her. For everything she’d say to me, my standard response was Why?, and then that led to the next question and then the next and so on. She never got tired of answering my million questions. At least, she never let me notice if she did.

Sometimes mum would take me in to work with her. This was a big day out for me and I would be super excited. Since I was the only kid at the office, I always got all the fuss and attention. I remember this big room where four of mum’s friends worked. They had their desks in each corner of the room. At three-years-old, this was my first performance stage. They’d pull out a stool and help me get up on it as I was too little to climb up myself. I would stand there and recite every nursery rhyme I knew and belt out every song I had learned by then (totally out of tune, of course!). I had this little toy guitar that would accompany me to some of these performances. The ladies were all so lovely; they always cheered me on and made me feel like a star. I enjoyed every minute of my two-foot limelight. I would stay up on that stool until curtain call (that is until everyone had to go home).

Around this time, I remember mum and me accompanying my father on one of his sailing trips. We sailed for about six months and the ship became home. We lived in a cabin and I was fascinated by the portholes that overlooked the ocean. I remember when the seas were rough, everything in the cabin would sway, which I found most fascinating. I wasn’t afraid of anything back then. As there were no other kids on board, I found new ways to entertain myself. The officers would leave their cabin keys hanging off their doors so their cabins could be cleaned while they were working during the day. I found it extremely entertaining to collect all their keys, mix them up in a big bowl and then randomly distribute them to the officers. I’d then wait patiently to see my prank unfold when they came back in the evening and couldn’t get into their respective cabins. I spent many evenings on the ship, guitar in hand, entertaining the crew with all the songs I knew. I had moved on from that little stool in my mum’s office and had now found myself an entirely new audience.

As a kid, I always had super high energy. I could keep going non-stop, all day. I had zero patience and I struggled to do things that needed me to sit down and stay put in one place. It was just too boring for me. I didn’t like eating much as I saw this as a waste of time. It slowed me down. So was reading. Too slow. I didn’t have the patience to sit and read all the words in the book to find out what happened. Instead, I would memorise all of my stories from cover to cover, word for word. That way, I didn’t have to sit still to enjoy the story. I could just tell it to myself on the go, whenever and wherever I wanted. And I loved it.

My oldest auntie would sometimes try to read me to sleep in the afternoons. I did not like being told I had to rest. On most days, I would just keep going till I totally crashed out at night. But my family would try to get me to rest, so instead of making me read, she would read to me. But often, she’d end up falling asleep before I did. Not impressed by this, I would stick my tiny fingers in under the rim of her reading glasses and lift her eyelids open. At times she’d try to skip a page or two to get to the end quicker, but I knew it all by heart. So I would promptly say, Uh... I think you missed the part where Bobo meets Mr. Bear? That was my favourite story — about a little elephant called Bobo who had a blue jacket that his mum had accidentally washed and shrunk. So, Bobo went around the forest trying to find someone who could stretch his blue jacket back to size so it would fit him. In the end, Bobo did finally get back into his jacket.

When I was about four years old, my little sister arrived. By then we had moved into our family home, a two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a block of six units. I remember being taken to the hospital to visit my mum and naturally, I had so many questions. I wanted to know where they had got my little sister from. How had she now magically arrived in our lives? Oh, the questions I had! My mum told me she’d gone to the market that day and come back with her. I guess my mum had figured I would have a lot more ‘Why’s’ if she tried to tell me the truth and she didn’t want to get into all of it just then. I was quite happy with the new little purchase. I was now a big sister. This meant I had responsibilities, but more importantly it meant I got the