Being a queer, neurodivergent girl in a Muslim family and homophobic country means knowing that some truths are heavy on the tongue.  

I have developed crushes on multiple boys since kindergarten. Puppy love, as people like to say. I would take a liking to a boy because he was smart, or because he consistently pursued me and was surprisingly charming, or because he would flirt with me in class. What broke the mould for 17-year-old me, was a girl.   

She was my first friend in high school because we were seatmates, assigned together for the entirety of freshman year. In the first five minutes of knowing her, she had already launched into an excited rant about a K-pop group she was obsessed with. I don’t think I loved her; not immediately. I would just look at her, my heart warm and excited, thinking: Finally, a friend. 

The realisation came creeping on me like ivy on a stone wall. A smile from her would make a day of school worth enduring. I would actively try to make her life easier whenever I could, like picking up a stacked chair from on top of our table so she could sit without having to do it herself. I was constantly mesmerised by her humour, intelligence, and strength. These tiny occurrences would happen each day until they piled up into a mountain I could no longer deny or ignore.  

It was a realisation I stubbornly resisted, at first. Once I understood what these thoughts might mean, panic set in. I couldn’t be gay. Being gay is a sin. I would burn in hell forever for even thinking about it. I had had crushes on boys before, so what does this mean? All I knew was that something was wrong; something broke off the straight line I had spent the entirety of my life on and launched me off track. I cried. I prayed to Allah. I begged Him to change my heart, if how I felt really was a sin. The feelings I had for my friend subsided the next day, which I took as a divine sign. This made me relax for a while. But the thoughts came rushing back a day later. They came to me like a flood, and my heart was a frail gate weakly attached at the hinge.  

I have never told her to this day. I was afraid to. I couldn’t bear the thought of her looking at me in disgust. We were good friends. It was easier to not say anything, especially because the strong rush faded after a year. I started developing crushes on boys again. I thought that was it. I had never been more wrong in my entire life.  

I had never classified that experience as romantic—even now, I am not sure. I don’t know if I was in love with her. I knew I had love for her—be it platonic or romantic, or something in between. I will probably never know. But it wasn’t the categorisation that mattered; it was the fact that the experience opened my eyes to a possibility I didn’t think applied to me—I could love women.  

***  

Almost all queer people can testify to this: There is something uniquely devastating about queer loneliness. It’s often accompanied by shame that presses on your chest, so hard it could bruise; a purple stain that stays with you for years, difficult to shake off. There are many of us, but we’re not always easy to spot. Most times, because it’s risky to show up loudly. Many of us choose self-mutilation as survival. We cut away parts of ourselves that don’t fit. We stay silent when our relatives utter a cruel joke. We deny the whispers in our heart and wipe away the tears at night. We learn to kill ourselves—slowly, silently—before other people get the chance.  

Some would romanticise this suffering and highlight it as a testament to our strength. I will not stand for it. We deserve more than hiding, than censoring our words, than being forced to cower to avoid death. I have heard one too many stories about friends being kicked out of their houses and losing their jobs for being gay. I have seen my brothers and sisters be tortured and murdered for daring to live as themselves. I have found myself saving up and looking around my room to determine which items I would take with me—preparing for the inevitable day when my family would find out. Ever since I was 17, I have always stood guard, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I feel time ticking away in my head, waiting for the unavoidable moment when my family finds out and they begin to look at me differently. It should not be lauded as admirable strength. I will call it what it is: torture, pain, death.  

Reality alone is crushing. I found myself yearning for connection with people who understand me. Truly understand me, because they experience the same thing. Going to university was a blessing. I broke out of the suffocating environment that had surrounded me for 17 years and entered a world where diversity could be found everywhere. I studied English Literature in the Faculty of Humanities and quickly learned that my friends were nothing like the people I had known throughout middle school and high school. The first time I gathered the courage to come out to a friend via the LINE chat app, her first response was: “Congratulations on knowing more about yourself!” I nearly broke down in tears. Pure relief coursed through my veins. I spoke the truth out loud for the first time in my life and it went well.  

The next steps came in stages. I came out to more friends, and most of them were either casual or excited about it. I experienced my first serious romantic relationship ever with a woman at 21-years-old and learned a lot from its successes and failures. I came out to my favourite cousin, then my favourite uncle. I started going to queer events—art exhibitions, conferences, marches. I befriended queer people on social media. I began to intentionally consume more queer media: books, movies, artworks. I traced the lines of history and civilisation down to where I stood, excited and nervous, all at the same time.  

At 22-years-old, I had the idea of creating a face-to-face community, one where people could meet and feel safe among our own. It was June 2024 and the US, as well as most parts of the world, were celebrating Pride Month. I wanted to follow the momentum; it was this month that I came to the idea of fostering a queer community. This proved to be difficult, since I was in the middle of finishing my bachelor’s thesis, whilst simultaneously preparing for graduation. This meant I had to delay it until July.   

There were, as I would come to realise, a lot of factors to consider when organising your first queer meeting. I didn’t know where to start. Where would we meet? How could I find people who wanted to come? How would I reach them? What would we talk about? Could I be a good host? Would it be safe? I was truly clueless. I had a Twitter account and a dream. Luckily, I saw a trend going around my Twitter timeline: A local sapphic had created a special hashtag for queer people to introduce themselves with the purpose of making friends or finding love. I traced the hashtag and saw people who used it, then sent a DM, one by one, painstakingly slowly, to tell them about my queer gathering idea. I must have talked to 80 different people in two weeks. It was exhausting, confusing, and yet completely exciting.  

The next thing was finding the venue and setting a date. This was not easy either, but I was lucky enough to know about a feminist collective in Jakarta, who had space in their building to rent for community meetings. I reached out to their manager and got a deal to hold my gathering there. Then I had to figure out the shape of the event. The topic, the structure, the event guidelines, the food...When I finally worked it all out, I compiled all details of the event in one file and sent it out along with the RSVP to the people who had expressed interest in coming. I named the initiative Queer Women’s Gathering or QWG; a manifestation of hope for more safe spaces for queer women. Later, I would change the name to Queer Folks Gathering or QFG, as per the community members’ suggestion to make it more inclusive.  

On D-day, I was a nervous wreck. I checked the list—25 people had signed up, with 21 of them actually showing up. It was a better crowd than I had expected. I gave away name tags and coloured markers and told people to write their preferred name and pronouns so we could all recognise each other. I sat us all in a big circle and welcomed them and explained why we were there. I had them break out into small groups and gave them the discussion prompts. We would then reconvene for a big group discussion. We talked about queerness as a political identity, about how we personally identify in the queer spectrum, and discussed how we could build a strong community together. By the end of the meeting, I had gained at least 10 new friends. A few people came up to me personally to say that they were grateful for this space. Most importantly, I left with surprising realisations: that I was not alone. Connection was not impossible. And I, apparently, could host a meeting that facilitates that.  

***  

The meetings kept going. I was as surprised as everyone else about the consistency. My ADHD makes me prone to dropping things halfway—being obsessed with something only for me to burn out later. And arranging these meetings isn’t easy. It’s hard work, but it’s the kind that I enjoy doing. All I know is that I love having this space and a lot of people love attending, so I dedicate my time and pour my heart into crafting every meeting. I wrote event briefs, created RSVPs, personally invited people, reached out to potential donors, drafted sponsorship proposals, negotiated with venues, and collaborated with a friend who bakes to supply us with homemade cookies. I had considered creating a social media account to make us more accessible to other queer people but decided against it for a while because it was too risky. Despite minimal public exposure, the community grew, from 21 people to 130 members in 12 months.  

So, every month, we meet. We talk about queer liberation, healthy relationships, gender-based violence, sexual education, religion, organising, decolonisation, and police violence. We do fun things too—Halloween parties, vision board nights, open mics. We know the path is hard, and the world is going to ruin, and yet we dance. We laugh. We stay.  

***  

QFG became my lifeline, my reason to keep going, even when it’s hard. And it is often hard, because organising a queer community in a homophobic country is not an easy feat. I have to call it “my feminist discussion community” when I explain it to my homophobic family and friends. I essentially gamble every time I reach out to a new venue. Often, I don’t know if it’s safe to tell them that it’s a queer meeting. I communicate with the owner or the manager and explain that it’s a bunch of people gathering to discuss social issues, and hope for the best. It is terrifying, every time, to have to guess if this time it will be safe; to have to arrange for safety mitigation plans in case we get raided and arrested. And it is infuriating to have to constantly negotiate my existence with the rest of the world. I always try so hard to not go along with the current; to refuse to be drowned in shame that is not mine.  

But shame is a baton they love to beat us with. In the span of one year, I have seen multiple news of gay events being raided by the police. The most recent one happened in Bogor, nearing the end of June 2025, in which the local police raided a talent show attended by 75 queer people at a villa and arrested them. Mainstream media platforms have taken to this news like vultures to dead bodies, gleefully sharing twisted facts about the shameful depravity of these people, spreading sensationalised accusations that they gathered for a sex party. People in the comment sections under these news posts ate it up and even spread around the video clip of the arrest to make fun of them.  

Indonesia doesn’t have any laws explicitly criminalising the existence of queer people, but it doesn’t have any laws protecting us either. In fact, my country has multiple regional policies that shame and ban queer activities and lives. In Aceh queer people who are caught having sex are flogged in public. In Garut, there was a regent regulation ratified in 2023 that bans any sort of perbuatan maksiat (an Islamic term for actions that go against God), including “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and pedophilic behaviors.” In 2020, Depok’s representatives drafted a regulation to ban any LGBT activities and communities because it was claimed that they go against the first point of Pancasila, the philosophical foundation of our country: “Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa” (“Belief in the one and only God.”) 

Too much news of queer bullying. Too many stories of people being outed. Cameras recording us secretly followed by posting it on social media under the caption: “What do you think, guys?” as rage baits. Shame is drilled into us. Shame, it seems, is our birthright. But I know for a fact that it is not. The shame is not ours. It is theirs. 

*** 

I remember sitting, facing a girl I would later come to love, and hearing her say: “I don’t think I’m afraid of death.”   

This statement raised my eyebrows as I asked to make sure: “No?”  

She thoughtfully shook her head. “I have nothing to lose.”  

I was silent for a while, biting my lower lip as the words slid out of me like a whispered confession, a new realisation: “I have so much to lose.”  

I didn’t realise it until I said it, but it was true. I am scared of death, of eternal nothingness, of a hell I still wish won’t swallow me whole. I am scared of losing everything I have by a force no one can stop. I have everything to lose. My family, my best friends, my cats, all the music and colour in the world, fascinating stories I haven’t yet read, the knowledge I have acquired in my 23 years of living on this earth, and my queer community—a hard-won victory in a world that cheers for our death and humiliation.  

As I lay there on the bed with a girl I would later come to love, tracing random patterns on her back, while rain fell outside, a thought came into my head. It was a humorous thought, though it had a bitter edge. This is what they’re scared of? Really? Two people finding peace and comfort in each other? It was absurdly funny, as well as stupidly cruel. It made me wonder about what was so wrong with people trying to love one another; what horrifying aspect left a bitter taste in their mouth when they would see people like us, people like me, embrace each other without shame.  

***  

QFG reached its first birthday a day before this essay was written. It felt almost surreal. Twelve gatherings in 12 months, 130 people, organised by a single girl in her 20s.  

“We have no one,” the sentiment often echoes, spoken bitterly, with defeat tingeing our voice. But for the past 12 months, as I stood in witness to 130 people coming together every month to soothe each other, to listen to each other, to help each other, I have learned that it’s not true. We have each other. We have always had each other. I saw the very proof in every D&D game, every question answered in the group chat, every resource recommended, every laughter echoing in rooms where we gathered, every “Hi, are you new? Welcome to QFG!”  

I stood there in a room filled with light and laughter and cake and Polaroid pictures, celebrating a milestone, proof that we could survive in the midst of chaos, and I thought, this, too, is a victory.  

I peer at the future right now and I can see it for what it is. It is a long, steep, and gruelling fight—I won’t pretend otherwise—but at least I know it won’t be lonely.