I’ve been in the UK for 13 days now on my 14-day holiday. It’s been four years since I last saw my university friends in person, and 4 years since I left behind the life I’d started to build for myself.

The few months after I graduated were tough—the mitochondria may be the powerhouse of the cell but, for the few months I was job hunting and trying to figure out how to stay in the UK, I was powered exclusively by desperation and anxiety. Desperation to stay, and anxiety that the future I had envisioned was crumbling.

It’s not that I hate Malaysia. Life is good, now. My job back in Malaysia pays me well and I get to do work that entertains me. I love the people in my life very much. My girlfriend has shown me love and shown me how to love in ways I didn’t know people could. None of these things would have happened had I not moved back to Malaysia after uni. I am grateful for the life I have.

And yet, despite the fact that I am going home tomorrow to a life that I love, my heart is heavy.

According to Malaysian tradition, anyone who flies abroad for any reason has to bring along at least 1x care package for a relative living in the country; and so, here I am, sat on a bus to Stratford, carrying a little bundle of Malaysia across London. I have no idea what’s inside. It could be a big package of ketum for all I know.

My younger cousin, working a cushy corporate job, lives with his friends just near the (former) Olympic stadium in Stratford. Whenever I see who “made it out” and who had to come back home, I always end up thinking that maybe I should’ve taken a BSc in Economics or something instead of my Sociology and International Politics degree.

His place is a ten-minute walk from the bus stop, and it cuts through a park. The sun is setting, the temperature is perfect. I don’t mind the walk, because I love walking places.

The heaviness comes back. Have I mentioned my daily steps have doubled the past two weeks I’ve been here on holiday? A man in a button-up shirt and a chunky North Face backpack cycles past me. I accidentally make eye contact with an old lady walking her dog, and I give her a little white person pursed-lip smile to make it less awkward.

We don’t really have this in KL. We don’t have parks that feel integrated into the city. Parks, yes, but you never really walk through a park to get anywhere. Parks are a destination, not a space that meaningfully exists within and interacts with its larger environment. Like everything else here, parks are silo-ed off destinations connected to other silo-ed off destinations via a series of big roads and highways.

You could walk if you really wanted to, I guess. You just have to make sure your knees and ankles are stable, because the ground will be uneven, and you hav to make sure you can do a decent hop, because you’ll have to jump across longkangs. The sidewalk will also decide to up and disappear at any given point point, forcing you to shimmy up against the side of a three-lane road, sweating through your clothes because it’s hot, and also because you’re nervous about the barrage of cars that are driving past you at about an arms length away.

Choosing not to drive in Malaysia feels like choosing to live a life without a necessary limb. At least that’s what it seems like based on peoples’ reactions when I tell them I don’t want to drive. My grandparents especially can’t help but let some disappointment show when my lack of a license is brought up. It’s a bit like I’m not really a grown up grown up if I don’t drive around. Sometimes my grandma will chime in with a “Oh but nowadays public transport is so much better,” but I can tell from the tone that she’s trying to convince herself more than anyone.

There’s lots of reasons why I don’t want to drive. The part of me that is an Activist(TM) doesn’t want to drive because he doesn’t believe that most people should be driving at all. In fact, most people in cities shouldn’t own cars—we should live in cities with well-planned interconnected public transport systems that are convenient and reliable. Most people in London have no reason to use a car, because their public transport network is reliable, and driving a car in a big city is always, without fail, a soul-sucking experience.

The other reason why I don’t want to drive is more personal. I tried taking my driving test 3 times back in 2013, before I left for uni. I failed each time because I was on the verge of an anxiety attack whenever the JPJ examiner came and sat next to me in the car. On my 2nd try, I sat down in the manual Axia next to a very tightly-wound lady officer. She was the kind of person whose uniform would be perfectly pressed at all times, every crease and every pleat in its place.

Anyway, I sat down in the car next to her, and wished her “Good morning.” There’s then a checklist you’re supposed to go through when you start your exam—put on your seatbelt, adjust the seat, adjust the mirrors, check the gear, etc. I had just about clicked my seatbelt into place when she snapped back: “Kau ni Melayu kan? Apasal nak cakap ‘good morning, good morning’? ’Assalamualaikum’ lah.” I failed that test about a minute in after I stopped 2cm over a yellow line. I still get angry when I think about it.

When I think of that memory, I feel the same heaviness on my skin that I feel on that bus in London, on the way to my cousin’s place. It feels how I imagine it’d feel to take a dive into a pool filled with non-Newtonian fluid—it would hit hard against you at first, then it covers you whole and starts to press in on you.

Kau ni Melayu kan?

The heaviness goes away for a second when I ring my cousin’s doorbell, and he answers the door. I go in for a hug, but he pulls away because he literally just got back from the gym. Which is considerate of him. We just catch up a little, though I don’t get too comfortable, because my flight back to Malaysia is in less than 12 hours, and my nerves are jittery from not having packed yet.

We catch up for a bit, and it’s nice. He’s one of the few extended family members I have who’s on a similar wavelength—sort of, kind of, not really, but maybe a little trapped around religious, conservative beliefs that press into us, boxing us into boxes we have no business being in, and trying to figure out how best to navigate around the pressures. Maybe one of us will find a crack in the box?

Sometimes family can be frustrating, sometimes it can be nice to feel that sense of comradery you only get from people you’ve shared blood with from the moment you were born.

In the package I had couriered over were a couple of packs of Malaysian curries and gravies, as well as two jars of Village Park sambal, all wrapped neatly in old leafs of The Star newspaper. I make a mental note to have Village Park the second I land, because if there’s one thing that can lift the non-Newtonian heaviness from going home, it’s the food.

I wonder about the other things I love about Malaysia. What other things do I love about Malaysia? Some of the people. The way we’re hospitable and polite. Our more relaxed natures. The general lepak attitude we have in life. Is that enough for me to say I love Malaysia?

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Earlier this month I got into trouble on Malaysian Twitter, when I tweeted “Can’t believe trans bathroom discourse has hit Malaysia, can everyone just be quiet and mind their own business please? The trans person in the bathroom isn’t going to hurt you. Thanks.“

A day before, someone posted this tweet about how they asked a trans woman to nicely leave the women’s toilet because their cis woman friend wanted to adjust her hijab. The trans woman then harshly reacted—“who do you think you are?”

Initial reactions had a thin veneer of courtesy and politeness. It was exhausting. People were saying “you asked so nicely, this person should’ve respected you and just left.” Instead of being a matter of transphobia, it became a matter of civility.

Unsurprisingly, it also didn’t take too long to then devolve into a hot mess entirely. Some of the choice phrases I saw: “Just kill them,”; “They are all mentally ill and delusional,”; “Trans women are NOT REAL WOMEN.”

People took my tweet and went wild with it. Some people recognised me from other tweets.

“He’s always been an LGBTQ+ supporter, that’s why everything that comes out of his mouth is idiotic.”
“Bro, if you embraced your true self from god, you would be so handsome.”
“Shut the fuck up, you’re going to hell.”

I got a message request which, to be honest, I admire the concision of: “WOI FAGGOT.” I reported his account and he got suspended.

When I said life in Malaysia is good, that was an oversimplification. The life that is immediately in front of me is good. I’ve surrounded myself with people I love and feel safe around, people who share similar views, people who… won’t call me “FAGGOT”. It’s like a small little snow globe world, shielded from the outside and filled enough glittery snow to block it out. Then, sometimes, the snowy cascade settles down and I’m reminded very harshly that this little world I’ve created is fragile and not guaranteed, that at any moment it can shatter and spill out into a world that would smash it into another million pieces if it could.

When I really think about the fragility of the status quo, then the act of creating my bubble and my safe space stops feeling loving and joyful, and truly feels like work. It starts to feel like a struggle, and the struggle between outside and inside begins to feel feels very, very real. Every act of creating comes with the tension of potential unmaking. Laying foundations on ground that may disappear tomorrow.

Existing in Malaysia as any type of person who sits outside of societal acceptability comes with a million different ways that your life could implode. The intersections of my self and the world outside are those of illegality and punishment. There are at least five different laws I can think of that, at this exact moment, I am breaking. I can’t help but laugh when I think of this, not because it’s funny—it really, really is not—but because of how ridiculous that is. At this moment, I am sitting in my living room, a month after landing back in Malaysia, typing this essay and drinking some water. There is no such thing as the personal. The political sphere has arms, and it is knocking on the window.

Existing in Malaysia as any type of person who sits outside of societal acceptability comes with a million different ways that your life could implode. The intersections of my self and the world outside are those of illegality and punishment.

Belief, which feels like an abstract, cloudy, ineffable thing that slips through the space between your fingers when you try to grab it, is legally boxed up and prescribed. You, born into this family, are legally required to believe this, this and this. This country It takes beliefs that should live in the head and the heart—the places in you where the landscapes constantly shift and even the most solid objects constantly dissolve and re-form—and freezes them solid by codifying them and bringing them into law. Whether you believe or not, you are placed within a broader political and legal framework that you literally cannot disentangle yourself from.

Maybe, after living here for so long, I’ve gaslit myself into believing that things aren’t so bad. This is just whining! Things could be so much worse! After all, it’s just a label on the Identity Card. It’s a small part of the bureaucracy that’s a mild inconvenience, but an inconvenience that can be navigated.

Take a second to step back, though, and it becomes very clear that they’re not mere bureaucratic inconveniences. Women subject to these laws need a male relative’s permission to marry. Queer people are subject to possible jail time and public casings for “crimes against nature”. Trans people, and even people who are mildly gender non-conforming, risk breaking “crossdressing” laws. I don’t think about what I’m writing right now, because if I do, I’d realise that writing this could be considered “illegal”, an infringement of said beliefs.

I don’t want to infringe on those beliefs! I just want to decide my own!

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There’s a bar in KL I went to this one time, with my girlfriend and one of my closest friends. It’s located in an older building, which used to house offices, and in fact still does—on the way up to this bar, you pass by the office of a lawyer who has somehow, in 2023, found his law practice surrounded by artists and bakeries and graphic design studios. The DJ at this particular event played disco, on vinyl of course, and the small wood-floored room glittered lightly from the reflected light off of a small disco ball hanging from the ceiling. It was loud enough to dance to, but not too loud that you couldn’t talk.

Whenever I’m out in KL, I have in the back of my head a mental checklist of all the things I’m doing that are punishable by law. The three of us held our drinks up—a G&T for me and my girlfriend, a Heineken for my friend—then said our cheers, thankful for each others’ company (forbidden), had little modest sips of our drinks (forbidden). I gave them both hugs, appreciative of their love (forbidden). My girlfriend, seizing the opportunity, grabbed my cheeks and pulled me in for a small peck (forbidden). We have a good night (not forbidden, but my grandma would not approve). Before we leave, we take a selfie together—we’re millennials and it’s a Friday night, of course we’re going to take a selfie.

I make a mental note that there’s a beer can in the image and that the image could potentially be dangerous for any one of us at some point in the future. That photograph stays in my phone and doesn’t go on my public Instagram. I tuck all this, the specific note and the whole chronically-anxious mental checklist, in the back of my head where it stays, because I don’t let it into the forefront unless I hear sirens or I want to write about it.

A few months later, REXKL was raided by the police and the state religious department when a queer Halloween event was held there. Before the event, I scrolled through my Instagram feed (which is very gay). Half of it was pre-event OOTDs, and, as the gays do, everyone was dressed to fucking murder. Then, later, I saw the news break on Twitter. Immediate panic. I did a mental rundown of who was there, and who would need help. I messaged my Muslim friends who were there, the ones most at risk of getting into legal trouble. When I saw that a mutual was connecting people caught in the raid to legal aid, I passed the number along to a few people who were stressing out.

That night put a lot of people in a dark place.

Whenever I’m out in KL, I have in the back of my head a mental checklist of all the things I’m doing that are punishable by law.

20 people were hauled out in a Black Maria, all Muslim, held under the Syariah Law that makes any “male person” who “wears a woman’s attire and poses as a woman” a criminal. The 20 faced fines and possible jail time. They weren’t all men, as reported by the news outlets. Based on what I saw later from people who were there, some were men, but some were trans women and some were nonbinary people, all of them boxed into the narrow legal gender that they are unable to escape from.

I’d been to those events before. They always feel like safe spaces, like the only place in this hellhole where you can be yourself, truly, and not feel eyes on you from potentially dangerous men, not risk surreptitious photos being taken and leaked to family. In the photograph I took the other night, there was a beer in frame, but there was also me in frame, with black eyeliner and coloured eyeshadow, and a women’s top that was ambiguous enough to be mildly androgynous. The only reason I wasn’t there on Halloween was because I had been overspending and couldn’t justify the ticket price.

At the REXKL raid, some of those detained were queer men who were hauled away for wearing eyeliner and dangly earrings. I add that to my mental checklist: apparently, (forbidden). Online, one of the people partaking in the raid had uploaded a video to TikTok—another dagger uploaded and pushed into the wound. It showed the 20 people being marched out, the camera literally looking down at them, their downcast expressions cast sharply under the harsh fluorescent lighting. The officers around them were holding back sneers and laughter, the disdain crystal clear in their eyes. That same scorn was imbued in the camera itself—the way it focused pointedly on each member, as though to highlight their “ridiculousness” and strip them of any dignity they had left. The commenters were more direct. It’s good that they’re arrested; stupid men who can’t accept themselves; can’t they just be quiet and mentally ill in their own houses?

In Malaysia, we have to make our own lives, and we are tolerated. We are allowed to live how we want, until it’s too much, in which case we’re torn down for taking advantage of the gracious tolerance we’ve been shown. For every person who doesn’t exist the way the law requires them to, in the way their families demand and in the way unseen but harshly felt social forces compact them into, we have to carve out space with those we love and trust, and hope hard that the wrong people don’t take notice. The tension fades eventually, but it stays in the background, a part of your survival instincts that never goes away.

For me, that tension sits in the back of my neck, a gelatinous glob that sticks to my throat and my spine. Sometimes, when things like the REXKL raid happen, those tensions flare back up and I feel it pull backwards on my neck, a reminder of how fragile our lives all are. I am reminded that I am building a life that’s conditional on people who despise me, and that it can be taken down at any moment if I am too loud, too angry, or even too noticed by the wrong people.

I spend two weeks back in the UK, and I know that it is annoying to read about. I know that it’s annoying to hear someone talk about how much better life is outside of Malaysia, how it sucks here, how I just need to get the fuck out, you know? I know! I know it’s annoying.

In Malaysia, we have to make our own lives, and we are tolerated. We are allowed to live how we want, until it’s too much, in which case we’re torn down for taking advantage of the gracious tolerance we’ve been shown.

Still, I find myself sad that my short trip is over. When I was there, the heaviness went away, for a while. I didn’t have to think about hiding, pretending, planning life around oppressive laws. The tension in the back of my neck lifted.

I just want a life that can’t be undone so easily. I want to be able to live a life that I don’t have to shrink down to stay safe the way I do now, pulled into myself so as not to push too hard outwards.

On my first night away, I was at a bar in allegedly-very-cool East London, with one of my best friends in the world. I hadn’t seen her in a few months, and I was grateful to able to spend time with her. It was a “loft”, so we sat outside on the massive balcony, looking out at the skyline. We went back in, and danced for hours. The DJ was playing latin house, on vinyl of course, and I realised I really liked latin house. There was no mental checklist in the back of my mind, no contingency plan, no random pangs of paranoia. I went to sleep, feeling peaceful.

5 minutes ago, I opened up my Photos app, and looked at a photo from the night. There, in my hand, was a pint beer. I think there’s something pulling on my neck.