“There was a dance competition at school and I had chosen to play the female lead. When I got home father punished me for what he thought damaged his name in the society. He hung me upside down and beat me. I must have been 8 or 9. Because I behaved like a girl, people would talk behind his back and comment on his son’s ways. I was the eldest son in the family and that is how, proudly, my name was chosen. As I grew up I could not associate with my gender. Every time, I looked at my sexual organs, I felt something was wrong with me. I spent most of my childhood and coming of age years in confusion. I was kept out in family gatherings and festivals, mostly alone in my room. My feminine disposition was an embarrassment for them. Even though I was a good student, I had problems in school too. I remember one of my teacher had found some kohl and lipstick in my bag and I was humiliated in front of the entire school during the morning assembly and eventually, rusticated. Loneliness became an everyday thing and I started connecting with people who were troubled like myself. And for the first time, in drugs and troubled companions, I found escape. By the time I completed high school, I was already addicted to pills and formulas. The drugs gave me relief from the crisis of my identity. I was still a boy who felt like a girl who did not know what to do about it. And because there was no one I could talk to about my predicament, I started caring less and less about life. Drugs became my only solace and to sustain my addiction I started dealing. I would take a bus to Jogbani with 1000 rupees and make three times the money and I have drugs at my disposal. The fact that I was doing drugs did not bother my family as much as my femininity did. And it was not to get me out of addiction that I was sent to rehab. My family wanted to change my behaviour, they wanted me to act like a boy. When I returned and that did not happen, I was kicked out of the house. At 16, I was homeless.” (Rhina Limbu, Kathmandu)