mental health journey: - UNTOLD STORIES OF PEOPLE FROM THE NORTHEAST OF INDIA

Meghalaya’s matrilineal homes To her chagrin, she learned that she would have no room for transgender women and never quite be accepted in the city as a contain many unheard stories of fear and chinki, radical, Northeastern woman - even in abandonment in a society that claims to the LGBTQ+ community she led and later fled value women’s lives - transgender lives to take care of her mental health. [...] The key idea without the burden of society’s narrow is to provide consistent support throughout the presumptions”… What is this societal burden? process and not just when the situation comes to a And how much of it has she felt over the years? head. [...] One of the notions I process of getting to know her and evokes my wanted to explore was her relationship to Sikkim— intellectual and emotional responses to the time Sikkim as a place where she was both hurt and is we shared, no matter how short and healing. [...] to love a girl the way I want? Will all my relationships end like that? Questions surfaced Queerness, for Antarleena, is the zeal to and re-surfaced, doubts grew outside of her explore the unexplored, to re-imagine, and to like parasitic plants, and she felt betrayed re-invent herself in this journey of eccentric once again. [...] However, concerned them - the refugee movement, the enmeshed within the context of Assam’s history socio-political situation of the newfound place, and politics and her identity as a Bengali, it and assimilation into the new culture.