A Fight to Be My Authentic Self: A Journey of Finding Who Ivan Is

People often ask Ivan where he’s from.

And Ivan usually laughs and says, “Made in Singapore, processed in Malaysia, and exported to New Zealand.”

It sounds light. Almost playful.

But behind that line is a story that wasn’t simple, and certainly not easy.

Ivan was born in Singapore but grew up in Malaysia. His childhood wasn’t stable in the way most people would understand it. The family moved often. There was no real sense of permanence. His father was involved in a world Ivan didn’t fully understand as a child — a world that meant secrecy, instability, and sometimes fear. There were things you didn’t say. Places you didn’t invite people into. Questions you didn’t ask.

At times, even answering the door wasn’t safe.

There were moments where Ivan had to pretend no one was home, sitting quietly behind closed doors while life pressed in from the outside. Electricity bills unpaid. Rent uncertain. A young boy was learning how to survive without anyone really knowing what was happening.

And yet, in the middle of all that, there was love.

His mother — strong, enduring, and deeply self-sacrificing — held everything together in ways Ivan only fully understood much later. She did what she could, with what she had, in a system that offered very little support.

But there was another layer Ivan was carrying — one that he didn’t yet have language for.

He knew he was different.

Growing up in Malaysia, there was no space to understand what it meant to be gay. No conversations. No visibility. No examples. Just silence… and a growing sense of suffocation.

Ivan didn’t leave Malaysia because he had a clear plan.

He left because he couldn’t breathe.

There was a moment — a breaking point — where everything came together. The pressure, the confusion, the internal conflict. He found himself overwhelmed, depressed, and at times, suicidal. He didn’t fully understand what was happening inside him, only that something had to change.

So he made a decision.

He left.

New Zealand wasn’t some carefully chosen destination. It wasn’t a dream. It was simply… somewhere else. Somewhere that might allow him to exist in a way he couldn’t before.

But arriving didn’t make things easier.

In many ways, it made everything more visible.

Ivan found himself alone in a new country, facing not just his identity, but everything he had carried with him — loneliness, depression, anxiety, and the weight of finally trying to live honestly. There were nights when he drank just to get through the silence. Times when he had to choose between paying rent and buying alcohol, simply to cope with what he was feeling.

It was messy.

It was uncertain.

But it was also the beginning of something.

For the first time, Ivan met people who were openly gay. He saw relationships between men that were not hidden, not shameful, not something to be denied. And in that moment, something shifted.

Possibility appeared.

That possibility gave him the courage to tell his family the truth.

It wasn’t easy. There were questions, doubts, and cultural expectations that didn’t simply disappear. In many ways, Ivan had to become the bridge — the one who explained, challenged, and held space for conversations his family had never been exposed to.

He didn’t just come out.

He had to educate, translate, and patiently reshape understanding.

And slowly, over time, something changed.

Not perfectly. Not instantly.

But enough.

Ivan’s journey didn’t stop there. What began as a search for survival gradually became something deeper. Through his own lived experience — depression, identity, displacement — he found himself drawn into mental health work, particularly peer support.

Not because he had it all figured out.

But because he understood what it meant to feel lost.

He became part of something new at the time — one of the early peer support movements in New Zealand. A space where lived experience wasn’t seen as weakness, but as knowledge. Where connection mattered more than authority. Where sitting beside someone was more important than trying to fix them.

And in that space, Ivan found something powerful.

Recovery wasn’t linear.

It wasn’t something you could prescribe.

It had to be defined by the person living it.

That understanding shaped everything that followed.

Looking back now, Ivan doesn’t describe his life as easy or even as making complete sense. But there is a thread that runs through it all — a quiet resilience, a willingness to face what is difficult, and a refusal to live a life that isn’t true.

He didn’t arrive in New Zealand with clarity.

He arrived with necessity.

And from that necessity… he built a life.

Not by avoiding what was hard, but by walking through it.

And perhaps that’s what authenticity really is.

Not a destination.

But the decision, again and again… to be who you are, even when it costs you everything you thought you needed.

Full Podcast: A Fight to Be My Authentic Self: A Journey of Finding Who Ivan Is