Desiree Akhavan

I'd wanted to be a filmmaker since I was nine years old and wrote my first script.

It was a sketch comedy show that featured a fake advert for a product called Vomlet, the omelet made of vomit.

I'd been desperate to find my voice ever since, but I was always writing at arm's length for myself.

After I came out, there was no reason to hold back, so I didn't.

I co-created a web series with my girlfriend at the time.

It was about a pair of superficial homophobic lesbians.

And for the first time in my life, my work started speaking to other people.

I let go of my idea of good and trying to fit into other people's notion of good, and I ended up finding my own.

After that, I wrote, directed, and starred in my first film, which explored themes of being a self-indulgent, closeted Iranian millennial cliché.

That film premiered at Sundance.

My next film won Sundance.

Eventually, my parents realized that being gay wasn't a death sentence, and we found each other.

But on new terms.

They are the heart of me.

They built me.

But they don't get to determine the rules of my life.

Nobody does.

I challenge you to disappoint your parents and to take the rules that they pass down from their own parents and ask if those are rules that you would choose for yourself.

I challenge you to be a little more honest and a little less obedient, not just with your parents, but with the world.

My mother's high school yearbook quote says, one should live life like a duck, calm and serene on the surface, but paddling like hell underneath.