People always ask me ‘When did you realise that you’re gay?’ and I usually answer ‘I always knew’. Because for me, that sudden realisation I think people often expect to hear is not the way it worked. There wasn’t a moment in life in which I discovered my sexuality, instead, I remember learning the terms gay and lesbian, learning what that meant and the realisation for me was that those labels described how I had always felt. In primary school, with my first group of friends, I felt alienated not to understand the crushes on boys, the obsession of finding a boyfriend, a theme that continued throughout my childhood and early teenage years – I felt different, and not different in a good way. I forced myself to fake crushes, to talk about Charlie from Busted instead of Rachel Stevens from S Club Seven, I scrawled the initials of boys I ‘fancied’ on the back of my hand because that’s what all the other girls were doing, and I pretended for so many years, that I was just like everybody else. And that was part of the point, I felt like the only person in the world that wasn’t ‘normal’.
When I was growing up, there were very few, if any, representations of LGBTQ+ people. I was swarmed with depictions of heterosexual relationships, in almost every film, every TV show, every book, and if ever there was an LGBTQ+ character, if ever I saw the way I felt inside represented in the media, they were there for the dramatic storyline, for the shock value, to be the butt of the joke. I had no visible or known LGBTQ+ people around me, my peers were either embracing the heteronormative way of life, or as in the closet as I was, and unfortunately, I was often witness to ‘gay’ jokes, to the labels I already felt represented who I was, being used as insults. Even after Margaret Thatcher’s section 28 banning the ‘promotion of homosexuality in schools’ was repealed, my PSHE and sex education lessons seemed to ignore the existence of LGBTQ+ people all together. I felt lost, and completely alone. I had no idea how to be openly who I was, I was terrified of anybody finding out and I hated myself.
As children, my sister and I used to make mood boards of the futures we wanted, pictures of people, houses, objects, ripped from catalogues and collaged into images that represented our ‘when I grow up’ dreams. Mine were always the same – when I grew up, I wanted to get married and be a Mum, dreams I still have, and dreams as a child I was certain were so out of my reach, because I knew that the random man from the catalogue, stuck awkwardly on the edge of my collage, would never be the future I wanted. But everything I knew, everything I had seen, everything that was around me seemed to be telling me that if I wanted the wedding and the baby, I would have to marry a man. It seems silly now that I know so different, but I spent so many years believing I would either have to sacrifice my dreams for the future or spend the rest of my life continuing to pretend I was someone I am not.
It took me most of my teen years, and so many google searches of ‘can lesbians have a baby?’, to become more accepting of my sexuality, and I was lucky to be living through such a period of adjustment in social norms and attitudes that meant I stopped feeling quite so alone. When I did ‘come out’, at first to my friends, and then slowly to my family, and others around me, I was lucky to be met with an abundance of support. My Mum, telling me in conversations since that she has known since I was 12 and tried to bring a ‘boyfriend’ home, said ‘That’s nice’, and carried on her day. She made me feel as though perhaps the ‘coming out’ wasn’t exactly necessary, that my sexuality has no bearing on her love and pride for me. From that point onwards, the journey through life as an openly gay woman hasn’t always been easy, but I feel lucky to have been born in a place and at a time in which my sexuality may not be accepted by all, but at least is not illegal, at least I am safe. I know for many people of my generation and older, 17 is quite young to have ‘come out’, but I know for the rest of my life I will regret that I was not that bit braver, that bit sooner, so that I could have shared my true self with my Dad, who I lost at 15, as I know now how much greater it feels to be loved for exactly who you are, than for a person you are pretending to be.
Pride events, spaces like the Moore Barlow Pride Committee, and the Rainbow Saints group I am a part of mean so much to me because I think it is so important to fill all the gaps that existed when I was growing up. I want there to be positive representation everywhere, I want young LGBTQ+ people to see themselves reflected not just in the media, but around them, in the community, in their families and amongst their friends, so that they feel safe to be themselves, to love who they love. I know I am both so lucky and privileged to love, and be loved by, the most incredible woman, and so I love her loudly, and hope that our strong, positive representation of a gay relationship can be something that fills the gap in somebody else’s understanding of love.
