Starting a new diary, I thought it best to exlain a few of the basics about myself. When you've been keeping a diary for a while it can become easy to forget that people that haven't been reading since the begining might not know some of the most important things about you. My sexuality is somewhat confusing. Not to me - well, not any more at least - but it's a little out of the ordinary and even I have only realised just what it is within the last year.
See, the fact is, I'm gay. But I'm in love with a man. How did that happen? I don't know. It kind of threw me off course for a while. In fact, my entire life seemed to be designed to throw me off course! To me it's just become as normal and natural as anything, but a lot of people have had problems with the way I am over the years. I was one of those people for a long time. I tried very hard to be straight for a great number of years. But you can't turn yourself into something you're not to please the masses, can you?
Recently I've been able to look back to the past and understand for the first time why everything seemed so confusing for so long and why it took me so many years to work out what and who I was. I remember that my sexuality developed when I was very young. My first crush was on sandi Toksvig when she played a character called Ethel from a kids show called Number 73. I was only 5 years old at the time, but I was determined to marry her when I grew up. Yes, I know it was a slightly misguided choice but I was only five. My taste has improved since then! And anyway, everyone's allowed a bad crush at some point :)
I made the mistake of telling an older friend that I was going to marry a girl when I grew up, and was immediately told I would go to hell for saying that. A girl loving a girl was 'wrong'. From that day onward until I had just turned 18 I never told a soul.
Over the following years I grew to be an expert at covering it up. I would fake crushes on men on TV to cover up for the fact that it was their female co-star that I was head-over-heels about. I was already enough of a bully-victim at school - the last thing I needed was to give the other kids at school any more ammunition against me. So I lied to them, to my parents, to everyone. Even to myself. It was a survival technique. I pretended so long that on a couple of occasions I actually convinced myself that I had a crush or two on men, as I was supposed to. And on the couple of occasions that I genuinely did find a man attractive they, err, actually looked like a girl. Not naming any names. *Cough* Chesneyhawkes *Cough*.....
As I got older and entered my early teens, I suppose it was a case of the teenage hormones raging that brought it to the surface. Up until then I had managed to really keep those feelings at bay. Then along came Gillian Anderson, the crush who wouldn't be denied. I would, I think, call her my first 'proper' crush. My walls became littered with portraits of her, I bought every magazine with so much as a mention of her, I was completely addicted to her gorgeous face and body. I began to let a little of the way I felt seep out. As long as I only admitted it to myself then it would be OK, I decided.
But that crush was quickly followed up with another, just as strong. And then they came thick and fast. The more I allowed myself to fancy pretty girls, the more I noticed to fancy. The cycle went on like that over the next couple of years and slowly drove me insane. I had no one I could talk to and the more I turned things over in my mind, the more confusing they seemed. I didn't know what I was. Since I'd had - I thought - crushes on men I thought that perhaps I was bisexual. But if I was bisexual then why couldn't I block out the way I felt about girls so that I could be 'normal'?
I didn't know what I was. Except for being depressed. I became withdrawn for a while as the dreams I had about those who I admired reached their peak. Finally I had to tell someone, and I ended up confiding in a very close friend I had at the time. I was surprised but relieved when she actually came out to me straight away afterwards, and a year later we briefly went out. But in the meanwhile, now I had told one person it became difficult not to tell others. I felt awful, keeping it a secret, but the few I told did not take it well.
However, despite the reactions I got from other people I began to feel happier in myself and began to accept that I just adored girls. I stopped hiding it, and if people guessed then I didn't care. I'd had enough of hiding. I even put a personal ad on the internet to meet other gay girls locally, and corresponded with a few for a long time. And then, smack-bang in the middle of me begining to conclude that I was a lesbian ....I fell in love with a man.
I met Y, my gorgeous fiance. Y is funny, he's gentle, he's passionate and he's as loopy as I am. We were meant to be together. Everything about us is compatible. Yet.... he's a man.
I just fell in love with him. There was no question of that. I was absolutely terrified when I slowly came out to him - I wasn't even sure what I was coming out as - but he was the first person who made me feel as though I was perfectly normal and that it was absolutely OK to watch the curves of a woman as she walks down the street. We soon realised that we were even compatible in our taste for girls. We talk about them so much, and we will never agrue about who to put up on the wall :)
I had to reassess everything. How could I be gay if I was in love with a man? I settled on the theory that I must be bisexual - what else could I be? - and finally I decided to come out to everyone. It was a risk, and I lost a lot of friends. Some people were just far more narrow-minded than I thought they would be. The few who stuck by me showed what wonderful friends they truly are - and since then I've made so many more, wonderful friends :) Yet somehow, it still didn't feel right. I felt under pressure to attempt to find other men attractive to balance out the 'bisexual' statement, but I just couldn't.
It took me a long time to work it out. Over a year, in fact. I finally realised that I had been right in the first place - I am gay. It's just that I fell in love with a man. Perhaps love and sexuality are not necessarily connected. Lines are more blurred than people would have you believe. I didn't understand how it was possible for things to have happened the way that they did, but I felt very, very fortunate. The perks of the relationship are something so special. there's no jealousy, because when an attractive girl walks down the street we know that we're both following her with our eyes. Neither of us have to muffle a 'Phwoooar!' when someone we like comes on the TV. It just feels natural. Unusual, maybe, but natural.
I felt a little validated by a TV programme last year called Bob & Rose. The storyline was about a gay man who fell in love with a woman, with the message being that he was still gay - it was just that he had fallen in love with someone unexpectedly. It was apparently based on a true story, too, and in the weeks after it was shown there were stories in the papers about other people who had been in the same situation, though none of them were my way round.
I finally decided to come out, all over again with the right sexuality this time, almost a year ago. Since then I've actually met a few other people who have had similar experiences to mine - either they are gay and fell in love with a mamber of the opposite sex, or straight but fell in love with a member of the same. Some men, some women, all with one thing in common - a sexuality that society doesn't really know too well. I don't know if anyone will ever come up with a term for it. Perhaps that should be up to those who experience it so we don't end up with a horrible word we all hate :P But for now I can only call myself a gay woman who happened to fall deeply, ecstatically in love with a man.
So that's me. And at long last, I not only accept it but I love everything about the way I am :)
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