I have had three major traumatic times in my life so far. One was my mothers death, the second my fathers on-going illness and the third my coming out – a late affair!
During my coming out period of about 10 years, I felt that this was the most traumatic, stressful, head wrecking part of my life, but hindsight as they say is a wonderful thing. I now know it was the least stressful of all three mentioned, the reason being that I ultimately had control over the result unlike the others. The hardest part was actually confronting it and saying aloud those two small words “I’m Gay!”

Well where do I start -I can honestly say that I can’t remember having a sense of being Gay in Secondary School, good old St Paul’s, but at the same time I certainly hadn’t a sense of wanting to be with a girl either. I must have been an odd child, Thankfully I don’t have any really bad memories of my school days but then again I don’t have many memories of it at all. Maybe it was so traumatic that my self preservation mechanism blocked it out – As i said odd child!

Gradually and I do mean gradually it started to dawn on me that I might be a little bit “different” The days of me going out with the lads and getting a girl for the look of it were numbered! Looking back mind you the opportunities for me to be a fully fledged friend of Dorothy were there aplenty but I managed to trip over them. I remember one case 17 years ago in good old Gran Canaria – A young Swedish soldier who I was quite smitten with asked me outside – little country boy must have thought it was for a breath of air and didn’t read the signals ( Written in ten foot neon lights with bells on them!) After that fish got away the net started to tighten but it was another ten years before I reeled it in and replied to an advert in Hot Press (Pre Internet – Do you all realise how lucky you are?) and got my very first date followed shortly afterwards by meeting the love of my life and the rest as they say is history.

Move back a few years though and you would see the coming out wheels in motion. You start to realise that you can’t hide a relationship and more importantly you don’t want to hide it. My first lucky victim was a mate who I took up to the scenic Flagstaff to break the good news – he was convinced I was going to tell him I was dying! Then some more friends and then the big one, mum and dad.

I probably spent a year on that one, the time was never right or I always ran away. Eventually I made a point of ringing home one night, told mum I had something to tell them and would call down next day. Before I could stutter it out my mum at 81 quickly banished years of pussyfooting about and wasted life with “You’re Gay?”.

Once that was over everything else fell into place. I told my brother and sister who passed the good news on to the rest of them. My parents took a little while to come around but I was very privileged with their support. One thing I will always remember my mother saying was “If God made you that way God will look after you” My partner is treated as part of the family as much as any of my other in-laws.

My sincere advise to anyone in the process coming out is get it over with and stop wasting your life. we have only one life and it is very very short. There never ever ever will be an appropriate time. I regret my years of lying and pretending to be some one I wasn’t but overall thankfully it all worked out and I am very happy with my lot at this stage.

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