When I woke up

We identify as Happy

I’ve written a lot in my blog about different things like cancer, work, travel and music. For a change I am going to talk about who I am, not just what I’ve done. I am in my sixties, and I have two children, two grandchildren and two years ago I married my wife. How I got here is a long story, but in summary, as a child I played with Action Man (not Barbie), I loved to dress up as a pirate (not a princess), and I did meet and marry a man, but he hated my love of hats (not pretty girly ones) – amongst other things. When I had a strange urge to buy a female friend flowers, or had an erotic dream that included women, and then had a crush on another female friend, none of these things indicated to me I might be bisexual. Yeah – slow on the uptake! 

 So now I identify as lesbian. Because all options are open, of course, but I am not intending to veer from this course now I have found it. I was very loath to talk about being gay when I first realised it in my early fifties, but I embrace it now and openly refer to my wife rather than partner in conversation. Let others’ conscious or unconscious bias do as it will, I am happy and confident with who I am – more so now than I have ever been. 

 When I say I ‘identify’ – that may set some hackles rising. Why do we need to ‘identify’? Very simple answer - because society wants to put a label on it. We can’t just ‘be’ – we must fit into a slot or a place in others’ perceptions of spectrum, so we label everything from sexuality to neurological ability. I have a stoma, but I don’t want to identify as an ‘ostomate’. I have had cancer, but I don’t want to identify as ‘survivor’. I have friends with life limiting conditions, but they don’t want to identify as ‘disabled’ – that’s not who we are, it’s just part of our lives. But there are some places you do need to identify, even if it’s just so you can use the right toilet (and yes, I do get looks sometimes when I used the one with the picture of a wheelchair on the door). 

 You may consider me ‘woke’ because I am a gay woman, a charity worker, because I support refugees and challenge behaviours like racism and sexism, and that’s fine with me. If you call me ‘woke’, I will take it as a compliment.