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PRIDE LONDON 2010

Mon 15 Feb, 2010
By Danielle Carter

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The hardest thing I have ever done

As I sit hear knowing what I am about to tell you part of me feels embarrassed, part astonished but all of me feels proud. From sexual awakening during my early teens I always knew that the heterosexual life just didn’t fit for me. However, I never thought that I would be in a relationship with a woman, a thought that could not have been further from my mind.

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Stating the Obvious?

Ricky Martin today released a statement saying that he was a 'very fortunate homosexual'

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Louie Spence goes toe-to-toe with Editor Danielle Carter.

Louis Spence apparently pirouetted into our lives from the wings of no where. After years of teaching wannabe dancers the difference between good toes and naughty toes he has been catapulted into our conscious as the new King/Queen of reality TV. With more charisma than Maureen from Driving School and more longevity than the girl that said 'Chicken' in Big Brother a lot, he really is a belle du jour.

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The hardest thing I have ever done

As I sit hear knowing what I am about to tell you part of me feels embarrassed, part astonished but all of me feels proud.

From sexual awakening during my early teens I always knew that the heterosexual life just didn’t fit for me. However, I never thought that I would be in a relationship with a woman, a thought that could not have been further from my mind.

So I set up home in Denialville.

I married a man; I lived the straight life whilst taking extra-curricular lessons in lesbianism. I never wanted to come out, why would I? People in the straight world never assumed that I was gay. I could slip into the gay world, get my rocks off and return home before sunrise without turning into a hetero pumpkin.

But being the only gay in the village of a middle class Christian town in Kent my choice of poison to steal my nerves was God’s very own Jesus juice; vino, vino and more vino. It was the only thing that got me through the door of a gay club on my own. However, my prop soon became downfall. If I ever met anyone who I thought I would like to see again, they wouldn’t on the grounds that I was drunken, secretive and insecure. I was stuck in a meaningless world. I went through one night after another getting drunk and behaving as though consequence didn’t exist.

Even though I was living this double life it never occurred to me that I was really gay. I slept with women, I enjoyed it but I viewed it as a hobby much like crochet. I would always go home to my man and eventually I would be married with children and the highlight of my day would be making an exotic casserole whilst finding a new trick with fennel. I could never predict how my life was about to unravel.

I started going to a counsellor. I had now completely left the scene on the grounds of burnout.

My work was suffering, I worked in care and I was breaking down. My husband left and my job absorbed every part of me, all of a sudden I needed me to be there for me – a concept that did not sit comfortably at all. I started on the advice of a dodgy website watching straight porn and trying to condition myself out of this gay state of mind I had gotten myself into.

Then the summer happened, the usual whirl of music festivals and weddings. But there was one wedding that saved me. I never thought I would have an epiphany in a church I always hoped that it would be in spearmint rhinos. I sat hung over watching my friend walk down the aisle, realising that I was the loneliest and saddest at the wedding, I broke.

I left the wedding drove home and sat on my kitchen floor in a Bridget Jones-esque moment listening to music, getting drunk and realising that I had literally fucked my life up.

I told my friends that my emotional collapse was due to work but I couldn’t feasibly keep up the lies. So a week later I told one of my friends.

It was the moment I came out to myself. It was that moment that it dawned upon me that I didn’t give a shit about coming out to others but I cared about coming out to myself. I had not lived up to my high expectations. I was about success and being gay was not successful, it was not my life plan. And I wept and wept until every last trace of my dreams had gone. The wedding disappeared, the children disappeared, the conventional dinner parties disappeared, my life disappeared. Everything that I was working towards fell away and I had no point of reference anymore.

So I retreated, I worked through the web of lies and bullshit that I had created around my life to buffer me from the truth and after one occasion of spending two weeks alone locked up in the house I realised I needed to get out. I didn’t want to suffer anymore but learn how to live with myself. So one day I got on a train to London. I would always go to London to disappear, I felt like you didn’t matter there- nobody knows you. People have always struck me like ghosts in London walking through each other never meeting again. I could not have been more wrong.

I had no idea but it was Pride weekend, I ended up following the parade into Trafalgar Square. Where I stood watching happy people, happy couples, and it dawned on me that they weren’t lonely or hollow they were alright.

I decided that I needed to start living the life I wanted to live. I felt more comfortable correcting people on the assumption that I was straight and I felt that maybe I could start to bring the walls down and may even at some point have a relationship and I have.

The one thing that I know from everyone that I have ever met that defines themselves anywhere from slightly left of straight is that even though the symptoms may vary ( you may not feel the need for alcohol, promiscuity or Prozac) those self- harming actions however they manifest themselves come from the same place. They come from a place of loneliness and a very real fear of isolation.

It is a process that never ends but the most important thing is to gain strength, conviction and above all Pride. It is the most life changing transition I have ever been through but I am ok with myself even if others aren’t and a lot haven’t been. I would like to thank the friends that have stuck by me and the friends who haven’t. You have had an equal contribution to my many realisations. There are still things that I would like to change about myself; my inability to stick to a diet, my obsession with Haribo and shamefully as a journalist my lack of accuracy when it comes to using apostrophes, but my sexuality is definitely not on that list.

Ultimately I am glad to be gay. I never thought that I would get to the point in my life when I could say that. I never thought that I could have a legitimate relationship, that I could get married if I wanted to, or that I could tell a girl publically that she takes my breath away but my sexuality was built on nevers and I never want it to go away.

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