If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?
I’ve been asking people I’m interviewing for Late Bloomer this question (including Anna, whose brilliant interview is below and had me shouting Yes! This! Me too! a lot).
I think if I had told my younger self that I was getting a civil partnership tomorrow, she would’ve said (reasonably) ‘What is a civil partnership?’ and (more reasonably) ‘Who are you, creepy lady?’
Hard to say if she would have been least impressed by it being a sort-of wedding (yuck) or it being to a woman (nothing scarier to a weird shy kid than turning out gay on top of everything else, in the 80s, come ON).
Under the circumstances, it’s lucky I took my sweet time to figure out my sexy business. One of the things about doing things later in life: you’re not always at the same pace as people doing the stuff you like. So you’re not always the same age as the people doing the stuff you like, or the people who are who you like.
We have an age gap, the Doctor and I.
For example:
Me: WELL YO ARE YOU READY FOR ME YET (pump it up prince)
Them: Er
Me: WELL YO ARE YOU READY FOR ME YET (pump it up prince)
Them: Is everything OK?
Me: WELL YO ARE YOU READY FOR ME YET (pump it up prince) Well here I go, here I go, here I here I go go, mic in a stranglehold, sweat pouring, and just like Jordan, yo I’m scoring, why aren’t you joining in, everyone knows this
Them: *googles* When this song came out I was two
Mhmm.
More on this later. I’m off to iron my frock. In the meantime, here’s a lovely read. Grab a cuppa.
Illustration: Naoko Stoop instagram.com/naokostoop/
Anna is 50, and works in student support in further education. She is also currently studying to become a counsellor, and is part way through a Level 4 qualification.
I feel 14 again in that I need to discover who I am, what I like, what I don’t like, how I go about meeting someone and starting a relationship.
What did you do later in life than some people?
I realised at 47 that I was actually gay.
I’d assumed I was heterosexual all my life, and in recent years had assumed I was asexual as I didn’t have the slightest interest in being with a man. It somehow hadn’t even occurred to me that there was an alternative option for me! This is despite having worked in FE for 15 years, and spending lots of time working with students who are questioning their identities, and being in a work environment which tries hard to be extremely inclusive.
I’ve been single for over 10 years and have lived alone for 25 years. I’ve only had relationships with men in the past, but they were always unsatisfactory and didn’t make me happy, and I gave up trying over the last decade or so. I am a very independent person anyway, and assumed it was that which made me not want a relationship.
My moment of realisation was an actual moment rather than a gradual thing. It was a bit bonkers really. It was March 2020, and I was watching a play. At the very beginning, I remember my train of thought going “hm, that actress looks very like Bev [woman I used to work with who was very openly lesbian]. Aww. Bev was really nice… this actress has great hair… aww the character is gay too, that’s nice… Bev had GREAT hair… I wish I was more like Bev… no, wait… waaait… that’s… oh. I LIKED Bev. Oh…” and then I missed the next half hour of the play.
On the drive home my brain went a bit haywire, trawling through some fantastic women I’d known in the past and admired so much and working out what was going on. I made up my mind to talk to my counsellor colleague on the Monday at work, but then the world went into lockdown and I worked from home for the next 4 months, so I had time to google everything and work it all out in my head, but couldn’t talk to anyone.
(Bev was great by the way. She was an English teacher and I can’t type ‘necessary’ without thinking of her tip: not every child experiences sloppy shits after rhubarb yoghurt. Year 9 loved that.)
What did people around you say about it?
I started coming out to people around me gradually. I realised I was gay during the first lockdown in 2020, and spent most of that time alone, not discussing it with anyone at all. I had a lot of time to think about it and to think back over my past relationships and feelings, and get to know what was going on inside me.
Then perhaps that autumn, when we were back at work in person, I came out to a work friend first. He was quite nonchalant about the whole thing, said he wasn’t surprised, that it made sense, that it didn’t change anything.
Then I came out to a few other colleagues, who’ve been supportive. Many just said ‘oh right, that’s fine’ and have treated me exactly the same. A couple had questions (didn’t you know? What made you realise? What are you going to do about it?). One told me that she was a lesbian when she was a teenager too, lol. One colleague, a gay man, looked incredibly confused and when I asked what was wrong said, ‘But aren’t you out already? I thought we always knew you were a lesbian!’ I said he could have told me, to which he said he assumed I already knew! I never did find out why he assumed I was gay.
I haven’t come out to my parents yet – I’ve no doubt they’d be fine with it, but it seems a bit academic when I’m not dating anyone or anything. I would tell them if I was seeing someone, and I’m sure they’d be fine, but right now it seems easier not to, as they’d just ask loads of questions and wonder why I’ve suddenly decided to start telling them things – we don’t really share emotions in our family.
What I hadn’t expected, even though I’d read about it, was the thing about coming out being a repeated, constant thing.
I came out to another woman on my course the other day during a lunch break. We’d been discussing relationships in class, and she started talking about ex boyfriends, and it felt as though I was hiding something by not saying it, so I told her. She was lovely about it – interested but not nosy, supportive and non-judgemental. I’m sure at some stage I’ll come out to other people on my course, and other colleagues and friends, and people round me.
What do you think was harder because of when you did it?
I haven’t got a bloody clue what I’m doing!
I feel 14 again in that I need to discover who I am, what I like, what I don’t like, how I go about meeting someone and starting a relationship. Navigating all that complicated stuff which most people have got figured out by my age. And although I’ve had relationships with men, I’ve never had one with a woman so I feel like a complete beginner again.
I feel like I’m not a ‘proper’ lesbian because I have no experience, and I’m conscious that some women in the dating world out there will think I’m just experimenting or that I don’t know what I want, or that I’m not serious. I was told that when I first tried dating apps.
What do you think was easier?
I think it helped that my work and my counselling qualifications mean that I’ve spent a lot of time analysing myself and working through feelings and emotions. The world is much more accepting and inclusive now than it was when I was a teenager too.
Have you changed anything how you present yourself to the world?
Definitely. I felt for a long time before realising I was gay, that I was boring and dull and I think I unconsciously wanted to hide away in the background. I wore a lot of sensible ordinary dull clothes, lots of grey and black and more grey. I always admired the look of, and was drawn to women who dressed a bit alternatively though, especially things that are seen as a bit stereotypically gay, like dungarees and Docs. I also really liked bright colours, crazy patterns, clothes with dinosaurs on, that sort of thing, but would absolutely not have worn them.
When I started coming out to myself, during the first lockdown, i spent a lot of time on reddit, reading various lesbian groups, and there were always threads about women wanting to look more gay to other women round them. I definitely identified with that, and wanted to dress both the way I wanted and in a way that meant other lesbians might be able to tell. I already wear Docs all the time (I have stupid feet) but I started looking for clothes that made me look less straight.
I don't have a clue what I'm doing there either, but I do feel more like me than I did. I know, logically, that whatever clothes I wear as a gay woman, are automatically 'gay clothes' but I find myself looking at things in shops and asking myself if a bonkers lesbian can wear it (they get a yes, like my new shirt covered in multicoloured owls) or whether it's something that boring old me would wear (I put them back).
It is helping me start to feel more like myself, but I feel as though it's early days still.
If you could have your time again, would you do anything differently?
It’s really nice to fantasise about coming out as a teenager into a lovely, inclusive, accepting society, and not wasting my time on stupid relationships that made me unhappy.
But I think that teenage/young adult relationships often DO make you unhappy anyway, regardless of what gender you’re with. It’s part of learning and discovering who you are and what you want and what makes you happy. The bad relationships I had taught me things, things I needed to learn and that made me who I am now. I didn’t hate every minute of them, there were good bits there too!
And then the world I was in at 14 or 17 or whenever wasn’t like today’s world.
I do see today’s teenagers struggling, but also being able to come out as gay or bi or lesbian or poly or asexual or whatever, and it being something they can see as possible. I see schools making efforts to be inclusive and supportive.
I have vivid memories of being in year 10, back in… 1987? and one Monday morning, one of the lads was sitting on his own instead of with his usual friends, and almost everyone was whispering and sniggering. A rumour went round very quickly that he’d been at a party on Saturday and had had a drink and tried to kiss ONE OF THE OTHER BOYS!
He was ostracized by most of the class very quickly, and was loudly called all sorts of nasty things, and spent much of the morning crying. I remember the physics teacher telling him to stop crying like a girl and to grow up, and ignoring the name calling completely.
I remember that my friend Rachel and I got him to sit with us and we looked after him that day, but we didn’t talk about any of it, just tried to be nice to him. He didn’t come back to school after that day, and we never saw him again – we heard he’d transferred to another school. I sometimes wonder where he is now.
It's nice to look back with hindsight and think that I could have recognised myself much earlier, but ultimately, I made the best decisions I could at the time with the knowledge and circumstances that I had. The past is what it is, I can’t change it, and thinking that way is a waste of energy.
If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?
I doubt very much whether my younger self would listen! She knew best and wanted to make her own decisions without stupid old people interfering. I’d let her crack on and work it out for herself. But I might tell her to keep an eye out for Bev.