New year's rant

My new year’s resolution isn’t your typical one. I don’t want to say I’m going to give up something, because that never works. No, my resolution involves a person, a place, and a thing.

I turn thirty-nine in two days and haven’t had the opportunity to be lucky in love…yet! In fact I was very unlucky in the sense that I was ready to come out at eighteen, but my brother pipped me to the post by mere hours. He, at fourteen, told my mom he was gay just before she was due to visit me in hospital, on the day I was going to tell her that I was too. When she sat me down in the busy café, late as usual, she had a very serious face on her, me with a kaleidoscope of butterflies in my stomach, pumped up to tell her. I genuinely thought she was going to tell me something really bad had happened, which to my life it had. She told me that my brother was gay over a mug of tea and a custard slice. I had a bite of the juicy, creamy cake in my mouth, and nearly choked. I couldn’t believe it! I had a whole speech in my head ready to express to her and was utterly disappointed when I wasn’t able to deliver it! Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for my brother, but just lost all of my confidence and swallowed hard thinking to myself, ‘I can’t tell her now!’

I went with the news, jealous as hell that my brother was going to all of the gay bars in town, me sitting at home as I hid my true identity. I sacrificed my happiness for his. When he was seventeen, me twenty-one, he met David. They ended up together for the guts of four years, moving in together not long after they met. I was wrapped with frustration. I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet someone as I was in the closet. It would have looked very suspicious if I had met him in town in the same establishment, so I ended up not availing of that opportunity.

It took fourteen years before I had the courage to show my true self again. In that time, I had pressure coming from the family to try to find that ‘someone special’, so I bit the bullet and tried going out with a man. It was torture! I knew at the first kiss with a guy that it just wasn’t for me. Well I knew before that, but tried nonetheless to make it work with Savi, my first, and only, boyfriend! In the end, knowing I was just stringing him along because of peer pressure, I let him down gently, as he wanted marriage and babies. I was a fool to let it go that far, but my mams eyes lit up every time I went out with him. I’m a people pleaser by nature, but enough was enough!

My love life lay dormant for ten years after that, but then I met Jacqui! She was my first proper girlfriend at the age of thirty-two. I dropped hint after hint with the family that I was into her. I was in hospital at the time, and, every time I was having a bad day, she would just appear an hour later! We spent all day Saturday and Sunday together, being watched closely by the nurses, having to leave the door to the bedroom open! We went out for three months, then one day, she vanished into thin air. I was ghosted! It was a really shitty thing to do on her part, and only weeks later she was plastered over Facebook with someone new. She broke my heart, something that took about two years to rectify.

I spilled the beans that I was gay to my councillor first, then a nurse, then my aunt who’s like a sister before I told mom that she had two gay kids. She was unfazed, which surprised me. My dad on the other hand was a different kettle of fish. I, his darling daughter, told him in the hospital lobby as we waited for the hall to open to play a game of bingo. The prizes were just chocolate and toiletries, but it was a nice way to spend an hour! He had only five minutes, in which he was silent for once, and then I dragged him into the bingo hall. He rang me the next day and said, ‘so, how’s my gay daughter this morning?’ It was words that sounded like heavenly bells to my ears!

He asks regularly, ‘how’s Lesbania?’ That’s how he tests the waters to see if there is anyone on the horizon in my love life! It’s something he was, and still is, surprisingly chilled about! I thought he was going to hit the roof, but he astonished me with his reaction instead!

Anyway, it took a good two years to get over Jacqui. Then I met a headbanger from Cork…Sharon. We went out, and broke up, and then reconnected somehow. Once again, I was in hospital. After a good six weeks, she came up to visit me. It was lovely but awkward at the same time. Because of covid, you could only see a friend or a loved one for 45 minutes at a time. I booked two sessions back-to-back, after all she did travel from Cork! We had a room to ourselves for the first session, then another one out in plain sight of everyone. We gradually got comfortable with each other, and if it was the other way round, the second session in the room, it would have been a much different story. We decided, together, not to put a label on us. Then she ended up getting together with her ex mere days afterwards! They ended up getting engaged but she wanted me, and her fiancée, and I wasn’t interested! Last October, they broke up! Sharon got in contact, wanting to start where we left off, but I wasn’t going there. She was the second person to break my heart! I was just over her when she wanted to rekindle our relationship, but there was no way I was going backwards.

I know that I’ve just given you all a detailed account of my heartbreak, not mentioning my resolution yet, but trust me, I’m getting there!

Three weeks ago, I was told by my councillor to put myself out there more, so I went on a dating website, meeting the most genuine, gorgeous, sweetest woman alive, Siobhan. We facetime each other on a daily basis, and, here it comes…my new year’s resolution is to meet up with her and hopefully hit it off. I’d love nothing more than to be able to call her my girlfriend!

New year’s has past, and even though she lives miles away, we rung in the new year together over facetime. Because of her work, and me after spending two weeks in Waterford, we can’t meet up until the 6^th. I didn’t bother ringing in the new year with family, I wanted to ring it in with her instead! I want our relationship to flourish, and, fingers crossed, I’ll get to spend the next few years with her in person! That’s my resolution! It’s a person, place and thing. The person, of course being Siobhan, the place being next December 31^st, and the thing being a relationship.

We both have our insecurities about ourselves, but we’re both very much on the same page as to what we want from each other. I guess my main resolution would be to be myself…my whole self! I want what I think everyone in life wants…companionship. Then a few years down the line I want marriage and a house with a couple of jack Russell terriers! She wants the same. I have goosebumps just thinking of her…so what am I going to feel when I actually meet her in person? Being only thirty-one makes me a bit of a cougar, but age is just a number. We are both mentally ready to settle down. It will definitely be a slow-paced type of thing, but that’s what I want…the thing! I don’t believe in one-night stands, and, even though she has had a life full of relationships and all of the things I missed out on, we are both in the same mindset now…together! The stars aligned when I met her, and, fingers crossed, things will stay like that!