CALLUM SKEFFINGTON

SOMETIMES I WONDER WHAT MY life would be like if I were straight. Would I be the same person? Well, obviously not! I wouldn’t be attracted to

guys for a start.

But maybe I would be settled down right now, with a wife and a mortgage and a kid on the way. I would be working a mundane nine to five job, dreaming of pints at the weekend with my mates and putting up the new Live, Laugh, Love sign for the Mrs. I’d go on holiday once a year, and I’d catch up with my school friends every six months and we’d talk about house prices, and I’d watch football…

Okay so, under no sexuailty related circumstances would I have ever been the type of person who watched, played or enjoyed football. And it’s only because of COVID that I haven’t been outside of Northern Ireland in a while. I don’t have a mortgage right now, and the fact that same sex marriage has been legal for just over a year has had little to do with the fact that I am unmarried and childless. I do actually work a nine to five (thirty) job, but I can’t drink beer because it makes me feel bloated, and I usually do see my friends a lot more often than every six months (again, aside from over this past year). My point being, the path my life has taken has - and will be - mostly unaffected by my sexuality; besides enjoying drag race and a preference for nights out in gay clubs.

Who I am as a person is defined by a vast array of things: interests, hobbies, friends, family, upbringing, dislikes, habits, fandoms, jobs, education, experiences, pets. Everything! Who I am attracted to is one minor part of me, but to the world (or at least enough of the people in it) this is the defining factor of my existence. A. Gay. Man.

It is the thing that can immediately determine whether or not a person will associate themselves with me, or if a bakery will bake me a cake, or if a person will believe their rights to be threatened by governments allowing me (some) of those rights too, or if a company will hire me, for the sake of diversity, or for the lack thereof.

Which seems entirely unfair of course, because out of all the things I have been able to control in my life, my sexuality is not one of them.

I realised that I was gay at a relatively young age. In my teenage years, I had a lot of insecurities, mostly about where I fit into a society that was telling me that my existence was a sin, something to be ashamed of, something that would ruin my life if I were to express or act upon it. So I did everything possible to be perceived as - and convince myself that I was - normal, i.e. straight.

To be honest, it probably didn’t work all that well, and it was definitely a waste of my time and energy. The transition into being out and proud was by no means a quick process, and anyone reading this will know that ‘coming out’ isn’t just a once in a lifetime experience. It is something you do every time you meet someone new, which can be both nerve wracking and exhausting. Whether it be a mannerism that gives away your sexuality, or explictly stating that you are not heterosexual, the journey is never ending. Thankfully, however, somewhere along the line, you stop caring about how people will react. Not to be cliché, but it does get easier.

It took me a long time to break down the barriers I had built up in my mind, and some days, for whatever reason, those walls still have the potential to hold me back. But I can’t be bothered pretending to be what people want or think I should be; I have worked too hard to embrace myself for who I am to allow others the opportunity to live rent free in my mind.

Because I am proud of the person that I have become! I take pride in the fact that I have become someone I never imagined I could be; the person that my twelve-year-old self needed to look up to. It can be a bizarre truth to wrap your head around sometimes; our existence is a protest! Through accepting ourselves, we protest against all things deceptively deemed to be ‘normal.’ It may have taken until my mid-twenties for me to love, understand, and accept myself, which seems way too old when you see teenagers accepting themselves whilst they are still in school, but to those of a generation or two above, I am extremely lucky to have reached this point now.

Once upon a time, I believed that being straight was the key to happiness. Now I believe that authenticity is the path to true happiness.

My sexuality may be only one minor part of who I am as a person, but it is the part that I have worked the hardest to accept, and that is something that needs to be celebrated with pride.

This is an opinion piece from the columnist/contributor and not the opinion of GNI MAG / Romeo & Julian Publications Ltd.