“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight for freedom, which landed in the valley of change.” – Shannon L. Adler

It’s been so long since I wrote anything for this blog – well, since I wrote anything I was okay with posting! To be honest, I’ve mostly been busy throwing myself into life…as much as I can in these times, anyway.

These last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing so much reflecting. I realised it’s been exactly one year since I changed my life, and it has been such a defining year for me. I’ve been looking back and thinking about the challenges the past year has presented, as well as the progress I’ve made, among other things. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this day – would it be painful, or would I feel celebratory? It’s been a bit of a mixture of emotions, simply because I’ve experienced both extremes at various points.

I’ll start with the negatives, and the challenges I’ve encountered. In all honesty, this past year was one that I wasn’t sure I’d make it through. I understand that this probably sounds extreme, but at that time I couldn’t fully comprehend and process what was actually going on in my life. I understood that I was carrying a lot of pain, and had been struggling with it all for some time, but I didn’t understand why I was doing a lot of the things I was doing, and I couldn’t fully grasp why I had felt so depressed. I just knew I couldn’t handle it anymore, and I wanted it to end. I felt that not only was there a chance I was wrecking my life, but I was disrupting other lives too, and that was the main reason I wasn’t sure I’d come through all of this. I could more or less deal with causing myself problems, but not others I cared about. This all hit me a few weeks after I left my ex – I couldn’t get the anxiety out of my head, that all I had achieved was ruining my life, and sucked others into a big drama.

The other thing I struggled with the most, was visualising what the rest of my life was going to turn out like. I thought I’d see an open road, filled with potential and opportunity, that would carry me wherever I wanted to go. Instead, I saw nothingness, a void. To spend so long feeling as though the walls were closing in on me, to then having those walls suddenly removed, was very jarring for me, and I struggled to adjust to that, for a long time. If I’m being totally honest, I do still find having a tonne of choices overwhelming at times. I feel like this is probably a reason why I try to structure and plan things so much, but I hope as time continues to pass, I’ll feel less of a need to validate the feeling of having control of my life.

As something of an addition to my last point about seeing the future as a bunch of nothingness, I had a huge feeling of hopelessness hanging over me for the first few months. I feel like to some people looking from the outside in, last year could read as a big, empowering, bold moment. The reality was very far from that. I had hoped it would be an awesome feeling of relief and freedom, but it all came from a place of pure fear and desperation. I was terrified – both that I had done the wrong thing, and that I’d go back, despite my instincts telling me to run and not look back. I feel like the first time I acknowledged this feeling, I felt a lot of shame in it, but I think it’s just as important to acknowledge it as well as the other feelings. Often, the reality of a situation doesn’t match our expectations, but that’s when we can really learn a lot about ourselves – what we end up making of the reality, whether or not we adapt.

Now, onto some more positive points! The most obvious, of course, is how much happier and carefree I am these days. I am so proud to say I am living life for myself now, rather than on anybody else’s terms. These days if I choose to do something, it’s because I genuinely want to do it. Of course, my need to be a people pleaser hasn’t fully gone away, and it probably never will, but it is something I am working on. I’m happy with my progress, and seeing how far I have come has been a real confidence boost for me. I do attribute a lot of this progress to the first lockdown, because it forced me to confront everything I was trying to ignore, and hide away from myself. I noticed over the summer that I was really starting to feel more “me” and so much lighter and happier. Yes, I do still have my bad days, but that’s just part of being human! I’m more resilient in dealing with these tougher days, and if anything, it just makes me appreciate the good times even more.

I do think that my favourite thing is that I’ve realised I’m letting myself dream again, without getting caught up in limitations or roadblocks. The full realisation of this only came fairly recently, thanks to my semi-spontaneous purchase of a planner. It had a section for writing down your dreams, for your life in general, and at first I really struggled to think of what to write. It makes me so happy whenever I think of one to add to the list, whether it’s something small and fairly trivial, or a big aspiration I had previously talked myself out of, or allowed myself to be talked out of it. Now I feel like I have a really good support circle which I appreciate so much, I’m finally letting myself think about those aspirations again, this time with the view of turning them into a reality.

I’m so proud of myself for taking my first steps towards achieving one of the biggest items on my list, which is to study for a degree with the Open University. I feel like it’ll feel pretty scary once it starts getting close to the course starting, because I haven’t been in education since I did my A Levels, but I’m finally in a place where I feel like I can handle it, and balance studying and working. In short, I actually believe in myself! While it is amazing that I have so many good people in my corner on this, it feels even better to finally be on my own team, instead of attacking myself with ‘what if’s. I’m amazed that I’ve been able to transform that previous future nothingness into something to aim for, and I am so excited for the rest of my life!

The biggest challenge for me over the last year has definitely been expressing my feelings, and was one of the main reasons I set up this blog. For years, I have struggled to acknowledge, articulate and express my feelings and emotions in a constructive manner. So I gave myself a space where I could try to find the right words, without that fear of judgement or being misunderstood. I do tend to describe myself as being allergic to talking about feelings, to a degree, and I do definitely feel scared of being vulnerable. This past year has helped me understand that my fear if vulnerability runs deeper than I initially thought…or maybe I had just been in denial about that, too. Either way, this blog is my first step towards tackling the issue, and despite my hesitation, it’s something I am going to continue working on in 2021. I would like to say that I have made a bit of progress here, but I’m not sure if it’s just wishful thinking on my part! So I guess I’ll say if you’re reading this, and you’ve managed to get conversation about feelings, out of me, then congratulations!

The second biggest challenge has been altering my perception of myself. For the longest time, I blamed myself for what I was going through, and even now, I assign myself blame. As a result, at the time, I did end up feeling as though I deserved what was happening, and that I deserved to be treated the way I had been. I had a very real fear that when I felt ready to get back out there, that I would continue to make similar choices, and perpetuate the cycle. Obviously, I didn’t want that to happen, so something had to change. I had to make myself believe that I deserve goodness, which is easier said than done. I’m still reminding myself – there are times I find myself surprised at a thoughtful gesture, and I tell myself that basic human decency shouldn’t be a surprise. I want decency and kindness to just be the standard in all of my relationships – platonic, romantic, familial – so I need to stop being surprised by it, and accept it as a norm. This is still a work in progress, but my approach towards it is to treat myself the same way I would treat a friend. I’d tell my friends that they deserve nothing but the best, so why shouldn’t I tell myself the same?

To end this, today has been more important to me than I initially thought, and it’s been so good for me to take note of how much I have grown and developed. Not only am I so proud to still be plodding along through life, I’m so pleased at how I have exceeded my expectations. I thought I’d still be hurting and struggling through my days, but I’m so much lighter, and my heart is full! I don’t feel like something is missing from my life. I actually feel that I am enough. Somewhere along the way, I’ve let go of the barrage of worries that used to take up my attention: am I smart enough; funny enough; good enough? There’s a lot of relief that comes with realising that I’m so much more accepting of myself now.

As I said earlier in this post, I am so excited for what’s coming up next for me! I have so much to be excited for, and I’m ready for whatever is in the next chapter of my life. I’d also like to thank everybody who’s been there for me and supported me, because you’ve helped me get to where I am today. You’ve helped me become a better version of myself, the person I was looking for, and wanting to be. I honestly don’t know where I would be, without having my friends and family behind me. So again – thank you! And thank you if you’ve read this post, and made it this far!

“A great beginning is sometimes at the point of what you thought would be the end of everything.” – Dodinsky

After a ridiculously long time, last week I finally put on my big girl pants, bit the bullet and got my first tattoo! (And of course I’m going to post about it!) I think I’d thought since I was a kid that I would end up getting a tattoo at some point, mainly because back then I thought it would look cool, above anything, but I’d been putting it off for various reasons. Firstly, the permanence aspect always used to scare me off. Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows I can be terribly indecisive. I’d worry that even if I locked down a tattoo design that I loved, I’d end up having some kind of regret at some point in my life. That wasn’t the only thing that put me off – I was worried it would hurt too much, or that the tattoo itself wouldn’t live up to my expectations. Most of all though, I wanted my tattoo – especially it being my first one – to have a lot of meaning to me. That way, I’d be less likely to go off it later in life, because I’d look at it and remember exactly what it means to me, and what it meant to me, in the moment.

And with that opening spiel finished, I’ll share with you the whole story, and the meanings behind my tattoo, and why it was important to me.

In all honesty, I’d been seriously considering tattoo ideas for about two years – I told you I was indecisive! The butterfly wasn’t actually my original choice. I was going to go with a feather, to symbolise my journey. Of course, I was in a completely different place then, but I recognised that I was changing, even back then, slowly but surely. I was branching out, figuring out my identity a little bit more. Although the end result is completely different compared to my initial idea, it’s nice that the idea of change is still a big part of my tattoo. It’s great for me, that I can look at my tattoo and see a positive symbol of everything I’ve gone through, in particular the last couple of years. Rather than dwell on the pain and the negative side of it all, I can celebrate the person I am now, and how all of this has made me a stronger, more confident woman.

I chose the butterfly because I wanted something that shows how I’ve embraced my femininity compared to in the past, when I would reject anything seen as feminine and girly. I used to love being “one of the guys” when I was younger, which used to absolutely mortify my mum at times. Gradually though, over the last few years I’ve become more feminine, which I’m sure she will be pleased to read! The butterfly also felt more “me” than the feather, as time had passed, and I had found myself more as a person. The idea of having something with wings really spoke to me, because it really fits with how I’ve been feeling lately. I’m free to just live my life and be me. I also wanted the Celtic style because I’ve always thought it looks pretty cool, and timeless, and again, I just felt it fit me better than a regular butterfly.

The colours were a happy accident. In the original picture I found online, and sent across to my artist, the butterfly was just purple, which I was pretty happy with. The colour was less important to me than the rest of it. When the time came, however, my artist suggested mixing it up a little by adding in some pink at the ends, to put his own spin on it and make it my own. He came back with a blue as well, to complement the purple, and I realised my tattoo was going to have the bi pride colours. In one way, I realised it would just add another layer to this, but on the other hand I wasn’t sure if I would want to have a part of my identity on my body like that. And then I realised that not a lot of people would see those colours the way I saw them, so it wasn’t a big deal. It just looks good aesthetically, and it makes it more interesting than just having it all as one colour. The colours definitely made me love the tattoo more than I did already.

The whole process of getting it done was surprisingly easy. The pain wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Then again, it’s always hard to judge when you have nothing to compare it to. There’s no benchmark, so you don’t really know how it will be until you get it done. It felt surprisingly cathartic in a way, too. I was literally turning the pain into a symbol of the next chapter of my life, and I felt amazing for it, when it was all done. I was reaffirming to myself that I am who I am, and I’m free to go and be the person I always wanted to be, the person I knew I was. It’s a symbol of me accepting myself for being me, not wanting to regret things that happened in the past, and instead, continuing to grow. It’s a symbol of everything I’ve learned in the past few years, about myself, and life in general. It’s a reminder that I deserve that acceptance and permission to be happy, not just from others, but myself. It’s a symbol of the healing and the transformation I’ve gone through in the last few months, and how proud I am of myself, for taking the good that I can, and for giving myself something I can take with me throughout the rest of my life. It’s a reminder that you can’t erase all the bad stuff that happened in life, but you can draw strength from those experiences, and apply those lessons in your future. Simply, it’s a celebration of how much brighter my life is now, and the changes I made to get to where I am today.

Thank you for reading!

“In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.” – Tom Bodett

I’ve not been so active on here, and I apologise for not being able to get as much stuff out as I would have liked. My brain has either been too full or too empty of thoughts, and it has been so frustrating! I have a few different ideas in my drafts, that I just haven’t been able to gather up all the right words for, so I’m going to do something different, in the hopes that I can formulate a whole post out of it.

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that 2020 hasn’t turned out to be the year I thought, and hoped, it would be. Like so many others, I had hopes for this year, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted what 2020 has brought us so far. But to try and put a positive spin on things, lockdown has actually been a really good time to reflect on the last few months, and think about what I can take away from what the year has thrown at me so far.

It’s totally fine to hit the pause button sometimes.

For me, lockdown actually came at the perfect time. I had been constantly busy with working full time, and cramming so much wrestling stuff into my everyday schedule, for so long. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved being busy. I always felt as though keeping myself occupied and being productive with something, anything, was better than doing nothing. In my mind, to do nothing would be wasting my time, wasting my days, so I kept myself busy most days.

But I knew it was a distraction, and I knew that underneath the surface I was struggling, and had been for a while. Typing this out now, I feel like I’ve deceived people, but the person I was really deceiving, was myself. I didn’t want to confront myself, and the state my life was in. Lockdown took the choice away from me, because suddenly, life had slowed down, and I had all this free time. I had time to think, time to process everything I’ve had going on, and to heal. It was so hard at first, to deal with everything I had spinning around in my head, but I know that having the time to finally sift through it all, has done me the world of good. I feel so much better than I did six months ago – I feel more at ease, and like my day to day life doesn’t feel as much of a struggle as it did at times.

You’ll never be ready – you have to jump, anyway.

Everything you really want to do is scary, for a number of reasons. That’s just the way life works. If it didn’t scare us, we’d all be off pursuing all the things we want in life, without a second thought. Whether it’s applying for that dream job, moving house, or whatever the current dream is, we never feel ready to take that step. What does “feeling ready” even feel like? Is there really a day where you wake up and decide you’re ready? I know I struggle to know what a scenario is going to be like until it actually happens, so I don’t know if this is a universal feeling or if it just applies to me.

Case in point, I wasn’t “ready” to leave my ex, and begin to rebuild myself. I wasn’t “ready” to dredge up a load of memories I was deliberately burying from myself. I wasn’t “ready” to confront myself with everything, simply put. I had to make that leap, armed only with my instincts, and blindly trust that I was doing the right thing for myself. I know now that I was right, and that I can handle the bumps in the road that come with life, but at the time I seriously doubted myself. Taking the “feel the fear and do it anyway” philosophy is a valuable lesson, and one that I know will come in handy time and time again.

I can embrace the real me.

Okay, so without context this could sound like I’ve been super fake this whole time, and that isn’t what I mean! Lockdown has given me time to think about what’s important to me. Something that’s been topping that list is just being me, and being true to myself. I’ve noticed recently how I’m not carrying around that ball of anxiety in my chest so much anymore, since I haven’t felt as though I have to repress certain aspects of my personality, or who I am. I’m free to be myself, and not have to apologise for it, and the relief feels amazing.

As part of being myself, I’ve been trying to embrace the things I used to wish I could change, like the way I look. It’s such a stupid minor thing in comparison to some of the other stuff I’ve written about before, but my self esteem hasn’t been great over the years, and sometimes hangups can really get us all down. The main one for me is my natural curls. I used to straighten my hair nearly every day, because I used to just feel like my natural hair was terrible, and a frizzy mess. In reality, it’s not as bad as that, and now I go with my natural hair more often than not. I’m growing to love myself as I am, curly hair and all! I’ve also been wearing makeup less often, during lockdown. Rather than feeling compelled to put it on most days, to compensate for feeling crappy, it’s now saved for days where I feel like it.

Knowing your worth isn’t a bad thing.

I’ve always struggled with selfishness. As kids, we have it drummed into us that being selfish is inherently bad. I’ve always tried to avoid being a selfish person, and at times that has been to my own detriment. I’ve struggled to recognise my own worth, for this reason. It took me way too long to realise that thinking of yourself first isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it’s good to look out for and care for others, but we need to show ourselves some of that same care. We need to show ourselves the same kindness we would show our friends.

I realised this when a friend said to me, “you deserve better.” I wanted to agree, but wasn’t sure if I should, because I didn’t know how it would be perceived. Would I be standing up for myself, or was I just entitled? After a little bit of internal debate, I told myself I was being a bit ridiculous. If the situation was reversed, I would have no problem telling my friend they deserved better, so why couldn’t I say the same thing to myself? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with knowing where your lines are drawn, and knowing what you will or won’t expect from someone else. I think I’ll use the, “would I say this to a friend?” scenario as my personal litmus test from now on!

I’m sure there are lots of other things I’ve learned from the wild ride that has been 2020 so far, but I feel like I could be stuck writing this forever if I keep going! What lessons have you taken away from this year? Let me know!

“Live your life, sing your song. Not full of expectations. Not for the ovations. But for the joy of it.” – Rasheed Ogunlaru

I’m my most honest self on this blog, and it’s possibly the most honest statement of all, to say I never thought I’d post anything like this. However, I’m grateful that I have a really great support network, and positive influences in my life, that made me feel comfortable with openly being my true self.

I took a bit of a scary step recently, and used a Twitter trend to come out as bisexual. It’s a pretty simple trend – you post a selfie, along with the flag/s you identify with. It wasn’t something I had necessarily planned on doing, because I wasn’t sure how “ready” I felt. I’m not convinced I would have ever felt super confident in coming out, to be honest. Even though at the time, I was fairly sure people in my life would be supportive, it’s still a daunting prospect, and a big step.

While it’s all still pretty fresh, I thought I’d share my journey in coming to terms with my sexuality, accepting the label, and finally coming out.

I’d known for quite a while that I wasn’t 100% straight, although I only fully came to terms with that a month or two ago. It’s been a pretty long process, and on reflection, I mainly think it’s down to not having many, if any, bi-positive people in my life. I’ve often heard comments like, “Bi people are greedy,” or, “Bi people will just sleep with anybody.” As a teenager, it can be difficult enough to figure out who and what you are, without adding another layer of confusion to the mix.

My approach was my trusty tactic of denial, because I felt pretty ashamed at first, as though it were wrong. I would tell myself there was no way I was crushing on a girl – I just really wanted to be friends with her, or I wanted to be like her because she was pretty. Sometimes it was easy to explain away my feelings like this, because my attraction to girls feels quite different from my attraction to guys. Plus, I have more of a preference towards guys anyway, so passing as straight wasn’t as much of a challenge as it may have been to others in a similar situation to me.

One of the main barriers in my path to self-acceptance was my cliquey classmates at school. Going to school in the 2000s, the go-to insult was ‘gay’. Obviously, this was always said as though being gay would be the worst thing in the world. I remember at one point, one of my teachers tried addressing this, by saying something like 10% of people are gay. Statistically, this would equate to three people in the class, she said, in an attempt to get people to think about how it could affect others. Of course, that didn’t happen, and instead, the popular girls decided to turn that into a game of trying to guess which three people in the class were gay. And of course, seeing as I was not at all popular, those girls were quick to label my best friend and I as gay, which soon spread around, and made my time at school miserable.

The other big barrier was the fear of those close to me, not accepting me. I was brought up as a Christian, so having the realisation that I fell under the LGBT+ umbrella, was terrifying to me. Although I felt close to my mum as a teenager, I couldn’t share this with her, for fear of how she would react. I remember previously, she had said she would accept me, or my siblings, if any of us turned out to be gay, or whatever, but I found it hard to trust that fully. I felt it was an easy thing to say when it was purely hypothetical, but when it came to a real life situation, the reaction may be different. It was easier to continue lying to myself, than it was to risk upsetting the apple cart.

But then, I met someone, and got into a serious relationship, with him. Obviously I didn’t have plans to be with anyone else, so I told myself it didn’t matter anymore. I had found the person I wanted to be with, so it did feel somewhat irrelevant, all of a sudden. Or maybe that’s just what I told myself. Either way, again, it was just easier keeping it to myself, hiding that part of me.

Fast forward ten years – we’ve separated, and I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching. It’s a whole other blog post, but things with my ex were pretty toxic for some time. Since the split, I’d been chatting a lot about how I’m free to live my best life, and just be my true self. Deep down, I knew I was still hiding that part of myself. I’d grown so used to the fear of rejection and ridicule, that I’d actually been rejecting myself all this time. It was time for me to call myself out on my hypocrisy – how could I expect myself to be truly happy if I was hiding a part of my identity?

The main thing I did was read. I read about bi-erasure, which really helped me understand everything better. I read about other peoples’ experiences with their sexuality, and how they came to terms with it. I retook a test on the Kinsey Scale, and got a 2. Instead of majorly freaking out, I felt good about it, because I knew it was accurate. I know a lot of people don’t like the Kinsey Scale, but it helped reassure me. It helped me see that it isn’t a black and white issue, and it definitely isn’t a 50/50 deal. For some reason, having the data behind it all, helped. It also helped me realise that there are other people out there like me. Don’t get me wrong, I still freaked out a little bit, but I was able to tell myself that it was okay, that it wasn’t a shameful thing. For the first time, the label felt more comfortable, whereas before I often felt I was trying to place myself into the wrong box. Looking back, I was definitely afraid of the idea of being out, acting on a same-sex attraction, and being in a same-sex relationship.

At this point, I still wasn’t ready to be out, and I didn’t really expect that I would be. I thought to myself, it would be nice to do something for Pride month, but it felt like it was too soon, and I wasn’t sure how I would feel when June rolled around. But I was done hiding, so I compromised with myself. I bought a beaded bracelet with the bi pride colours, as a little present for myself, and I suppose, as a subtle hint. If somebody saw it and put two and two together, I wouldn’t have been mad. It has only been in the last week or so, that I continued dropping clues on my Twitter, by adding a frame on my profile picture, and putting the rainbow flag in my display name. I was working up to becoming ready to come out, but at the same time, I didn’t want to just randomly message my close family and friends about it, because it doesn’t exactly come up in conversation.

I guess hopping on a Twitter bandwagon was actually the most “me” way of coming out, actually. The decision to post the tweet was semi-spontaneous. I’d seen other friends doing it, and I was happy for them, but I wished I could be as brave as they were, and comfortable enough to do that. So I bit the bullet, and put out the tweet before I could talk myself out of it. I sent it late at night, so I could go to sleep, and decide in the morning if I wanted to leave it up, or delete it. I woke up to a couple of nice messages about it, but that was about it, thankfully. I think I was mainly worried about someone close to me reacting negatively, or having someone ask me a bunch of questions I wasn’t ready for.

I’m lucky that nobody so far has really been bothered, and that my friends are happy that I feel able to be my whole self. I know not everybody is as fortunate as I am in this regard, which feels crazy to me, considering all the steps forward we’ve taken, over the generations. I can only hope that this ceases to be the case, and that others’ sexuality won’t be such a big deal to people. I guess my main point here, simply, is this: don’t be a dick. Just let people be true to themselves and live their lives.