Our Life Stories – Page 2 – London Irish LGBT Network

Yvonne’s Story: Finding The Gold At The End of My Rainbow

For Pride month, we asked some of our members if they would like to write their story and tell us of their ‘Pride’. If you would like to get involved email: londonirishlgbtnetwork@gmail.com

Today, Yvonne tells her story

Finding The Gold At The End of My Rainbow

By Yvonne Devine

My story is the opposite of many…..I emigrated to London from Ireland in my 40s. I envied LGBTQ people who seemed to have left in their 20s and ended up in strong partnerships. I chose college and working and studying my way around Ireland (as well as other travel) resulting in me realising my feelings at 26 and not declaring them til 29 due to adverse conditions in my workplace of homophobic bullying by a Supervisor. I found out years later there was an Equality Tribunal that LGBTQ people could contact to complain.

I had already endured years of loneliness and isolation which led to low self-esteem and lack of confidence and had developed a coping mechanism of alcohol misuse. At least I hadn’t thrown myself in the river I thought, like the stories I heard on a frequent basis……but I sometimes wondered what would be my future.

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Our Life Stories

Bernárd’s Story: From Ennis to New York To London Pride 2021

For Pride month, we asked some of our members if they would like to tell their story and why they are proud. If you would like to contribute, please email londonirishlgbtnetwork@gmail.com

Here’s another story for you but first, grab yourself a cuppa!

From Ennis to New York To London Pride 2021

By Bernárd Lynch

After over forty years of activism in the LGBTQI+ community I look back and see that as a gay man the trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters because he must encounter the people who see his secrecy before anything else. They drag his secrets out of him with often dire consequences. The aim of the dreamer, after all, is to go on dreaming and not to be molested by the world. But the aims of life are antithetical to those of the dreamer, and the teeth of the world are sharp.

At school in Ennis C.B.S. the boy I was best pals with I fell in love with. He may have loved me as his pal, but I was in love with him. And although I didn’t know it at the time, I felt it with every bone in the soul of my body. This was the prevenient and perineal truth of my tortured adolescence.

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Our Life Stories

Hannah’s Story: Life would Be Boring If We Were All The Same…

For Pride month, we asked some of our members if they would like to tell their story and why they are proud. If you would like to contribute, please email londonirishlgbtnetwork@gmail.com

Here’s another of these stories but first, grab yourself a cuppa.

Life would Be Boring If We Were All The Same…

by Hannah Doran

I always knew I was different. And I thought I knew why. None of my friends had Irish blood, none of them were dragged off to church on a Sunday, nor were they aware of the mythical lands that are the County Mayo. I had somehow escaped being sent to the local Catholic schools. That’s why I knew I was different, oh and being the product of an act of parliament but that’s another story. And I conned myself into believing that because that was the easy way out even through it didn’t address the simple fact that I wanted to be a girl.

My childhood at times was quite lonely, yes I had friends but few of them were really close. I struggled to fit in at times simply because I didn’t fit in. I knew that I would have been much happier French skipping with the girls instead of half-heartedly chasing a football around at Junior school. And then there was that small question of why I was on the only ‘boy’ who didn’t mind wearing a dress in the school play. Oh and that other question that kept coming up…”Why couldn’t I have just been born a girl?”

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