International Day of Persons with Disabilities: It’s about the whole me

Increasingly awareness of intersectionality is growing and quite right too. I’m not blind Mon, Weds and Fris and then gay the rest of the time or vice versa. Being blind and being gay are both important and intertwined aspects of my identity. Now I freely accept that some of what I share is likely to have been the same if I were straight and for any of my blind network, I’d love to hear your thoughts.?

I felt very confused about whether I was gay or not as a teenager. My first experience with a guy was not something I wanted or understood and I tried to tell myself it was because I couldn’t see girls at school and it would all be fine when I finally got myself a girlfriend. LGBTQ+ stuff wasn’t positively taught or referred to growing up and I was only vaguely aware of one adult who had come out as gay.

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Again I’ll be skirting over a lot of my coming out journey, but friends and then the visibility and acceptance at Lloyds of LGBTQ+ people really helped me reach self-acceptance.

Telling my parents was, like for many, a really daunting thing to do. Young people who are living at home are often worried of the reaction and being kicked out. By the time I told Mum and Dad, I was financially independent, but at the time I still relied on them to help manage my banking, shopping deliveries and the like. Really important things to me being able to live. Now I know I’d have been fine because I do all these things, but where I was in my independence journey then it was a concern. It went fine btw, but was super stressful, especially telling Dad.

Then there was meeting people and dating. Even if you’re not gay, I’m sure you’ve heard gay dating is not a nice place. My first challenge was finding an accessible website/app and none are brilliant. Part of this is other users, who don’t write a bio and just rely on pictures.?

I was upfront about being blind, although apparently asking for a description of what they look like, is asking far to much for many. Some just didn’t get it and I still had a photo sent, really! Having conversations with multiple people, using difficult sites could be hard and actually I found impacted my wellbeing from both the negative dating culture perspective as well as exacerbating headaches and migraines, on top of my job.??

Finally meeting people was difficult, this had to be safe but also they’d have to come to my local area as I found travelling to them difficult and wouldn’t want to do so in an unfamiliar place either. I’m so pleased that I met my boyfriend Rhys, who had a great bio and we did voice messages on Whatsapp soon after connecting. He travelled to Bristol to see me 6 weeks in and it’s gone from there and hence my regular visits down to Carmarthenshire.

These aspects of my life are intertwined and whilst there has been challenges, it all combines to make me who I am today.

#IPDP #Disability #DisabilityInclusion #InclusionMatters #InclusionIsForEverybody #LGBTQ #Pride #Stonewall

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