One of the biggest regrets of my life is that I never sat down with my mother and told her that I am gay. I chose, instead, the easy option of writing to her and telling her that I was a homosexual.
Facing Mum for the first time after writing that letter, I felt very nervous as I travelled to her home. I hesitated several times before walking up to the front door, ringing the doorbell, and announcing my arrival.
What a shock I got when she came towards me with open arms and, as she gave me one of her wonderful hugs, heard her whisper, “I always knew, I don’t know why it took you so long to tell me.”
Not all my family was like mum, though. Some told me they were having difficulty accepting what I was because it wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to men in the area we came from. Hurtful words, but I already knew that the best thing I could do was to keep away from those who were upset by the life I was given, and let them live their lives as they wanted.
Over the years, I regained contact with some of those family members and, thankfully, have the changing face of society to thank for bringing us back together.
The fact that, in the past, there had been a few other men in the family who had never married never seemed to raise any suspicions that the family included gay people. It may have been discussed, but never while I was in the room.
I don’t know if any of those men ever ‘came out.’ Probably not, but it must have been tough for those who were gay when they lived. This made me more determined to live my life as I wanted and not as others expected me to.
Moving to live and work in London in 1986 was one of the most important decisions I’ve ever made. Although the city acted like a wall that seemed to shield gay people, I was still struggling to ‘come out.’
It was a strange situation because the first two jobs I took in London were in industries where other openly gay people worked.
When I took my next job, which would last 23 years, it took me six years to come out, and that was only when I heard the words “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” Of course, nobody cared that I was gay, yet for all those years I had been terrified of what some of my work colleagues would think about me had I ‘come out’ of the closet.
Fast forward to today, and being gay is widely accepted by much of society. Or is it?
When we moved to our current home in South Wales, both my partner and I felt a little hesitant about whether people would accept us. There are fewer residents here than in the area where we had lived for over 30 years. We were returning to that place where I’d been told that ‘being gay didn’t happen.’ We could not have been more wrong!
People have been so welcoming, and we’re as much a part of the community as anyone else. Strange, though, is that every now and again, when I meet somebody for the first time and am asked who the other guy who walks our dogs is, I find myself hesitating before saying, “He’s my partner.”
Maybe some of the scars from our past never heal?
All photos in this post belong to me, Hugh W. Roberts
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