Saying Yes to Heaven

(realising i was a lesbian after a five year relationship with a man)

I took the train from the sticks to visit my friend in London last week. We sat in the corner of a loud coffee shop with bad French decor, some kids and their parents on the table next to us, and bonded over how we still want to kill the men that we dated before we each met our girlfriends. It was nice.

We met at eighteen and twenty, Lilly and me, and it wasn’t til twenty-four and twenty-six we admitted to ourselves and each other that we were gay. Six years of sharing crushes at sleepovers and gossiping about our boyfriends. Seems so silly to look back on, knowing what we know now. Lilly is so similar to me in so many ways, I forget how parallel our lives have always been. It’s comforting to have someone who can relate to your inner monologue so easily. It’s also disturbing, in a way, to see yourself reflected back in someone so clearly.

Lilly at my old flat, January 2023

A bit of backstory about myself;

The day after my nineteenth birthday I threw a party and ended up sleeping with a man eight years older than myself. I was practically a virgin and his attention flattered me. I stayed with him for five years. Amongst numerous other reasons, I eventually broke things off after I realised I might be a lot more gay than I had initially thought, but i continued sleeping with men as (what I realised later was) a way to punish myself. The men I met after my long-term boyfriend treated me in ways I won’t go in to. But it wasn’t good, I’ll tell you that much.

Lilly came up from London to visit me in the midst of this shit show. She had not long broken things off with her ex for the same reasons I had, saw how I was coping and put her foot down. She dowloaded Hinge on my phone, helped build me a profile, and set my preference to women.

A few months later I met Ava. We spoke on the app constantly and, in true lesbian fashion, became inseparable pretty quickly. It was only after being in a relationship with a women that I realised I had never truly enjoyed sex or experienced desire before. Confirming what I should have known a long time ago, really.

No shit - I’m a lesbian.

In May of this year Ava asked me to spend my life with her, and I said yes. We are to be married next year; a vineyard in the South, early September

love letters & notes from ava

If you’re a femme lesbian who came out late because you believed the only value you held was the value a man gave you, this probably makes a whole lot of sense. But I get that staying in a long-term straight relationship when you’re gay probably doesn’t add up to some, and it’s a question I’ve brought to myself many times, so here’s a messy explanation of why it happened.

Thing is, the entire world is designed to appease the male gaze. English society steers women and girls so violently towards existing to be validated by men that you soon have it so deeply rooted in your mind you want nothing more than to gorge yourself on attention from the opposite sex. For me, this yearning desire for male validation, and the satisfaction I felt when I received it, was mistakenly believed to be the feeling of love.

The thought of never being wanted consumed me and the attention my ex gave me poured into my ego and the desirability I craved so badly. I realise now that male validation was only a condition I was made to believe I needed as a woman. I believed I should comply with what a man wants of me. And I wanted to be wanted so badly, so deep within my soul. 

It will take time to rid myself of the trauma that clings to me from believing I belonged with a man for so many years. I still carry so much anger towards myself for not realising sooner, and so much anger towards the men who kept me from my truth via manipulation and gaslighting.

But I give every heartache and anguish to the earth to be alchemised and used elsewhere. I let myself soften. I loosen my grip on it. It tumbles from my hands, out of my chest, pours from my mind.

I will not allow my anger to turn into squashing bugs on the pavement. I will cover my love in a blanket when she falls asleep, I will visit cafes with bad French decor, I will watch the leaves turn over and over again and find solace in the heaven I have been gifted in Ava. Anger is good sometimes, and often well deserved, but I will not let it consume me. And one day I will wake up and realise I haven’t thought about my past in weeks. It will become lighter. It will soften again, it will sweeten. I believe that day will come.

Sometimes, as I fall asleep, I think of the past lives I’ve had. I remember the flat above the pizza shop I shared with my ex. The oddly shaped bedroom, the limescale-covered bathtub I cried in, wishing something within me didn’t feel so fucking wrong.

And lately I’ve been noticing the hands of old women. There’s something so beautiful about tarnished rings on wrinkled fingers with painted nails. For the first time in my life I can see myself as an old woman, long grey hair and coloured gels, hand in hand with my wife. I am excited to be her. She knows what heaven is, even more than I do now. She can barely remember the room above the pizza shop, so much has happened since then. She loves me for the heartache I feel, she loves me for getting her here.

It’s all worth it, she says, you said yes to heaven, and you have no idea how much heaven awaits.