Mistakes?

We all make mistakes throughout our lives. Some we look back on and give a small inward laugh, others cause you more grief and you spend the night worrying about it. For example, you write the car off, say something that you wish you didn't and spend the next year paying for it. Then there are those life changing mistakes. Those things you don't realise you have done until your forced to see it. The kind of mistake that you will live to regret for the rest of your life. A regret that no matter what you achieve in life, you will always look back and think "What if?".

I don't have any regrets per-se but I do have those moments when I look at my life and think in the words of the Pet Shop Boys, What have I done to desserve this? Now don't take this the wrong way, I have not done something wrong or something that I regret but something has happened recently to me to make me realise that the person I thought I was, carefree and Fabulous, was well, maybe not quite so fabulous afterall.

I have always followed a simple rule in life and it always warms me when I hear someone else, a dear friend tell me, your gift in life is you do not judge. It's not my job to judge. Neither is it my job to punish. But I wonder then why it is I choose to punish myself time and time again? Why do I push myself to this limit where I it is either mmake or break? Or is it mearly my mind playing tricks on me and making me see things in a different light.

My life has changed so much in such a short time realively. A decade on from my breaking up with my first boyfriend, a pinacle point in my life, my life changed. As I once described it to my boss, I was once invisible to the world. A nobody. Someone people made fun of. Lonely and miserable and hating my own life not for the blessings I have received but for not being the true me.

Ten years ago or so, I became visable, I arrived, I achieved all those things I had once dreamed of that seemed a distant dream or wishfull thinking. I can remember when a friend came to visit how we had a night of truths and I confessed it was me that had changed, that had become someone else. I'm not even remotely the person I was 10 years ago, aged 26. I was young, innocent, shy and insecure. I lacked friends, vision, I felt so lost in the world and that it was all going wrong and against me. Enter the new Millenium and voila, here I am. I arrived. The invisibility cloak was gone and the Neil you all know and love arrived. I'm not even aware of what casued the transistion. It just went from the sad me to the real me. Everyone puts it down to my coming out. That moment when you can truly be yourself.

I read in the Evening Standard tonight about how hard it is to be 'Out' in the city. But from personal experience I have to confess I did change at that moment. Finally telling Mum & Dad the truth. I always promised I would tell Mum & Dad before anyone else. The night that happened, there were tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of relief. Unless you have ever gone through it I can't possibly explain to you what coming out is like. You feel like the message you have to tell is finally going to allow you to beyourself for the rest of your life, but the one lifeline you have always had, your family, are the biggest obstical in the way. Will they accept me for who I am? Will they love me still? Will they accept me as they have unconditionally for who I really am? Or will I be rejected like a used newspaper put out with all the other recycling? Will that one thing I have always known, Family, that one security in life, still always be there?

The experience of coming out is possibly the hardest burden I think any young man faces in life. You are, after all, bought up into a straight family. You are told from birth, one day you will have a wife and kids. Its much like the media today, playing to mases.

I was lucky, my coming out story - (Available on MP3 as aired on Gaydar Radio), tells the story. How I finally after meeting Dean, my first boyfriend, plucked up the courage to say those ultimate 3 word, 'I am Gay'.

God bless my parents, Dad was more keen on getting back to the football and Mum asked me, was there anything else? Did I want an operation? (I think she thought I wanted to become a Woman). They have whole heartedly giving me support through all of my life's hurdles. I truly am, thanks to them, a "Lucky Bitch", and I thank Mum & Dad with all my heart for their wisdom, advice, nurture and most of all their love. For accepting me for whom I am unconditionally.

Meanwhile, back at home, I think I have made a mistake. I'm not sure. I trained in Drama and Performing Arts for over 10 years, sometimes the drama queen takes over. But I think I finally have a regret, a mistake. Something I look back on and think, What the heck? Did I really do that? Who made that decision? Why did everyone follow? Then I work it out and realise it was my fault. My decision, my advice. When I look back and say to people I was invisble, I simply mean I was a nobody. A hasbeen, a loser. I was nothing of note to anyone. People made fun of me and I had no friends. Somehow in an amazing ten years that changed into the new me (I sound like a detergent advertisment). I'm no longer the black sheep, infact I have my own flock. An amazing support group of dear and wonderfull friends. Far from being invisible I am loved. Not just by one person but my entire network of friends and family.

I have adapted to my new life and believe me I do not miss the old me. Do I still make mistakes? Of course, who doesn't. It's simply the one that is bugging me right now that is causing me as much grief as coming out to my parent in 2008. Was I shallow? Was I mean? Did I force my new found fabulousness onto others? Was I always an Actor and never in the audience? Did I always preach to the converted? I have moments where I flash back. I see moment from the past and don't even recognise it. It has that De Je Vous feeling but really doesn't flash up in my brain. Get used to it Neil, you'll forget more as you get older.

I still consider myself a "Lucky Bitch", don't worry, but I am no angel. The boy who was invisible not only came alive but with a vegence and with that comes responsibility and accountibility.

So I sip on a nice freshly imported Bordeux and write my final words du jour, I wonder. Have I made a mistake recently that is my fault? Avoidable? Or will it all pan out okay? I don't know the answer, I just know that I feel that after all that elevation from nothing to the top, the only way left is to fall and fall hard. While I am not scared of falling, I am scared there will not be a soft bottom of the ride.