YOU’LL BE AS SELFISH AS ME IF YOU HAVE ANY SENSE
I want it all – and I’m not ashamed to say so. Call me selfish if you like, but I’ll never apologise for having ambition. Where I come from we weren’t taught to expect much from life other than a job in a pub or being able to buy your own council house. Maybe you hoped to marry and have kids, but if you were gay or trans you didn’t even think those were on offer. Your biggest concern was hoping to land a job without fear of judgement.
So, what do you do in a world that says you’re not entitled to anything? If you have any sense, you become selfish. You develop coping strategies. You have to. ‘Fuck you’, you say. I’m not going to be who you want me to be. You become headstrong. You learn to fight. You say ‘this is me’. More often than not, you have to drag everyone else along kicking and screaming. It is the only way they will accept you and even then, you may find that the very people who are supposed to love and support you don’t.