A Merseyside-based life coach has opened up on the "wrong and abnormal" feeling she struggled with for years.
Anna Martin, who lives in Newton-le-Willows, experienced internalised homophobia for a long time as “it didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t like boys or men because that’s who girls were meant to be like”. The 37-year-old only came out as lesbian two years ago after being married to a man with two children. Prior to this, she questioned if she was bisexual but never explored her feelings due to the heteronormative society she grew up in.
She told the ECHO : “Girls like me just weren’t gay in my eyes. I kept telling myself that it was just curiosity, that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, and that I should keep it squashed down so as not to rock the boat of my family. As a result, I never really knew myself and I always felt that something was missing, something my then-husband noticed too. I was there, but not there, and constantly felt restless.”
