Shameless (finally): Neil's story

“He said yes! With my fiancé on the day I proposed in February 2020”

In 1970, my mother (then aged 42) was convinced she had a kidney stone.  And a couple of months later, I was born – even in the womb I was meant to be something else!

Born into chaos (I am the youngest of six children) and, since homosexuality was illegal in Ireland until 1993, born a criminal. I walked in Pride marches when it was still illegal to be gay, the rush of adrenaline mixed with the fear of someone maybe recognizing me.  Fear has been a constant in my life, as has the accompanying adrenaline hit. 

As a kid, I knew fear – fear of being hit in school (corporal punishment was still legal), fear of my dad being drunk, fear of being found out: I wasn’t into girls. There were fun times too, long summer evenings playing along the canal, community project visits to Dublin airport (that was a huge treat) and singing in choirs. But there was an undercurrent of fear, complicated by layers of shame and secrecy.

When I was 12, Mrs O’Driscoll asked me “Neilo, what are you going to be when you grow up?” “I don’t know, but I won’t be living here” and I used my father’s time working in Canada years before as the reason I wanted to travel. Aged 12 I knew how to lie, and I knew that I had to leave Dublin before anybody found out I was gay.

By age 14 I had the solution – I’d become a priest and that way since I wouldn’t be getting married, nobody would have to know. I only lasted three months in the seminary, was forced to come out to my parents and discovered the small, close-knit gay community of Dublin. David Norris, The Diceman (the light of heaven to you Tom) and Philomena Moore were some of the characters I was fortunate to meet.

My coming out got ahead of itself and suddenly I was telling anyone who’d listen - I discovered it was a way of being different. Whatever the motivation, the consequences weren’t always positive.

True to my word I left Dublin, initially for Australia. Then Luxembourg, Then Chile. Then France. Then London. Then Madrid. Then London again. Everywhere I went my 12-year-old was saying “can’t stay here must move on”. Before I left to live in Chile, a neighbour of ours in Dublin joked (in that typical dry Dublin way) “Delhi? ah they’ll find out about you there eventually” – how did she know? I was 29.

A bad break-up in Chile left me desperate for validation. And never having been taught boundaries or self-care, my behaviours were reckless. I was diagnosed hiv positive.

That’s not a typo – I refuse to give it capitals. 

Facing up to how I had acted out and the hurt that I had caused, mostly linked to my internal shame was, I discovered, the way to address my shame. One therapist described it as the “shame hot potato” - it gets passed on until someone drops the potato. I needed to drop the hot potato.

But not before I changed religion, climbed mountains (with no training), and was friendly with princes and ambassadors – not bad for the lad from the Dublin Liberties, and my mother had plenty to tell the neighbours. Basically, I would have done anything to distract you from who I really was. I could even do it in four languages.

I started to go to a therapist back in 2013, here in London. We unpicked my childhood, some of which I had never looked at in previous therapy. Each week she would ask me “how are you going to keep yourself safe this week Neilo?”. I work for bp, I know all about staying safe. But of course, the therapist meant healthy emotional boundaries. I needed to discover my internal handrail and hold on to it.