I’m going to get a bit deep with this blog.

As I hurtle towards 50 years on this planet…. yep! It’s only 2 years and 3 months away, I have reached my mid-life crisis.

Now before anyone takes anything I say the wrong way, I want to make it perfectly clear that I have NO REGRETS about the path I chose. That’s not to say I don’t have any regrets at all.

I have a loving husband and three beautifully frustrating kids, none of which I could live without.

However…..

Over the last year I’ve had a bit of an epiphany. My eyes have been well and truly opened and I have wondered at times, what my life would look like now if I had been brave enough to do some of the things I crave to do now but can’t. My time has passed.

As parents, my parents had it easy!!
Yes, they worked bloody hard to get what they have.
What I mean is, that me and my brother were textbook kids.
We argued, a lot!
We rough-housed.
We went out with our friends.
We both did OK at school.
My parents never really had much, out of the ordinary, to worry about.
We both eventually married and left the family nest.

We both grew up during the 80′ and 90’s and one of the biggest issues of the time was AIDS.
We grew up with adverts like this….

If anything was going to stop up from being adventurous, it was advertising designed to scare us out of being adventurous like this. The AIDS campaigns at the time were designed to shock, and they worked.

My brother was a little more adventurous with relationships than me but his first marriage didn’t last. He has since settled down and has found the perfect lady to keep him under control and I can’t wait to see him tie the knot with her in three weeks in Italy!

I, however, was a totally different story.
I was always very quiet. I kept myself to myself. I had my friends at school but I would lock myself away in my bedroom with my music and my TV (all three channels) and my movies.
At one point my Father was actually thinking I might be gay!
I really don’t know what he would have done if I’d said I was. He’s very old school. Quite frankly he’s homophobic. In his eyes, every male actor or dancer is ‘gay’ and I shot him down about his attitude at every opportunity.
I ended up doing ‘what was expected of me’. I found a husband, I settled down and I had three kids.

This was over 30 years ago and I have to ask myself, if I’d had access to all the social media I have access to now, with all the information available, would I have experimented more with my own sexuality? Would I have been a little more adventurous or rebelious?

The answer is quite simply, Yes!! I think I would.

The last year has seen some changes in me and my attitudes to things.
As much as my eldest daughter frustrates the hell out of me, I am totally jealous of her for being as adventurous as she is. She doesn’t give a stuff what people think and lives life from day to day experiencing what she can along the way.

My other two kids are following their own paths and have yet to decide where they want to go and how they want to live but I will support them with whatever they choose.

All three of my kids live life with their hearts on their sleeves. They couldn’t give a stuff whether their friends are straight, gay, bi, trans, Christian, Muslim, black or white…..or whatever!! Everyone is ‘normal’ in their eyes, regardless, and that is how it should be.
I’m so proud of them.

I have spent the last year in total mid-life crisis mode.
I now have tattoos, I have piercings I never thought I would get, I’ve started losing weight and I find myself wondering where I would be if I’d had the guts to do it all when I was a teenager.
My parents are horrified.

My husband was my first and only relationship and I really love him but I was well into my 20’s when I met him.
Do I regret not being more adventurous as a teenager?
DAMN RIGHT I DO! and there is my only regret. I have begun to feel like I wasted my teens.

So I think that the last year has seen me living my life vicariously through my daughters and through people I have come to know and love through social media.
My interest in all things LGBTQ have been truly enlightening and are what have made me question myself the most over the last year.

If I had a reset button on my life, would I push it?
I honestly can’t answer that one.