It took me a while to learn to be vulnerable, both with myself and others. Being raised in a society where being a woman meant being weak, subservient, or emotional, and being a man meant being strong, dominant, or unemotional. To be seen, you had to be a man or be like a man.

People always ask; when did you know? They tend to assume when you 'come out' in your early twenties that you spent the rest of your life up until that point, blissfully unaware of your sexuality. They tend to think, just because you appeared to be straight your entire teenage life and quite successfully so, with a string of long-term relationships with the opposite sex, that you simply woke up one morning and thought; hey, maybe I like girls now?! 

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease that requires at least five insulin injections a day, or if you're lucky like me, being constantly plugged into an insulin pump. The most basic level of diabetes care means I have to weigh all my food, do some maths and then inject the appropriate amount of insulin to counteract the carbohydrates I'm eating.