Grá

The Gaelic word grá (“graw”) means "love".

It is the most common word for love in the Irish language. It can be used to express love between family, friends, significant others, and couples. Also used as an informal term of endearment. Grá can convey both romantic love and deep affection.

This simple and pleasant word is the very core, or heart if you will, of my aims for 2025 … in short I want love, I want grá … in all its many forms. I would even add a deep desire for self focused grá. I want to love myself again … actually to tell the truth I want to better love myself for the first time.

I finally accepted myself in late 2022 and I finally stopped repressing my authentic self and allowing the girl inside to breathe and be ‘me’, to allow thoughts long since pushed down … I experienced a strange thing, I finally smiled without forcing it, I didn’t hate myself … I started to love myself.

I want that to continue.

So this year a large goal is to love myself, stop talking myself down all the time, believe people when they compliment me - actually allow myself to see myself as attractive, cute, pretty … all the things that for so long I refused to believe were possible for me. I want to love myself even more in 2025.

I have lost the love of blood family during the end of 2024 & start of 2025 … but have found the love of found and chosen family that feels so much more real in its place … I hope this love continues to grow and strengthen and will do my best to ensure it does.

Where I wish for grá in my life most … romantic and significant love in a relationship … I have never been in a relationship, I have never dated … only ever being on one date (and it was cut short) I am tired of being alone, feeling unloved and unlovable … I hope and pray that 2025 is the year this form of grá finally finds me, binds me, and secures me in a deep, true, and lasting connection with my person.

I understand that for many years of my life this point has been too complex and hard to come to fruition, for many years I did not believe I could date a straight woman as it would be deceitful to them, as even in the deepest pits of my depression and repression, internally I knew something was off with me and I wasn’t just ‘a guy’ - also I couldn’t act upon my attraction to men as I had to keep up the performance that I was a ‘good Christian’ and play the part, it had to be girls or nothing … so it was nothing.

2024 brought me to a point where I was comfortable in myself to pursue dating and courtship, and finally accept I am bisexual … I am a bisexual woman (who to be fair is more into Megara than Hercules if you get me) and there’s zero wrong with that! So I hope 2025 is the year that something develops and happens with this. that I finally find love, true and lasting.

Find me, my Grá

I believe focusing first on the grá for myself will lead to greater things in all other aspects of love in life … and so in an attempt to do that, I plan to stop talking negatively about myself, spend more time enjoying my hobbies, more time on self-care, I plan to live, grá, and laugh … in short enjoy 2025.

So let 2025 be the year I finally find Grá … in all its forms, to their greatest potential.

🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷

Written for the Queer Vocal Voices Challenge: