A Love Story is Amanda. She has brought me a steadiness I had never had — I have lived in this house longer than anywhere since the ten years in Kilcohan, and every other address was months or a few short years. People ask me whether I like living in Derry and I say I like living with Amanda, and I do. We have had our rows; we both carry issues up one arm and down the other, as most people do, and that is what makes anybody unique and beautiful in their imperfections. And here is the bald truth of it. I want to live as a woman, and I am afraid of what that would do to us. That fear stops me in my tracks, and it has held me still longer than anything else has. The irony I keep turning over is that it is the steadiness of her love that gives me the ground to face the unsteadiness at all — that I can only walk backwards off the cliff because she is standing behind me.
Amanda has brought me a steadiness I had never had. I have now lived in this house, here in Derry, longer than I’ve lived anywhere since the ten years in Kilahora, Cork. Everywhere else was months, or a small number of years, one address after another. People ask me whether I like living in Derry, and I always give the same answer: I like living with Amanda. And I do. We have had our rows. We both carry issues up…