When I was 18 years old, I applied to be a nun. That’s right. Me, the now 52-year-old nutcase, ex professional squash player, former prescription-medication-consumer, and raging homosexual.

“God has Bigger Plans for you”, came the written reply from the Mother Superior in 1989. It was penned in the most exquisite cursive letters, with such perfect handwriting that I couldn’t stop reading it. 

Bigger Plans.

Hmm. Now what, I thought.

I suppose the nuns were right and I dodged a bullet. Or maybe THEY dodged the bullet?

My childhood and youth were spent obsessing over Holy Mary. She was the only person who could save me from my wicked thoughts about Agnetha Faltskog, one of the female singers in the newly popular Swedish band ABBA. How I loved looking at her bottom in ‘ABBA – the Movie’ when it was shown in the assembly hall of St Marnock’s primary school in Portmarnock. That was 1980 and I was 9 years old.

It couldn’t be true, could it? My eyes fixated on the derriere of some blond bombshell, was surely a sin, no? But what about the crush I had on that girl in the school play, a year later? I followed her around like a little puppy, yearning to be near her whenever she was on stage. She had the lead part of the play, while I was a simple choir member. I couldn’t even sing. My lip-synching days started early apparently. Later I would learn to prance at the same time.

Her friends called me a lesbian. As a curious 10-year-old, I naturally asked my mother about this new word.

Picture the scene. It must have been a Saturday night, because my mother was sitting in front of her mirror readying herself for the impending morning rituals of the church choir gathering before 10 am Mass. Wearing an off lime-green flannel dressing gown, well-worn purple furry slippers, she had a head full of giant pink rollers. Well, half of her head anyway. The other half lay flat, begging to be transformed into the weekly Sunday morning look. It wouldn’t be right to show up at the church with limp hair, now, would it?

“Mam, whats a lesbian?” I asked with a petrified tone.

“A what?” spinning around, a lone roller exploded off her head.

“A lesbian”, I backed towards the door.

“Don’t ever use that word in this house again. Ever. Go to bed and say your prayers”.

So naturally, I retreated to my room, took hold of my plastic illuminous Holy Mary statue that my Nana had recently filled with holy water, dabbed a bit on my forehead, sniffed it a little – it definitely had an odour reminiscent of my Nana – retreated under the blankets, and prayed for forgiveness. For what? I didn’t actually know. But I did know that my illuminous Holy Mary would make it all better.

When I was 15, I accompanied my Nana to Lourdes, in France, where St Bernadette was lucky enough to see an apparition of the Blessed Virgin, in a grotto. Allegedly. Thousands of pilgrims flocked there every year (and still do!) hoping for a miracle to cure them from their cancer, or broken hip, or deafness, or blindness. Me? I just wanted to stop fancying girls. By now, I’d become clued in to what ‘lesbian’ really meant, and by GOD was THAT a sin?

I also, secretly wanted to see Holy Mary, for I firmly believe a sighting would help my cause. I went in the Holy Water Baths where hundreds of others had been, and washed my skin with all their DNA, hoping I would be cleansed of this dreadful affliction.

I didn’t see her. But I did have my first ever masturbation in Lourdes. In the bed beside my nana. Well, let me clarify. I wasn’t in the bed beside my nana. I was in ‘a’ bed, which was ‘beside’ my nana’s bed. That would’ve been weird. I mean, who do you think I am?

A year after that, I visited Fr Eugene, the school chaplain at Portmarnock Community School. I was still desperate to find a way out of my sinful body and mind, and sought his help with researching religious missions I could volunteer at. At 17, I was about to sit my leaving cert (the final year mandatory exam that would determine one’s future and included life-long nightmares). As I sat in his office, gazing up at the photo of Pope John Paul II, Fr Eugene stared at me in a most uncomfortable way.

“It’s quite uncanny” he said in his broad American accent, which was a novelty for us Irish teenage girls.

“What is?” I asked uneasily. The sunshine peeping in through the office blinds, reflected on his bald head and I couldn’t stop staring at those three strands of hair neatly resting atop his left ear… not the worst of combovers, I thought.

“It’s her face”, he pointed at a statue of Holy Mary on his desk.

“Her face?” I felt a bit better now. He wasn’t about to drop the hand or anything with that disturbing grin of his.

“Yes, it’s the image of YOU!” he became more animated, sitting forward in his chair, knocking his plump belly off his desk.

“The image of me?” I felt quite chuffed to be honest.

“Look here”, gripping her midsection, he held her towards me.

“Looks JUST like you”, he continued.

Looking back, I wonder if he said that to all the girls in an attempt to woo them onto the churches side. I have blocked out many of my secondary school memories, but that one seems to always bubble to the surface.

At that point in my life, no-one knew my secret. I was the girl who played the piano at a local hotel on a Friday night. That shy girl who sometimes back-combed her hair to look like Robert Smith, but sometimes wore sensible shoes and played the organ at mass. That quiet, not-so-pleasant-looking freckle-faced girl, who played squash for Ireland and went on pilgrimages to Lourdes with her Nana. That girl probably didn’t have a sin in her bones.

The obvious thing to do, was to write to the nuns. I mean, Fr Eugene told me I had the face of our blessed virgin. It was a no-brainer, right? Besides I’d never make it in this world, not with this lie, and people would wonder why I never married. It was my only escape.

I don’t remember how I handled that rejection. Probably clutching onto my illuminous virgin mary statue, which by then was undoubtedly filled with vodka. It was in fact the first of many rejections. Now, as a writer, some 40 years later, rejections come fast and often. But I’m tougher and older and wiser – maybe that’s a stretch – but what I do know is THOSE NUNS WERE RIGHT.

2024 has started out superbly for me. My agent at WGM is excited about my memoir “I’m not Bipolar – I’m Irish”, and I’ve decided to try my hand at something new – Acting. I suppose it’s not REALLY my first time acting, is it? I practically acted my way through my childhood and early adulthood, pretending to be straight. So, I guess I have a bit of practice. It’s both ironic and extremely pleasing to me, that my very first ‘proper’ role, is that of a Mother Superior. It’s a comedy sketch, with the Prague Harman Street Players. Get your tickets for the shows here: No spoilers, but in one of the many hilarious sketches, I play a stern, seemingly frightening Mother Superior back in the 19^th century. A special delivery by carrier pigeon leaves me distressed by what I see before me on the parchment paper. And it is NAUGHTY! So, I must put an end to it!

How fitting it is that as I closed the last page of my memoir and turned it into my agent, I am starting a new chapter of my life playing the part of a Nun. The universe certainly works in mysterious ways.

My Nana is long gone, but guess what? I’m taking my mum to see the ABBA Voyage show in London this year for her 80^th birthday, where I hope to cast my eyes over the perfectly formed bottom of the Agnetha Avatar. Sure, life couldn’t be any better right?