Tell us the story of how you met! Did you already know you were attracted to the opposite sex when you met?
M: Yaz had just moved over from Perth and got a job at the clinical I was working for at the time. It was my mum who actually employed her. Best wingman ever! So we met at work and our story started out as friends. I had known for a long time prior to meeting Yaz that I was attracted to the same sex.
Y: I first met Meika at work, I was new to Brisbane, we became good friends who started spending A LOT of time together and fell in love. Meika is the first girl I've had a relationship with, I had no idea about my sexuality until I fell in love with her.
Did you ever feel you had to hide your sexuality, and when you did come out, what was it like telling your friends and family?
M: I decided to come out right after high school, though I'd known for a little while that I was also attracted to women. I think I just needed to get to a point where I was confident with who I was and acknowledge it wasn't something to hide. I was nerve racking at first telling people I cared about, though the more people I told the more I felt I was becoming the person I'd always been and caring less about other opinions. Everyone was really supportive!
Y: Telling my friends and family was easy, they were all so supportive. I did feel at times I had to hide it as it was very new to me as an adult and having constantly heard of the attacks, slander and hate crime in the media. Meika and I had also been abused and assaulted at the beginning of our relationship by someone I thought was a good friend, this threw my confidence and mentally was something extremely hard to overcome. I wasn't sure how people around me would take it but after time Meiks has helped me feel a lot more confident and safe.
What do your matching tattoo's mean?
The tattoos mean a lot to us. We wanted something we felt no one else had, that was unique to us and our relationship. While separate the line on the side of our hands may just look like a simple line, but when we are together and holding hands, those two lines represent so much more than just the equality symbol for us. This tattoo is there to remind us of our times of love and overpowering happiness, and it symbolises the harder times we've had to go through to reach that point. Its a marl to signify the fight we all embark to achieve equality, and no matter what, when we are together, our love always wins.
If you were able to impress on anyone any specific fact about homosexuality and/or gay marriage. What would you want them to know?
M: To those people who justify the inequality of same-sex couples because 'they just don't understand it'. You don't need to understand. We are not asking you to take part in our relationship. Not understanding doesn't make us any less human, it doesn't make our feelings any less important, our life goals less achievable, our morals less moral and our love less significant. Just understand we all strive for the same happiness.
Y: To the people that find homosexuality a novelty and sexy, some men especially who think its okay to be derogative towards lesbians. From experience I find they don't take our relationship seriously and think its okay that they feel the right to get 'in between'. We are all human and deserve to be treated equally with respect in our relationship, regardless of the gender. I know people everywhere suffer with these issues regardless of sexuality or sex so its a much bigger issue than I could begin to explain.
When showing public affection, are there moments when you still feeling judging eyes? How does it make you feel and how do you overcome it?
M: I wouldn't say I really allow myself to feel the judgement, if it is there then I choose to ignore it. I like being close in public and I'm at a point where I'm beyond comfortable with who I am and who I'm with that being close to Yaz in public is so normal for me. In terms of over coming other people's opinions, it was a matter of not considering their comfort to determine my overall happiness and self assurance came from me, not the public opinion or legislation.
Y: I'm not huge on PDA regardless but I don't feel judgy eyes when I am. I just lack the confidence to not think about what other people are thinking because I have been judged before. I overcome this feeling by looking at my how hot my girlfriend is and knowing that I'm winning at life!
