Gizma

This is a thicc thing I typed up about me discovering I was aroace (hahah or so I thought) in some thread, and I wanted to keep it, so here it is lol

I'll try to remember as best I can how I found out that I was aromantic and asexual (or so I thought) (I'm a girl and I'm turning 19 tomorrow aaa), here it goes...

So ever since I was young, I never had any crushes. My grandparents would ask me if there were any cute boys at school, and I always said no. Random girls at school would gush about boys and I never understood why. I always though that maybe one day I would get it, but I never did. To be honest, I was happy I didn't have to deal with all of that icky gooey love stuff.

Once though, a family that my dad knew was eating supper with my family and some others we were camping with at a restaurant. That family had two kids, one of which was a boy about my age. He was great, and we messed around a lot catching snakes and frogs and just being kids together. His dad though during this supper made a comment along the lines of "So E, have you been having fun playing with your little boyfriend?" Uh. What. He's not. Uh. And I just... burst out crying. Why did this man have to assume that I, a 9 year old, was 'with' this boy, and 8 year old, just because we were playing together?? It scared me. A lot. So from then on I actually avoided being friends with boys so that nobody ever assumed I was dating someone. After that I just lived my life as a happy kid, and that was that. If I was just friends with girls, nobody could think I liked them or they liked me! It wasn't a big deal until I got to middle school.

People started dating, and my friend told me she liked someone. I was curious who it was, but I didn't get it. Why would anyone want to be seen as two people? "Oh, Jack and Jane are sitting together again! Jack and Jane are eating lunch together!" it all just seemed too weird. I wanted people to see me for me, not me with someone else.

Time went on and eventually, I think about grade 9, I became very confused. Why hadn't I had a crush yet? Isn't that normal? What is a crush even? Someone who you want to be around a lot? OH MY GOD I must have a crush on my best friend. That was terrifying. I didn't actually have a crush on her, I just thought I did. Because I misinterpreted platonic feelings for romantic feelings. Luckily I never acted on any of that since I was so repulsed by it, and I found out pretty fast that what I was feeling wasn't a crush. I just wanted to be closer friends with her.

All was fine and good after that, and somewhere between then and the start of high school, I came across the term "asexual." I think I was doing quizzes online to see if I was gay or not (lol) and I came across one singular quiz where being asexual was a possible result. And I got it. Suddenly it made sense. I had always been sex-repulsed, whether it be scenes on TV or sexual jokes. After talking to another one of my friends, she came to the same conclusion. I was ace.

That was a huge awakening for me. Finally I had a word to describe myself, and it felt good. Though, because so few people knew of the term (especially in 2014/2015) I never told anyone that I was ace outright. I always just said I wasn't interested in dating. That seemed to work fine, and nobody ever had a crush on me, so I was golden! Right? Wrong.

In grade 11, a guy from the grade below me joined the higher level concert band that I was in. He ended up sitting next to me for some reason, and I got v i b e s. Like bad vibes. Like, this guy likes me vibes. So panic ensued. I could only remember the incident with the boy from when I was 9. I didn't even want to be friends with this dude because *gasp* people would assume stuff. Well sadly it got worse for me.

He asked me out. Well tried to. I pretended to not hear him, and I left the room. That was at the end of grade 11. He then texted me a bit through the summer (he kinda caught me off guard once and I gave him my number rip) and every time I freaked out. I just wanted him to go away.

At the start of grade 12, he caught me alone in the band room and properly asked me out. I kinda stuttered out that I wasn't interested, not just in him, but in anyone. I couldn't bring myself to say that I was aromantic and asexual since I didn't know him that well. Here's a comic I made about that: https://www.deviantart.com/ewspirit/art/That-s-Rough-704848612

So that was traumatizing. Eventually, for one reason or another, we became closer and eventually became best friends. What we had could have been considered a relationship, but I was so horrified at that thought that I repressed it completely. As time went on we went our separate ways because he was actually a terrible person and I just had the most aggressive case of rose-colored glasses. So yeah.

After leaving him, I was in a huge depression. Even though it was for the best, I still felt like I'd lost a part of myself when I cut him off. That took a really long time to get out of, in fact it was very recently. When I met my new best friend. (The year is now 2020).

Let me tell you something; I've never felt anything like this before. My whole life I've gone around repressing any emotion or affection towards anyone, and I ended up using the label "aromantic" to describe that. Instead of straight up not feeling attracted to people, like most aros are, I actually occasionally DO feel that. And it took me 20 years and one amazing man to realize it, as ridiculous and cliched as that sounds. It still sounds fake to me, honestly.

He made me realize that I've been in denial. All of the little events that went down when I was a kid damaged me more than I thought they did. My grandparents pestering me about boys. That guy who described my childhood friend as my boyfriend. My uncle being extremely insensitive whenever I mentioned a friend of mine who happened to be male. The interrogations I have gotten my whole life about my male friends.

Because of all of that damage, I hid from my feelings. I believed that if I just pushed them down far enough I could convince myself they didn't exist, or they existed as something else entirely.

My partner-

Uh. Wow. That's a new one.

Yes. My partner. He is helping me open a door. Not just any door; a door to a dungeon, locked up with dozens of barricades and chains in the depths of myself. The thing is, I'm still trying to open it. Every day I open more locks and get closer to fully opening my full potential as a human.

I hate to say it, but I was wrong about my identity for 6 years. I'm not aromantic and asexual; I am greyromantic and asexual.

This is me. I just wish I could make my brain believe it.