Aro/ace Stuff

My Personal Journey: Part Three

Jesus. Oh god. I suppose I'll pick up from where I left off?

Right. I left this last time confused, basically. Well, from there, I identified as lesbian. Very simple and easy.

Except. Nothing ever is.

So I had got the lesbian, asexual and aromantic pride flags. Like the huge ones. And I only displayed the lesbian one and intended to get rid of the others seeing as they no longer fit. I did get rid of the aromantic one, because I had started really hating the label (I gave it to another aro person I know). I. couldn't seem to let go of the ace one. Somewhere in me, I still liked being ace and wanted that label still. But I was still confused. Regardless, I put the flag back on my wall and told myself that I was "ace spec". In that time, I considered a lot of ace labels: fraysexual, grey asexual, aceflux. But I couldn't be bothered with the whole questioning dance again, so I just said ace spec. Soon enough, I felt comfortable with just asexual again. So that was that. Lesbian asexual.

Except not. Because nothing's ever simple.

Like a very stereotypical lesbian, I went and got a crush on my best friend. Wouldn't recommend lol (I know there's every chance they're gonna read this so if you are, hi :) idk what else to say). Anyway, that was fun and not very important to anything but it comes into play in later questioning.

So I got over that, and however long later, I had a bit of an "oh shit" moment. Let's give them code names. So we have Dennis and Poppy. Dennis is gay and out to both me and Poppy. He is my friend. I get on with Poppy fine and last year got quite close when we had to do weird seating plan stuff because of Covid and I sat next to her lots. Poppy is straight but an ally and not like an Ally™ but actually just cool about it yk. Both of them know I am lesbian. So basically we were lining up to maths and Dennis and Poppy were just bantering. Somehow, Poppy ended up saying something along the lines of "how do you know i'm not gay?" and Dennis says "well why don't you kiss [my name which I now realise I didn't code name oh well]?" and pretty much on instinct I panicked and was like "nO!" and like stepped back. Obviously, she wouldn't have because it was a joke and even if it wasn't we were in the middle of school, but somehow the idea freaked me out so much. Poppy was like "oh wow" and then I realised what that sounded like and apologised and we laughed about it. However, it had already happened.

Obviously that wouldn't be like something that alloromantic people would be up for necessarily, but between that and the sudden realisation that I almost never have crushes and when i did, it was on my best friend, I started thinking "oh. I really might be demiromantic like I thought except like the other way coz not straight but gay".

So that was that. Demiormantic asexual lesbian. And that where I'm up to now (well and I'm a demigirl and that whole thing happened kinda at the same time but this book isn't for that).

Tbh, I'm still kinda constantly questioning if I could be bi not lesbian seeing as how I had also had a crush on a guy under similar circumstances as when I first thought I was demiromantic, but I keep arriving at the conclusion that I just wouldn't ever want a bf so yeah.

I've said it before and I will say it again.

Being on the aro or ace spectrum is really hard. It's so difficult to navigate yourself in such a romance and sex-obsessed, heteronormative world. I mean, you've all seen my journey now. I've been dancing around the spectrums for two hears now and it hasn't gotten any easier. Questioning your identity generally is difficult, but it's that bit harder when you don't have one or more forms of attraction to go off. If you are questioning your aro/ace spec identity, be patient with the process and youself. It takes time. It's tricky. But finding the community and finding yourself makes it worth it. And if you never work it out, that's still fine because nothing is expected of you whether you're queer or not 💜🤍🖤🤍💚