Rio/20s/he/him/so this turned into mostly Joker Out and Käärijä blog now, so, enjoy your stay. I apparently have lots of judgements about how food should be eaten. Also I post some nsfw content so if that bothers you better stay away
this morning I'm randomly thinking about this bus trip and their seating arrangements, and how Bojan seems to be ✨️willingly✨️ cornered in 🥰 I imagine Jere trailing behind him in a bus row, glued to Bojan's back, directing him where to sit, making sure no one squeezes between him and Bojan and doesn't take Jere's seat :D
I've always had a hard time coming to terms with my aroace identity, especially the asexual part. The main reason is that I never really had any of the experiences that most of my peers on Tumblr did when they came to terms with their asexuality.
I first discovered asexuality when I was a freshman in high school. I read an Instagram info graphic and thought "hmmmm this might be how I feel." There was no light bulb moment where I realized I wasn't broken and that what I was feeling wasn't abnormal. Just a mild curiosity.
So I began exploring more info graphics and googling about asexuality to see if I truly did relate to it. And the more I searched, the more confident I felt that I was asexual. Then, looking for an asexual community, I came to Tumblr. And under the asexual tag, it was post after post of people lamenting how broken they felt before discovering the term asexual. How it was a lightbulb moment where they realized, "I'm not broken, and everything I'm feeling is valid."
Now, I do want to note that I do not intend to insult people who post about/relate to these experiences. There are thousands of these posts for a reason. I'm just saying that for me personally, they were detrimental to my own asexual journey. I never felt broken. I didn't have an AHA! moment when I first came across the term. I just had a mild curiosity that stemmed from a small spark of relatability to the asexual definition.
So I saw all these posts I couldn't relate to at all, and I began to question if I was actually asexual. After all, if every asexual shared these experiences, how could I call myself asexual if I didn't experience any of them?
All of this was further exacerbated by the transition to high school. I went from a predominantly white middle school to a high school with maybe one other white person. All around me were minorities with experiences I couldn't relate to. So, I began to wonder if I was identifying as asexual just to put myself into a minority group. To make myself fit in more.
And I would try to share these feelings with anyone who would listen, anyone I thought could relate, but nobody did. I was always met with pity. I never wanted pity, I still don't. What I wanted was for someone to agree with me. To show me that I wasn't the only one who felt this way. That I wasn't broken or alone.
I looked at all these experiences and decided that I couldn't possibly be asexual. And that even if I was asexual I wasn't asexual enough to claim it as part of my identity.
I discovered I was asexual when I was a freshman in high school. I didn't feel comfortable identifying as asexual until the summer after I graduated.
Even now, many years later, I still don't really feel pride in my asexuality. At least not in the way I feel about my aromanticism. I identify as aroace, but it's always spoken with an underlying connotation of I'm aromantic! and also asexual. As if my asexuality is just a thing that's there, rather than a part of me that defines how I interact with this world.
For everyone who relates to anything I've just said know that you are valid in your sexuality. There's no one right way to realize your aspec, no matter what it might seem when scrolling through these tags.
I wish I had someone say these things to me when I was coming to terms with my asexuality. I think I would have been a lot happier if they did. If just one person who's struggling with their identity sees this and feels better about themselves I will consider this post a success.
Anyways, for those of you who read this whole thing, thank you, I know it was long, but it means a lot to me.