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shayberri789 · 2 years

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In honour of Ace Week, I'd like to talk about my experience with growing up ace.

Many, many of my fellow aspecs talk about growing up feeling broken, to the point where I almost felt "fake" because I didn't share this apparently universal experience. (No slander to them by the way, I can recognise myself for being the oddball that I am, and the reason I escaped the self-hatred and broken feeling is. Actually kind of funny)

(Also sorry this is very long and rambly, editing is a bitch on mobile.)

I've always known I was aromantic and asexual. Not the terms, but I know I have been like this since before I can remember. The most important aroace memory I have is the one that saved me over a decade of grief, one I made when I was seven.

I was in grade one, and in a tiny, tiny school with literally only 4 people in my grade. My best friend, Jess, had just broken up with our classmates Thomas (they had been dating the way all 7yos do, and Jess has always been boy crazy). She was ranting to me about him, and I was a bit bored with it, playing about on the patio wall. I distinctly remember saying to her: "I'm never gonna get a crush! Dating is too much drama." And that was that. I promised myself never to get a crush.

And for years, I thought I was fantastic at keeping promises to myself. I was a pretty child, and I've always been kind, and many of my guy friends developed crushes on me, or felt pressured to have a crush and decided I was the best option. I don't know. I turned every one of them down, and said I wasn't going to date because I'd made myself a promise not to. I never developed a crush on anyone myself, and I thought it was because of a promise I made when I was seven. I never felt pressured to have a crush because of that promise, and all my girl friends accepted it too as an answer when they asked if I had a crush. We were like, ten, we didn't know better. None of us even knew what the lgbtqa+ was. Same-sex marriage was only legalised in 2006 in South Africa, and I didn't have a phone or access to the internet until I was 13. We also weren't as steeped in the amatonormative bullshit that comes with growing up, or fandom, or the internet.

When I was around 11-12 years old, we went to the coast to celebrate one of my childhood friend's mom getting married. Both his parents (his mom and later adoptive father) were close family friends, and while we were there I met up with an old friend I'd lost contact with.

I found out Dune, the lost friend, had had a crush on me since pre-primary school. He'd put a ring on his finger and declared that he was going to marry me when we grew up. I think He'd given up the notion by the time we reunited, but it made me feel weird. I started actually thinking about crushes, and my promise, and I worried that maybe I'd been repressing feelings. Did I accidentally close my heart to love because of my promise? But... not having to deal with crushes made my life so much easier, I wasn't sure if I wanted a crush. But I was worried I'd broken myself. It didn't help that when I brought this up to my mom (who is, by the way, an amazing woman and completely supportive of me now and my very queer brother and is bi herself) she said that closing your heart to love was unhealthy, and I should let myself feel things.

In retrospect, that's solid advice. I wish I'd listened to it more before I developed repression of emotions and memories as a coping mechanism to deal with immigration and a new country. But at the time I took it as confirmation I'd broken myself because again, I was eleven, and while I've always been mature for my age I still was lacking a lot of knowledge and growth.

Fortunately, I've always been a stubborn, genuine thing. I only changed parts of myself I didn't like, or thought hurt others, and no one else was allowed to decide that for Me. And I liked the peace not having crushes gave me, and I saved myself many years of grief and worry with that decision. It was three days of worrying about having broken myself, compared to an almost lifetime of many other aspecs.

That conviction was admittedly hard to hold onto though. I had several squishes in my childhood and the following yesrs, or maybe they were actual crushes but I doubt it; and I started becoming vaguely aware that saying I'd made a promise to stay single and unattracted to anyone was a weird reason for turning someone down when you're like 13/14yo. I stopped talking about my promise, but I never got a crush, never wanted one, and never wanted to date. I just kept living my life, even when I immigrated and said family friend's child from earlier, a boy I had been friends with since I was literally three years old, told me he'd been in love with me for five years the day I landed in my nee country. Thanks Vin, that's totally something to drop on your childhood friend when she is busy feeling like she'd lost everything. I spent a week analysing the last couple years of our friendship to figure out if he even cared about me the way I did about him. We're not very close anymore.

A year later, in Year 10/Grade 9, my new best friend invited me around to her house to tell me "something important". When I got there, I found our other friend we'd been growing closer too over the last couple months there already, and they were holding hands. Tess said to me, very gingerly, "Shay, I just wanted to let you know that I'm pan, and Saph and I are dating."

Three things you should know: I was barely aware that "gay" and "lesbian" was a thing at this point, I had no gaydar or ability to predict romance, and had quite frankly forgotten that crushes were a thing. I wasn't even looking for chemistry in my friends. I was caught completely off guard. I had no fucking clue was pansexual was. I'd only just started learning about the queer community and did not know how to react to this, and was suddenly, horribly reminded that my friends were at the stage where they cared more about finding someone to date than plodding on happily with the friendships we had. Tess later told me I "was a bit homophobic because of the way I recoiled with a slightly disguisted look on my face."

Honestly, I think it's because I was disgusted by romance in general and was unprepared for the confession, and was suddenly re-evaluating the entire friend group dynamics. I'm gonna forgive myself if I reacted badly, but I honestly wasn't aware enough of heteronormative culture, had forgotten amatonormativity existed, and didn't know enough about gay people to even be homophobic.

That night, I spent four hours researching the lgbt community to understand as much as I could, to find out how to support my friends and be a good ally. I still thought I was straight, back then. It got to the point where I knew a good deal about the queer community and experiences, enough to help my brother figure out he was pan and trans, and yet I still did not come across any aspec identity. Not in Tumblr screenshots, not on the wiki pages I read, not from word of mouth from the queer people I met irl.

I even went through about a month or so where I thought I was bi. I had enough common sense long before then to realize that a promise made when you're seven should not affect who you crush on, just what you do with those feelings, but it was the only explanation I had, so I quietly stuck with it. When I found out more about the queer community I thought to myself "... am I gay?" And critically evaluated myself, and came to the conclusion I felt the same about guys as I did about girls, and I must be bi, surely? But that didn't feel right, and It honestly made me feel uncomfortable to label myself as that, so I never mentioned it.

Fortunately soon after that, I was talking to one of Tess's old South African friends, who told me he was "asexual" (in hindsight, and seeing how he grew, I think he was actually aromantic. But, it's not my place to tell people how to identify). I didn't know what that meant so googled it, and realized... hey, this covers a lot of how I feel (or rather, what I don't feel). It wasn't quite right, I didn't really understand sexual attraction either (I still don't, really, but I do on a rational level), but it fit me better and explained a hell of a lot more than bisexual did, so I claimed it. Plus, pretty flag.

I tried to come out that pride month. I made an ace flag-coloured version of my profile picture, looked up the pride days for June, and decided I would change my pfp and bio on ace day to come out. Which I did! And many people congratulated me on figuring myself out, even more were confused as to what it was, and the rest didn't notice. But before all that, I'd accidentally come out on aromantic's day, first, much to my fear and embarrassment. I didn't realise I could be both aromantic and asexual. I didn't want it to seem like I was trying to be 'special' to fit in with my friends (I value genuineness greatly, and never wanted to appear like I was presenting myself falsely, especially for something like a trend or peer pressure). I quickly changed my pfp and bio before anyone noticed, and did it on the correct day at the end of the month.

Fortunately, it did make me look up aromanticism, and realize this identity fitted the rest of my experiences. But, I still didn't know I could have two identities, because I didn't know about the SAM model. I decided to stick with asexual, because I liked the flag more.

I still felt a bit like an imposter, though, like I wasn't really welcome in the queer community, and I always knew I didn't fit in the cishetallo one. I didn't know any other ace people except for the guy who told me about the term, and he was far too interested in sex and hot people for my comfort. I dedicated myself to learning more about the queer community as a whole, the lived experiences and politics, so that I could continue to support and be with my friends (who had, one by one over the year or so, come out as queer in some way, as one friend group does after the first one bites the bullet) even if I "didn't really belong".

It took me a while to feel fully comfortable as asexual, and to internalise I could be aromantic too and accept that (I called myself Grayromantic for a time because I thought the squishes had been crushes, and I almost wanted to hope I wasn't completely locked from love. I've since learned better and honestly, I'm really happy as plain aroace). I went through a period of trying on all kinds of micro labels to explain my experiences, but I've come to settle on the plain old aroace label. I'm happy, and I'm happy with myself. I also found the sunset aroace flag last year and fell in love with that, too 😂

I'd like to give a huge thank you to @fuckyeahasexual for all the information and support their blog gives, and the experiences and constant acceptance and reassurance that we are all ace, and for the info they give on aromanticism too. It played a huge role in my coming out and being proud, and then being loud and proud for the remaining years of high school. It's allowed me to meet so many more aspec people, and help people figure out their own aspec identities in my real-life community.

So yeah, I am, very extremely aroace. I swing wildly between sex and romance neutral to outright repulsed, and I have no interest in a qpr or any other relationship beyond family and friendship. (Shout out to my brother for getting into a qpr and then telling his actually aroace sister about it last out of everyone!).

I've been aroace my entire life, and I've never wanted to be anything different. I've dealt with my fair share of both microaggressive and straight-up aphobia from strangers, loved ones, fandom and society in general.

And I've never related to those posts about people growing up feeling broken, and for every single aspec out there like me who skated on through life and to their identities without that trauma as well, I tip my hat to you. We are valid, we are no less aspec than those with different traumas to us, and we are no less important or alone or isolated than they are. We're all in this together, and we should all take pride and care in one another. For our similarities and shared experiences, and for our differences. Happy ace week.

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