So! I’ve been coming up with these little PARABLES to explain my aroace experience. I LOVE THEM, they’re like children’s stories that I offer to people who demonstrate in good faith that they are trying to understand what I am going through.
The most recent one is the where I explain how I am moving from what I COULD (?) offer to what I DO HAVE to offer.
It’s like someone coming into your fruit shop and saying, "Hey do you sell tomatoes?"
And you’re like, "um, there’s a vegetable shop next door?"
And they start insisting that tomatoes are technically a fruit and you SHOULD be offering it. And then you figure, you know what, I could go next door and get some for this guy.
So you go out the back door to the vegetable shop, and pay for a couple of tomatoes. You bring them back, hand them to the guy, and he goes off happy.
Great. That was an interesting experience.
He comes back. Again, he wants tomatoes. Again you say, “I am a fruit shop, I sell fruit.”
He says, “Tomatoes are red, those look like tomatoes, give me those.”
You hand him a couple of apples. He takes a bite. He says “these are terrible tomatoes.”
You say, “They’re not tomatoes, and they’re not awful. They are apples, and they are excellent.”
He isn’t listening.
Again, you go next door, buy tomatoes and hand them to this guy.
This happens over months, and by now, you’re this guy's sole provider of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, sometimes gourds… all fruit, right?
He’s somewhat happy. You’re confused. Also maybe happy he's happy?
The shopkeeper next door is charging double, and you’re paying the extra out of your own pocket.
You're counting your earnings, wondering why you're always short, and you realise you have been bleeding money to provide vegetables you never had in stock.
You should have said: “Yes, these ARE terrible tomatoes.” And then just waited for him to leave.
Also, you realise the reason why this guy kept coming back is because your shop doesn’t have a signboard. You thought displaying your fruit wares would make it clear, but no. You really do need a signboard.
So you make a signboard. It says “FRUIT SHOP”, with the tagline “I sell fruit, not veggies”.
The guy returns. He is upset. “When did you become a fruit shop??”
++++++++
To be clear, I am not making fun of the guy.
I am, however, espousing signboards.
Also, as a seller of fruit, I should never have bought veggies to resell. But I didn’t know. Because tomatoes are fruit? Also, the guy seemed so sure, and I was less sure. But now I’m not confused.
I am in elementary school. I have discovered something in myself that is different from my peers. I have no words to express this feeling, so I instead live in discomfort for years and years and believe it to be normal.
I am in seventh grade. I have lost my entire friend group because a rumor was spread that because I am queer, I must be a creep. My last sleepover with those friends was spent sitting in the same room as them while they texted each other talking shit about me.
I am in seventh grade. I have endured homophobic bullying from snarky comments to food being thrown at me in the cafeteria, and today finally swing back. I get one of the bullies on the floor and the teacher breaks us up. I get in trouble for fighting while she continues to bully me. Nothing is done about the bullying when I speak up about it.
I am in seventh grade. I am being outed to my entire classroom by the people I share a table with. They are walking to every single desk and telling each classmate I am queer. I watch as every head turns to look at me in disgust. I am completely alienated from that class and spend my days working alone.
I am fourteen or fifteen. The discomfort I have lived with my entire life finally has a name: dysphoria. I have come out to my family as trans. I am in my room alone on my birthday, crying because every card has "girl" on it.
I am fourteen or fifteen. I get a tone with a family member because I am tired of her excuses for continuously misgendering me. Her husband corners me outside and threatens to hit me if I ever talk back to her again, and tells me my identity is made up. My family sides with him.
I am fifteen and sixteen. I wish I could die instead of living in stagnancy.
I am seventeen. My country is passing law after law to restrict my community. Trans people are going missing and being murdered, and their lights are snuffed without so much as a whimper. I am disgusted and afraid and grieving alongside my trans brothers, sisters, and siblings.
I am twenty. I do not speak to much of my family anymore, my mother has only ever called me my birth name, and I have lost every single friend I ever had except one, and had to rebuild myself and my circle from the ground up. Family holidays are hollow. I have self harm scars permanently etched on my skin, purple half-moons under my eyes that are like stains at this point, and I will never forget how I have been treated and what I have endured. My heart breaks knowing millions out there experience the same things and worse.
I am twenty. I am crying in my boyfriend's arms about not feeling like a real man. I am hearing him reassure me that he sees me for me and he loves me as the man I am. My small friend group strictly calls me by my chosen name and pronouns. I am in love, I have more support than ever, and for once, I'm starting to feel glad I'm alive, glad that I held on. For once, I have hope.
I am twenty. It is pride month and I am hearing the same complaints over and over again. And I am not apologizing for existing a little more brightly this month. We have all fucking earned it.
Aroace culture is getting really excited for pride month for the first time because you finally found people in the queer community who accept and celebrate a-spec people!!
Asking for touch as an aspec is so weird like “hey, please touch me, but not in a sex/romance way, just in a human contact way. Interact with my body’s touchscreens. Punch me in the face or something. Please. I’ll take anything at this point.”
Edit: of course everyone here has blanket permission to tag this as Blorbo from their Shows. We love seeing representation, implicit or explicit.
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