Hello there - I only just discovered your blog today. I'm sorta questioning if I'm afamilial but I think I have some internalised aphobia that's preventing me from thinking about it holistically (for context, I am aspec in other ways (arospec). This ask got long so sorry about that!
What doesn't help my situation is that I was adopted aged 2, due to my bio parents being teenagers when I was born. Unfortunately my adoptive family turned out to be abusive, so I cut them off when I was 20. Naturally, I have a lot of trauma and difficult feelings around family, which when I question afamiliarity, I get scared about in case I'm just mistaking trauma for being afam. But then when I think about it in the abstract, even in positive situations like queer found family or friends in the past metaphorically "adopting" me, I feel really aggravated by it in a way I can't easily explain.
I love my friends and know they mean well, but found family makes me feel this heavy black weight in my stomach. Like, I would almost say repulsion. I just sorta nod and go along with it but I kinda loathe how common it is to foist the idea of found family on someone without asking. When I lived with my ex's family post-cutitng off my own, his parents kept saying I was like a "third son" and kept joking about how they've basically adopted me. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful for their support but something about being subsumed by a family unit without asking made me feel afraid. Despite all the trauma my adoptive family caused, it's not that I don't care about them on some level. I just, hate the expectation to have a relationship with people simply because I'm related (by blood or adoption) to them.
I actually tracked down my birth mum aged 23 (I'm 24 now) and while it's nice to have her in my life and know more about my blood relatives, I'm finding it hard to feel like this is a mother-son relationship and not simply A Person who I have met. It could just be the adoption throwing a spanner in the works there, but on the other hand, she isn't abusive like my adoptive parents were. Despite this, I often feel like we wouldn't be friends if we weren't related. It might even sound heartless or callous but knowing things like conditions that run in the family was as big a motivator to finding my birth mum as it was knowing her as a person. I'm ashamed to think if I told anyone irl, they'd think I only care about her so I can fill in gaps of info I've had for the last 2 decades.
I discovered I have a half-sister too, but I don't get on with her at all. My friends think it's weird I call her my half-sister. It seems like people would prefer I just said sister. But I could go the rest of my life not knowing her and I wouldn't really care. People might say "oh but she's family" but that elicits nothing from me except the societally imposed guilt I've been told I "should" feel for not feeling a familial bond with her.
There's more but I've rambled enough already. Sorry for how haphazard this ask is.
Sometimes I'm like "I could be afamilial" and other times I feel like someone could easily go "it's just trauma" - but idk about that. It's like when people say aces and aros with trauma can't be ace or aro - or their aspec identity isn't valid if it's come *from* trauma. This is a long winded way to ask though- is it possible to be afamilial *because* of trauma? I keep asking myself whether I was just born like this and would have felt this way if I had a "normal" family, or whether I'm like this because of the things that have happened. Do any of my experiences chime with afamiliarity to you?
Anyway, thank you for reading this ask and for this blog
- (You can call me Ty)
Hi, Ty! I'm unable to label you, only you can do that for yourself, but it sounds like it could be afamiliality, definitely. And you absolutely can be afamilial because of trauma, the microlabel regarding it is caedfamilial if you'd prefer that. I wish you well.
