Let me tell you something...
Possible triggers: Internalized aphobia, non-explicit sex mentions, mentions of anxiety.
Excuse my grammar/wording/spelling/sentence placement problems. English isn't my first language and I tried my best.
So. I’m usually not one to talk about personal stuff with friend or family, much less online, but I felt the need to write AND share the story about how I dealt with being a-spec and just finding out recently (today) that it is ok to not have all the answers right at this moment, and that I’m not the only one who felt like didn’t belong, like something in her didn’t fit in “normalcy”. So here it is, I hope you don’t get bored.
All my life (or as far as I can remember) I’ve always felt off. Off like something was missing in me, or the way I viewed things.
I was a kid who liked “boys” stuff for a while, and then I started liking “girls” stuff, and then it was all a mash-up of both, which my mother always accepted and supported, so I felt like that “off thing” wasn’t my tastes or my gender identity. I always got along with boys better than with girls when younger and that was never questioned either, not by my family nor myself, so that wasn’t “it” either. When growing up I started getting along with older people better than kids/teenagers my own age, and I started having a better relationship with girls than with boys. Mind you, I thought all of this was normal, and it is, but I never stopped and asked myself “Why am I going around trying to fit in? What am I looking for? What ‘s missing?”.
I had a few crushes when I was a teenager, all of them were boys who looked a certain type of way, all of them impossible to have: one of them liked my best friend, the other was too old for me, and the other liked the most popular girl. The interesting thing was that I never felt the “urge” to be with them, or the pain from not being able to be in a relationship with them. I was content with just being their friend, even helping them get together with their own crushes. The thought of being in a romantic relationship never crossed my mind. I never once thought that me not having any sort of interest in love and even sex while my peers were already experiencing all of that was “unordinary”.
During the time I was 16 I thought for a while that maybe my lack of interest was probably because I just didn’t like boys, so in my last year of high school with the help of alcohol (pls kids don’t do this, drinking underage is illegal) I had my first kiss, ever. With a girl. And I didn't like it. Nope, it wasn’t because it was with a girl or just because she didn’t kiss well, because she did, I think ( I was inexperienced, ok?). It was because the act of kissing struck me like nothing more than just a very long exchange of saliva and an awkward tongue swords play. Me being me ignored that fact by just thinking “probably it’ll feel different when I actually like someone.”
2 of my 3 best friends had never had any sort of relationship and were not in a rush to be in one, so I thought I was just the same as them.
Brief pause to pat my young, innocent, oblivious, and confused 16 yo self.
Didn’t really think about the matter again until I was 17, moved to another country with a different language and the family I hadn’t seen for 14 years started asking the questions people asked my mom instead of me “Any boyfriend? Do you like someone? How many boyfriends have you had? None? Why? Are your standards that high? What’s wrong?”
And then I remembered. I remembered never wanting a boyfriend. I remembered never really liking someone. I remembered craving friendship with multiple and all sorts of people, but never craving something that should be normal to crave for at my age. I remembered always thinking that something in me felt like was “turned off”, and never really thinking about it (Now I know it was because I was scared of what I would find if I looked into it, scared that I wasn’t “normal”). I remember my mother being asked about me and my lack of any type of interest in the matter and her saying “there’s no rush. It’ll come when it has to come.”
I did not, in fact, know what was wrong with me.
The anxiety I’d had since the age of 14 started getting worse and worse and the voice inside of my head wouldn’t stop asking what was wrong with us. That voice started attacking me, calling me names like “heart of ice” or “ice queen” (as cliche as it sounds), would never shut up about how I would end up alone because no one ever could love someone who couldn’t love. “How can you love romance books and not like someone real? Are you nuts? You probably are. You are broken.”
I got scared of myself and others too.
I always was a bright, outgoing yet shy person; my friendly nature always making me want to be close to people, but after my anxiety became a bottomless pit I started pushing people away in an unusual way. I would get close to them enough to call them friends but after a while, I would distance myself from them, never replying to texts or always canceling on them, for instance. I made sure I kept myself close enough to never feel lonely but the moment I felt too close I would take 2 steps back. (This, sadly, is something I still have to deal with and am trying to change, not only with friends but family too.)
Months after I felt my first “like” for someone (which honestly it was just me being completely dazed by his kindness, nothing more). It was fast and stupid and didn’t make sense, I was learning a new language and starting a new job and we just got close and I knew it had no future but I didn’t care because I had hope again, hope that I wasn’t broken and could finally talk about butterflies and fireworks and even heartbreak.
He liked me back (surprise!!), but I remember not being happy, nor excited, nor…. Disappointed.
“Probably if I kiss him I’ll know if I really like him. Perhaps, if I kiss him, I will feel something again.”
After a very, very uncomfortable and wet and too long for my liking kiss, I remember feeling nothingness, emptiness, the kind you feel when you aren’t hungry nor full. Like when you listen to a song you used to love but feel nothing and think nothing, just an “Oh. Cool. That’s a nice song.”
It didn’t work out of course.
“Probably he just wasn’t the right one.”
I lost a friend and a little bit of myself after that.
At the age of 18, my best friend confessed to me, he told me he had liked me for a long time. Of course, my oblivious self didn’t notice and hurt him, hard.
Worst part, I didn’t like him back. I was so afraid because I knew what that meant. My best friend would leave me because broken me couldn’t make herself feel something for him. (I was in a dark place guys, pls bare with my drama.)
And yet, I would never lie about something so serious, so I didn’t. And I was right, he said he couldn’t deal with just being my friend, and he was completely right. I could not ask him to still be friends when he felt so much for me. I just didn’t understand (because how could I?), but I agreed and respected his feelings. He was several years older than me and had had past serious relationships, so I trusted his experience.
After several days of no communication whatsoever, he texted me again and devoted all his free time to win me over, no kidding.
(Later I would find out it was my mother who convinced him that he had to fight for me, that I was just, for some reason, scared and closed off to the idea of having a relationship. She blamed my dad, whom I didn’t have a good relationship with for a good chunk of my life, for being the reason why I never let any man get close enough to me. How could I blame her? She never suspected I was different because I never told her anything.)
And a month later, I started liking him. Like, really, really, liking him. We started going out and eventually, I fell in love. I loved the way he would make me feel. I loved how much he accepted me and how open-minded he was. I loved we liked most of the same stuff and that our hobbies were so alike. I loved how different he was to my dad. I loved how gentlemanly he was. I loved many things about him; I loved him in my own, different way. Different, because kisses for him were butterflies and summer and oceans and to me never felt any different than just two mouths moving against each other; they weren’t disgusting, they weren’t meaningless, they just were kisses. Different, because he needed sexual affection, and I didn’t. Different, because sex was such an important thing for him, that I would do it just to make him happy. Different, because to me, joining hands and cuddling were more than enough to show my love. It was different, not less or more, even if he believed until the last day that he loved me more.
I broke up with him two years later and it was painful and ugly and illuminating.
Heartbreak meant that my dependency on him needed to be replaced with dependency on myself. I needed to trust and listen to myself more than ever. I needed to stop looking for validation and assurance that “yes, you are normal, you just take your time.”
I needed to stop listening to the voice that repeated “you will always hurt whoever approaches you because you can’t give them what they need” over and over again.
Being alone trying to find answers made me join a talented community that welcomed me with open arms and a lot of love and acceptance. A community that gave me the gift of meeting extraordinary people who, in their own way, felt the same as me and never rejected/judged me for that. Made me realize that my taste in stuff is broader than I thought and that it was ok to like certain stuff. It made me accept myself and others. Made me take pride in who I was and never, ever, feel bad about it.
Thanks to this community, and these people, I got to understand I was Demiromantic Asexual (with gray areas).
That not wanting kids is not some crazy millennial nonsense like my family kindly (haha) makes sure to let me know every time I bring the topic up.
That being indifferent to kisses and sex but needing affection and hugs and touches is not contradicting.
That being open to being with someone but also being happy alone is normal.
In my 20s I wholly comprehend I still have a lot to learn about myself, that I might not fall fully under one label but many and I don’t know yet, but that’s what growing up means. And for the first time in my whole life, I’m excited to see what more I have to offer.
Notes: Special thanks to @kkazulwolf because they were kind and awesome enough to listen to me, let me ask questions and reassure me It is ok.
