Happy Ace Spectrum Awareness Day!
I’m McKala, a demisexual cisgirl from North Carolina, who will be moving to Kansas in August to start college at KU!
It took a long while for me to realize I was demisexual biromantic. I believed I was hetero for most of the 17 years of my life, simply because that’s what was the norm and until I was fifteen I wasn’t aware of but three sexualities. You could be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, and that was it, right?
So I began to, for a short time, identify as bi. I never told anybody, I was afraid to; my mother is in her early forties and has in the last ten or so years, realized that she, too, has an attraction to other women, I don’t know why I was afraid, honestly. But I was.
And right as I was feeling like I was ready to come out, bisexual felt wrong to me, the word, because...I wasn’t bisexual. And I was also afraid to embrace this because of my Christian faith. I struggle with my sexuality and my Christianity still; I can’t wrap my head about how either could be mutually exclusive. So I didn’t come out, it was just easier that way.
But then I discovered the term asexual and finally, finally, finally! A word that fit me. I first came out as ace to my friend Dustin, second, to my friend Rachel whom I met because of glee club. It felt good. Naming this. I’d felt broken and wrong because I never felt sexual desire...but a few times, only fleeting, so I thought I made a mistake and identified as asexual.
Until two things. 1.) I had other instances of sexual attraction to close friends who I knew loved me and I loved them in some ways and I accepted them as such; 2.) I understood what demisexual meant, really understood.
I came out as asexual in June of 2013, I identified as such until September 2014, when I realized that wasn’t ace, but demi. And finally? I’m settled into this label.
Sexuality is fluid, it can change over time, and it can take a while to figure yourself out. I’m sharing my journey to the ace spectrum to tell everybody that it’s okay to not know for a while, it’s okay to go through three different sexuality labels until you discover who you are.
