Before I turned 16 this year, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.
This isn’t a post that you should be alarmed about or whatever so you can chill but... anyway, ever since I was young, I knew that I just wasn’t exclusively attracted to guys.
There is this one friend from highschool who came out to me as bisexual in junior year of high school and since then, I’ve always thought of my sexuality. I think, since junior year, I have always put off trying to find out what my sexuality is because I thought “what if my parents find out I was attracted to girls, what would they say?” and the fear of hurting my parents stopped me from thinking about my sexuality.
But on the months after I graduated from highschool and before I turned 16, I started thinking about my sexuality again, this time, I didn’t put what my parents would think first. At this time of thinking, I thought I was bisexual, I even came out to one friend about being bisexual and if she’s ever reading this, you know who you are and I love you. I knew that I could get attracted to anyone regardless of their gender, and I knew that I am not just attracted to guys. But, along the way of practicing to call myself a bisexual, I thought that that label didn’t define me well enough. I felt like it wasn’t the correct term and even though at that time I thought that bisexuality was what my sexuality felt like, it still didn’t feel right enough.
Then, on July, I read up more about pansexuality, I actually read about it on 2013 and a thought at the back of my head kept telling me that I might be pansexual but I denied that thought... I thought I was too young to even find out what I am attracted to back at that time but two years later, I was there writing on my journal about thinking that I might be pansexual or rather, panromantic. I thought that I could love anyone regardless of their gender, because that is how I’ve always viewed love. That love is limitless and whatever their preference may be to the world, love is love and their physical appearance doesn’t matter. And I started to get more comfortable with that term, I am more comfortable with calling myself a pansexual/panromantic because that is how it felt like. Although, I was so confused at that time that I stopped identifying as a bisexual and/or as a pansexual.
Today, August 29, 2015, I saw a post on tumblr while scrolling through my dash explaining the spectrum of sexuality and romantic preferences. And a certain label caught my attention, demi. Then, I read up about it. I’ve always heard the term demisexual in this site but never thought that I could actually identify as a demisexual so I stuck with pansexuality and bisexuality but today, after so so so so much thinking, I finally figured out that I am panromantic/demisexual.
Here’s the story of how I figured out that I was demisexual. Demisexuality, by the way, is rarely or not feeling sexual attraction unless a bond is formed.
In elementary school, I only had a crush on one person. And even though at that time we weren’t friends or didn’t have a connection, his personality was what got through me. That’s the first time I felt attracted to another person as far as I can remember. When I entered highschool, that crush faded and for two straight years, I didn’t have another crush and I didn’t feel like I was attracted to anyone at all, be it boy or girl. Though, there is one person who I became friends with and then... I felt attracted to them. There was connection, there was friendship and they were the one that I was attracted to for the rest of highschool. And along the way, I felt an attraction to a close friend who was a girl but she was my friend, so I tried to stop that because you can’t do that to friends. Eventually, the sudden sexual/romantic attraction to this friend faded away because we didn’t talk that much anymore after graduation. We still talk though.
Now, I am in college and I rarely find myself attracted to anyone anymore. Because I am in a new environment, I am with new people and there isn’t attraction yet. I have a friend who has crushes on both girls and boys (but says that she isn’t bisexual) and I’m just here trying to understand what it’s like to have a crush on someone based on primary attraction... like I find it so hard to empathize to that feeling anymore? And literally my friends and classmates would talk to me about their crushes and the people they are attracted to and I’d just try my best to empathize with them because I don’t feel that... I rarely get attracted to a celebrity now, I think that I’d just find them aesthetically pleasing but not essentially sexually attracted to them. And I’ve always joked about something being wrong with me when my friends ask me if I have crushes in my university and I tell them that I don’t have crushes. Like, I try so so so hard to form crushes but it just doesn’t get to me. There are a lot of conventionally good looking people in my university as people would say so I tend to feel so weird and broken because I have never been attracted to anyone in my university. When my friends talk about crushes, I try to empathize by telling them about the boy who I find aesthetically pleasing with the nice smile but I know that I am not attracted to him in that way. When my friends freak out over crushes I just feel so... I don’t know how to explain it’s just so so weird. For a period of time, I thought I was broken, I thought that not being attracted to people made me broken but today, I finally figured it out because of that one tumblr post.
I am a panromantic demisexual, I could be romantically attracted to anyone regardless of their gender but I could only get sexually attracted only after forming a bond or a strong connection with them. Like, this just feels so good to finally figure it out by myself, I finally know what my preference is and that just feels so nice and now I don’t feel broken, I don’t feel like something is wrong with me anymore. When I was showering a while ago, I was smiling to myself thinking about this, because it felt right, because I finally have something to label myself as and I just don’t fall in the ??? part of sexuality/romantic preference.
Consider this as my coming out post, I don’t know if I’ll ever tell this to my parents because I don’t want to break their heart knowing their daughter is queer as hell but if I ever fall in love with a person who is not a cismale then I will. I don’t really know why I’m publishing this post but I just needed to let this out, I just needed to do something to express my identity and I hope that whoever takes the time to read this long post understands, and if you do, please tell me because even though I identify as panromantic demisexual, I am still trying to understand every part of it.
I don’t know if this will change, knowing that I have changed the sexuality I identify as so much because I was trying to figure it out but all I know is that this is the surest I’ve ever felt about this and I hope you understand. Thank you for taking the time to read this.