Thirty, Flirty and... Thriving?: An Aro (Short) Story
How does it feel to be 30 and a perma-single aro surrounded by people in romantic relationships? It's not as funny as it sounds. (Warning for general negative thoughts).
1990 doesn’t seem so far away, but, in reality, three decades have passed since then. That year, the Human Genome Project officially began, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, the first web server was created, the World Wide Web was funded and the first content web search engine was introduced. That was also the year the official demolition of the Berlin Wall began and when the first episode of Twin Peaks aired. 1990 is also the year I was born.
Thirty years are a lot and that’s exactly the amount of time I’ve been alive (biologically, not mentally and certainly not emotionally. Those have felt like twice as long). Since 1990, I’ve seen the economic crisis in my country, the devaluation of our national currency, protests and rallies, some of which I was part of when I was only 7 years old.
I saw our football team winning a gold medal at the Olympics, the rise and fall of pop punk music, the evolution from walkman to discman to mp3 player to streaming. I’ve owned Beta videotapes, DVD’s and a Netflix subscription. I was there when the first Spider-Man movie premiered in 2002 and I’m still here after our third live-action Peter Parker on the big screen (Andrew Garfield is the best, by the way. You can’t change my mind).
I got a college degree, I’ve traveled to another country, attended four music festivals, learned a language different than mine, written 40 fanfics from start to finish, changed jobs, successfully moderated a blog for four years and, currently, I’m taking care of my mom. I got through the influenza pandemic in 2009 and I’m now trying to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve made friends, I’ve lost friends and, this year, I said goodbye to the last of my grandparents. I could’ve probably done more, but I’d said it’s been an eventful life; however, compared to what other people around me have done, it seems like nothing.
In the last six years, my sister moved in with her boyfriend, two of my friends got married and two others had babies —those last two points only in the span of three years. Everyone in my inner circle has settled down except me and I can’t help but to feel betrayed by a generation that promised me we were going to be different, that we weren’t going to settle for normal, that we were going to be a revolution.
All these promises of long-lasting and committed friendships were forgotten once adulthood fully hit us and all the expectations about family and kids were hot on our heels. It was then when they began to cancel plans, when the texts became scarcer and meeting twice a year was considered almost an excess.
“True friendships are those in which you can spend years without talking, but still love each other as if nothing had happened”… Do we really have to be satisfied with that?
I know it’s not fair to blame them for choosing a life that doesn’t include me in the way I’d like, after all they maintain other friendships just fine, but then I wonder if it’s really a me problem or if it’s a circumstantial problem.
Is this a consequence of my inability to form long term relationships of any kind or it’s just that I can’t relate to them anymore for lack of shared experiences? Because here’s the thing: me being aromantic actively makes my relationships different from others. Not stronger, not better and not purer; just different.
When you’re 30, aromantic and perma-single, maybe you can talk with your allo friends about your jobs, but you can’t talk about dinner with your mother-in-law. You can talk about not making ends meet, but you can’t talk about the baby’s first words. You can empathize, you can be happy for them, but you can’t truly relate.
You become a listener and not an avid participant, and that breach between you and your friends turns you into someone who lives on the margins (to borrow Hannah Gadsby’s wise words) with little to nothing to share in a world that prioritizes the impossible dream of the nuclear family.
How many conversations about the latest episode of your favorite tv show can you maintain when there’s more important things to talk about, like the husband who’s looking for a house he can pay for with his new raise? How many times can you attempt to talk about random things before the conversation drifts to the baby that hasn’t stopped crying since his teeth started to erupt?
How much of this disconnection can you keep ignoring before you realize there’s nothing keeping you together?
It’s not that what you care about doesn’t matter, but when the world is so strongly ruled by the amatonormative idea of companionship, it is difficult to relate to something that’s not relevant to you.
Your life suddenly feels meaningless and, for some, it really is. You are stuck.
My life, as an aro person in a country that’s generally quite closed-minded, is different. For me, there’s no one I can consider a partner for life. My goals aren't focused on marriage or motherhood, or anything remotly close to what society considers normal. This is when the challenge to celebrate my own victories appears, because they're not what people expect of me.
At 30, it's not enough to have some success at something you love; what good is it when you have no one to share it with? And you start to be too old for the many other things you want: Too old for friends, too old for fun, too old for new experiences, too old not to have figure out life already. Too old to find someone that feels the way you do.
Am I asking too much? How do you know what the limit is when the rules were specifically designed to exclude people like you? Who gives you the guideline to communicate your emotional needs effectively without them being dismissed? How similar to them do we have to be to be included?
The goal is, then, to learn how to recognize my own value, despite following a path no one else seems too fond of. It's saying "It's great your kid has taken his first steps. I've finally made some progress on that story I've been working on for six months" or "Jeez, it's fantastic you went on that trip for your anniversary. I've recently managed to catch up on that podcast I've wanted to listen to for a long time."
The dream is to form a community. A diverse community integrated by true conviction and not because the people in it had no choice due to the high cost of living around the world. One with people that say “This is what I want” and not “This could be a lot worse.” “I chose you”, not “This was the last thing I had”.
How many chances of getting that do you still have left as you age?==================================
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Back in February when I turned 30, it really hit me that I've lived through a lot and things have changed so much since I was a kid, so I decided to write this little something for @aggressivelyarospec‘s #AggressivelyArospectacular week.
I hope this... expands your horizons? And, if you're aro and over 30, hit me up with a message; together we're stronger. Fuck, do it either way if you're younger, I'm so up to talk about all this with you guys.