Thoughts I needed to write out down below. Not negative or anything but very personal.
I generally refrain form using labels to describe myself (Not because I think that labels are meaningless, mind. It has more to do with the implicit claiming of community that comes with them and the fact that I don’t really feel like I belong to those communities for lack of a better phrase) but honestly the more I reflect upon myself the more I realize the qualities that have always made me feel separate from others correlate pretty strongly to aromantacism/asexuality.
I went to prom stag in high school and mostly just went out of a weird sense of not wanting to be kid who missed prom. I knew nobody would ask me and nobody did, and I was fine with that (I went with friends who were friend-dates. My prom night was interesting to say the least but that’s another story). I think I made a self-deprecating joke about it once but it was never in seriousness.
I did/still do think about dating as something other people do. I’ve pretty much thought about it this way since I was old enough to understand romance.
I distinctly remember eighth-grade me googling “what does it feel like to have a crush on someone” and “can boys and girls just be friends”. The answers to the second question were concerning to me since most of them were shitty yahoo answers posts parroting rom-com bullshit like “lol no guys and girls think ~totally~ differently”
I remember talking about arranged marriages in history class in junior high once and people (at my very Western school) being aghast at the idea while I just kinda like doesn’t seem so bad ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had a male friend in junior high/high school that apparently had a big crush on me in junior high that I was aware of and thought had gone away until one of my other friends (female) told me this wasn’t the case and I felt really uncomfortable with the change in status quo but agreed to date him anyway until I had an internalized freak out the day after in P.E. health class where I realized that couples in high school kissed and had sex and I was like NOPE and broke that shit off with him after like less than 2 days and before anyone else in our friend group knew about it. This awkward not-relationship was never brought up again and I am no longer in contact with him for unrelated reasons
Related to the above, everyone treated it as obvious that I should reciprocate this crush and sort of mindfucked me into thinking I had a crush on him even though I’m certain now that I never did
Not too long ago I was reading a post on reddit about what sexual attraction feels like (because I had to look this up isn’t that telling) and someone was talking about how they thought they were asexual until they had their thyroid checked out and turns out they just had a fucked up libido. I felt unsettled by the post and thought to myself that I don’t want to have my thyroid checked because I don’t want to change and I’m not sure what that means
