there's something so uniquely tragic about the experience of being aro and going through your own type of unrequited love. when you desperately want to know someone down to each of their quirks, spend your time with them, be vulnerable and share your deepest secrets, live with them, be their first option - but you can't, because all of those things are reserved for their romantic partner. they'll never feel the same way about you, and if they do, then comes the irony: you can't then reciprocate because then it's in a romantic context only. it's such an awful feeling to click with someone in a way you've never clicked with anyone else, think that they might be your soulmate, and have everyone around you ask "why aren't you dating? you'd make such a great couple" and maybe even feel that "well, maybe I could try" only to realize it's viscerally uncomfortable for you to even think about "trying" at all. that's not the type of love you want. but it's the type of love they want, in the end. and you desperately try to wonder if you should try to enter a romantic relationship with them, just to hold that spot in their life, just so you can be as special to them as they are to you - just to desperately cling onto what you have before it fades away. because after all, at some point they'll want and have a partner - and that partner won't be you. and from the moment that they have them, you'll never get the chance to be this close to them again. slowly you'll feel them pulling away as you can't do anything about it but watch, because you can't simply get "in between" a couple. certain attitudes and types of closeness are reserved for one type of love only. despite not being allo, you see yourself stuck in that same old tale you've always heard of: being "in love" with someone in a way in which they simply cannot reciprocate. they'll never be "in love" with you back, and as each day passes by you feel the tension inside you increasing, as if you're only counting the days before the ultimate tragedy arrives and you'll just never speak to them or laugh with them or cry with them again. you'll just watch from afar with an ache in your chest, and now suddenly you understand what was so painful about all those cliché unrequited love stories you used to see everywhere.
