I've been floating this thought in my mind for a while now. I literally wrote a poem about this - I can't shake off, within myself or coming from other people, the age old question - what if it's all trauma and mental illness?
What if I'm only asexual because of my trauma and mental illness? That poem was about the common suggestion that I experienced sexual trauma - more than the "just some sexual harassment" I know I experienced and obviously has nothing to do with it - and am experiencing amnesia. This would be the worst case scenario. "And by the way shut the fuck up, that's a horrible thing to say to someone" was my poem, and I'll add "your assumption that the only trauma women experience is sexual trauma is misogynistic". But of course I know, I already know it's not completely out of the question. And even if it's not that - what if my trauma, that I already know I have, not some secret really bad trauma that I don't know about, was sufficient to result in my lack of interest in sex?
What if one day I EMDR my way into being so much better that suddenly, I'm sexually attracted to other people?
And my aromanticism - it's even easier to assume. Fuck, the book I was reading recently, on EMDR and post traumatic stress, pointed to the inability to love others as a symptom. I think a lot of people view me through this lens, without even feeling the need to bring it up. To the large majority of people who know me and know about my trauma, who don't even know aromanticism exists, I'm probably just not able to trust men, because I'm scared of them. So either I'm a lesbian and I'm good at hiding it, or I'm not, and it's even sadder, cause I'm just so scared of men, I can't trust men, I can't get close to men.
As it is a fact that men have been horrible to me. My trauma was caused by men. It's a completely objective fact: men have been horrible to me.
But there are two things I want to say. And the first is - inability to love, my ass. I may not be able to experience love, even platonic love, with the exact same logic as other people. Maybe it's in the sense in which PTSD makes one "neurodivergent" (assuming I had nothing going on to begin with); I maybe don't see myself in the exact expressions and sensations other people have of love, and maybe indeed, my trauma influences it, maybe it makes me more wary, maybe. But I'm able to say, with my full chest, that I love men. And it hurts, you know? I love men, who hate me so much. Because men, as a whole, are not the few individual men who abused me. Because I experience aesthetic attraction, and pretty men really make me smile! Because I've also seen myself in men since I was a child, because I've gotten along so well with many men, because I've had so much fun with men. I have other influences in my life than my trauma. I may even love men, to some degree, because I was taught to love men, through what I read, watched, and listened to. But the fact of the matter is, this sentence rings true, not just in my head but also in my heart: I love men.
And if men were the most relevant example here, don't get me started on my love for women. The love that made me choose, for all my "neutral" philosophies of identity, to be a woman: to proudly proclaim my womanhood. To be able to stand next to the great people that are women.
Now onto the second thing I meant to say, or ironically the first, circling back to why I started writing this altogether:
Despite all of these doubts, one thing I feel certain of, is that no one can ever cure the aromanticism out of me.
Because aromanticism is more than just lack of romantic attraction. It's an identity, and that's very important to many, but it's also a philosophy, and that's what's most important to me. (That's also something I wrote a poem about, so at least I'm consistent.)
If, like I said above, I somehow manage to therapize myself into feeling sexual and romantic attraction... I can never undo the learning that being aromantic allowed me. I can never stop seeing amatonormativity for what it is. I can never fully rid myself of the influence of knowing that romance can and should be a choice. Even an unlikely future self who experiences romance - because to be clear, I don't really believe this can happen - will be... culturally aromantic. I don't just mean that I'd have "moved somewhere else on the aromantic spectrum". Even in a somehow fully black and white situation, I don't see how I could forget, short of being hit on the head really hard, my long-held vision of the world informed by aromanticism.
I love - I love - being aromantic. I love what being aromantic has taught me. Should my life look very different in the future, my "past" self would have still had the experiences I'm having now, the feelings and thoughts I have, that are aromantic. I can never "be fixed" of aromanticism, not only because it's nothing to fix, but also because it's more than just a lack of romantic attraction. It's a different view of life and society. It's an opportunity. An opportunity to choose for yourself your priorities, your people, and how you spend your time with them. An opportunity to feel confident prioritising yourself when you need to.
It's like these "everyone should get more aromantic now" posts. That's how I personally read them at least: everyone can benefit from at least trying to look at the world through an aromantic lens. It's freeing. I have no reason to imprison myself, just because I fancy someone some day. Being aromantic makes it easier to point at what everything is, means, and how it can make me happy.
I could probably say the same thing of asexuality. This is just my personal order of priority - and also what I feel most confident about. I feel it's easier to feel scared and unsure about asexuality. Though one idea just popped into my head: even in the worst case scenario I described above, it's not asexuality I should be scared of. Asexuality, even [in this made up scenario] temporary, would have been what allowed me to keep going, to know my limits, to regain a sense of control over my identity and my body. Asexuality would be, in this context, my opportunity to become a me that survived.
I'll keep that in mind, to comfort myself when someone tries to scare me.
