This post is being written for the October 2016 Carnival of Aces. The theme this month is “Joining the Asexual Community,” and I am super excited to write this post because I think it is interesting to frame how I came to terms with my asexuality from the perspective of how close I felt with the community.

The first time I remember encountering the term “asexual” was watching this youtube video. I really don’t know how I ended up watching the video and I didn’t have a strong reaction to it. I think I just thought “oh huh I guess people are like that.” But I did watch all the way through the 13 minute video.

I got into tumblr significantly more since that first experience and I think I probably had seen a few posts on asexuality prior to this, but the second time I really remember hearing the word asexual was when I told a close friend of mine that I liked him. (I know, ironic, isn’t it.) When I told him, he said something along the lines of “Remember that time a guy asked me out and I told him no because I am not into men? Well I am also not really into women either. It is sort of like I am asexual, but I don’t identify that way.” I remember having thoughts like “what do you think I wanted from this relationship?” or “I don’t understand you definitely reciprocate what I feel for you.” I also remember researching asexuality quite a bit under the ruse of it being to understand my friend more... and after reading about asexuality briefly questioning whether or not I was demisexual. That time I spent questioning was squelched by not knowing the split attraction model and running into people calling others “special snowflakes.”

I settled into “straight but near asexual on the sexuality spectrum.” For all intents and purposes I forgot I ever even questioned my asexuality. But I was determined to find the aces around me.

I had this one friend who, before we were close, I assumed to be ace. I don’t remember why. Except one day, he told me he had a boyfriend. We became a lot closer and it turns out that he actually is grey-ace, but doesn’t really find that to be an important part of his identity.

There was another guy who, right before I really began questioning, I started to develop strong feelings for (which I now recognize as platonic feelings). I remember watching this youtube video on flirting a bunch of times in a row in order to memorize the steps of flirting so that I could actually flirt with him. Which did work. We held hands a couple times and sort of went on a date. I say sort of because while we were there he told me about how he didn’t “feel ready” for a relationship. In fact, he didn’t think he would ever “feel ready” for a relationship. Again, I remember thinking “What do you think I want from a relationship?” I thought he might be aro or ace. Which apparently at this point I had figured out the split attraction model. I don’t know how that happened.

Cue me, in the midst of rejection, getting sudden, unexpected feelings for a woman. Decidedly not straight feelings.

I committed to questioning my orientation. I committed to listening to my feelings whatever they ended up being. I started therapy around the same time so I was also learning how to identify basically every other emotion also. I was getting used to listening to my own emotions in a way I never did before. One day, I came to the conclusion that I was bi. That was the same day my best friend (who I had strong feelings for, yet never voiced them like I did with the two others in this story) came out to me as gay. Those two things happened within the same hour. I have never experienced so much cognitive dissonance in my life--I felt like I was purging all the remaining internalized heteronormativity from my body all at once. I can no longer even comprehend how I thought about orientation before this day because how I think now is so radically different.

After that day, there were two thoughts that were rattling around my head without making any particular sense to me:

I am capable of feeling the same strong emotions for women that I feel for men.

All three of the men who I felt strong feelings for in the first three years of college were not interested in women, yet I felt that they reciprocated my feelings for them. Maybe I only “liked” them because my subconscious deemed them “safe.”

Now it is so obvious to me that I was asexual. But it wasn’t at the time. I identified as bi. I loved how close the bi and ace communities were. It made me very excited and happy. I would just sit and think about how wonderful that was. I thought the ace community was great.

Finally I actually kissed someone and realized “hey, I never want to do this again ever.” and after that I realized fairly quickly that I was ace. It took me a little longer to say “I am aromantic and asexual,” but I at least knew I was a-spec in some way or another.

After this point I was fairly involved with the ace and aro communities on tumblr. I slowly began coming out to my closest friends. I started to want to talk to real life openly ace people. My school had an ace group, but there was no info about it online at all, which made me anxious. Plus, it was my senior year of college and I didn’t want to get involved with a group that I couldn’t stay a part of for very long. I stalked my local ace group on meetup.com, but was very nervous about actually going to an event, and nervous about the fact that I would most likely be the youngest person there.

Asexuality Awareness Week 2016: Cupiosexual Romilda Vane

Life Moves On, by your Hufflepuff Mod

Romilda never thought she’d end up here. As a school girl, she’d been... fickle. She done well enough in most of her classes, sure, but back then, she thought the most important thing was getting a boyfriend. Romila shudders when she thinks back on how many hours she spent making and perfecting love potions and remains incredibly grateful she never managed to successfully get a boy to take one, though she’d been incredibly disappointed at the time.

The War had been her wake up call. She’d thought she was protected and safe at Hogwarts, even without Dumbledore. She thought she’d be shielded from the worst of it. Instead, the worst of it came to her.

When she was given a choice to stay and fight or flee to safety, Romilda had found herself gripping her wand and walking forward to hear any orders given without even a second thought. Funny, she always thought she’d choose to flee.

Asexuality Awareness Week at Hogwarts moodboard

As long as I’m doing absurdly self-referential linkspams, have a linkspam of some notable pieces I have written.  By “notable pieces” I mean “pieces I still like, somehow, not necessarily the pieces people know me for.”

Day 1:  “But what about The Sex?”: asexuality, relationships, and the metaphorical cake

Day 2:  Other fish in the puddle: relationships, compromise, and being alone

Day 3:  An Ace Survivor’s Manifesto

Day 4:  Coming out (and coming out [and coming out {and coming out}]) 

Day 5:  Here goes everything

Day 6: Greyromanticism 301

today’s asexual awareness week theme is art and ironically it coincides with the opening of my new shop pride letters where i take any pride flag and paint it onto any letter you want! 

you can buy one here or here if you’re interested! 

Some Space Ace icons for Asexual Awareness Week

Feel free to use these! You can click on the images to see which star/moon/planet each layer is from.