#also agender

So when I was but a young Dark Lordling, I spent many a day reading at the school library. I was an anxious nervous mess with horrid social anxiety, and I'd stick my nose in a book and read the day away, content to let life pass me by and convinced I wouldn't make it to adulthood and so didn't put a lot of effort into thinking about my future.

Hella depressed basically. But this isn't about that, and I'm in a much better place now.

The point is I read a lot, specifically fiction books, and only the things they had at my school library, as I didn't have any way to get to the public one in my down time. Wanna know the number one available fantasy books at a high school library?

Romance. Teen romance, full of love triangles and all kinds of romantic teen drama. And I read around three books a week, so I tore through them quickly. And, as you might be aware, romance books have a lot of romance, and romance tends to be tied up with sexual attraction, even if it was watered down for teen eyes.

Another thing that was going on is I was in a terrible high school in the middle of the desert where half the student body was distantly related to each other in some form or another, teenagers were getting into messy relationships, breaking up and cheating and getting pregnant around me, while I huddled in the library and knew 0 of the drama going on in my school because i wasn't involved and could not care less. I'd hear about it at lunch from my friends talking about it, and the pace at which relationships formed and fell apart truly was staggering to me.

A born stay in my laner if there ever was one.

At this point my father had already asked if i was gay, and the idea was so befuddling he never asked about my dating life again when i asked him how me not dating made me gay and he didn't want me to question his thought process ever again.

So!

Be me. Be 14ish years old. All the books have teen girls drooling over two boys, people throwing themselves at each other because they were 'irresistible' or they 'couldn't help themselves'. Obviously none of that actually happens in real life! Its very easy to pick between people, because no matter how good looking one guy is he's a major asshole. This is just written this way for drama purposes, because these are fiction books :) People choose who they want to date based on aesthetics and nothing else. Teen crushes were just a list of actors you liked who were good at their job (mine was dean winchester because i thought he was funny, and literally no other reason). Getting a partner or dating in any way never even occurred to me as something I'd want to do, because why? What was the point of it if all you did was hold hands more and kiss and see movies or something. Kissing's gross (sensory it makes me gag, bleh), its too hot to hold hands, and I can go to the movies with my friends, so...???

Then I looked at everyone around me and feel nothing but annoyance, fear, or general pleasantness, normal human feelings towards other people. The same as I've always been my whole life. Puberty was nothing to me because I barely changed and deserts are already hot so the sweatiness didn't even register as an issue.

Except everyone around me is dating and being total idiots. Why are girls doing things for boys? Why are boys being assholes for girls? Are my peers really that stupid? Why date at all if your going to mess up your friendships? Why did all these fantasy books have romance in them as a plot, when all i wanted was to read about dragons and magic and castles? Reading so much romance was making me more annoyed by the day, and even now there's nothing more boring to me than romance books.

Except no one else was speaking up and saying 'hey, why are all of you idiots now? You turned fourteenish and became a bunch of stupid assholes for no reason? Why are we getting into petty fights and yelling about break ups instead of playing pretend and comparing Pokemon cards! I want to talk about dragons and magic, not whose dating who and what actors and actresses you'd want to date! I don't want to date any of them, why would you!'

There had to be something wrong with me.

Thats what i thought for maybe a week, analyzing my elder sisters suddenly stupid decisions about boys after not caring for years, up until i stumbled onto a post about asexuality (on tumblr, i've been here a while), and how it was the lack of sexual attraction, and everything clicked.

I wasn't broken, i just didn't feel the same things as everyone else. Problem solved, i went back to my day to day and continued not to care about what anyone else around me was doing with their love lives, I had better things to do. Like get into Wheel of Time and try to cram it all in my brain over one semester.

Then a few years later I saw a post about aromanticism, and the idea of romantic attraction being a thing that existed never even crossed my mind, so I added that to my identity and continued on with life.

Over the years i've turned the idea of partners over in my head, but I'm sexually repulsed so I never really felt the need to change that for me, and every time i contemplate dating the idea of going on dates to get to know someone in a romantic sense always sounds like the most soul crushing boredom imaginable. I get that some people need another person, but I cannot fathom the feeling. Like why?? Do you need a date?? If i want to go to dinner i'll go by myself, and if there's another person i need to consider when making my decisions i lose time pursuing my own interests. I don't want to snuggle someone or hold hands or any of that! I can't think of why you need anything other than friends in your life, or why our society makes such a big deal about marriage and sexuality, when to me its a non issue.

My best advice is to think long and hard about if you feel something when looking at others, and how those ideas make you feel. Its hard to define and feel the lack of something, and some people are demi for a reason, but you have your whole life to explore so don't feel rushed.