#somename

Thank you for sharing with us!

Hi!! Thank you for the ask ✨

Thanks for asking!!

It’s quite a common story, I think. I grew up knowing about the existence of gay and bi people (but as a vague concept in media, not having any out queer people in my day-to-day life) so I just assumed I was straight as a default, a “late bloomer” since I never had any crushes at all. So I just never thought about my orientation and lived my life as a happy, oblivious child.

At age 11, I moved to a different country and it felt like all my new classmates were dating and being really giggly all of a sudden, and I flip-flopped between thinking either that this was a weird kind of culture difference, or that they were exaggerating to be cool, or that I was too “wise and mature” to be bothered with these things, or that I was a “late bloomer” and would develop feelings when I was older. (I also had a random thought about possibly being bi, since I felt the same way about everyone regardless of gender, but pretty quickly realised that wasn’t it)

That went on until I was around 14 or 15, when I started googling …cause I thought “something must have happened by now, surely!” and I found the word asexual, which fit me, and the word aromantic a couple months later, which fit as well. And I kind of fell into an internet rabbit hole of blogs and forums and youtube videos of aspec people sharing their journey, and felt so at home and so seen in the aro discussions I saw.

I came out to very select people as “questioning possibly being on the asexual spectrum” while I was in my last years of high school, and finally in my late teens/early twenties I decided to just identify as aroace.