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You know, I like to think of myself as someone who’s pretty well established in my ace identity these days. Maybe that’s true. I’ve done what I can to lend a helping hand to aces just discovering themselves, both younger and older; I churn out ace headcanons and spin thousands of words of fic upon them; I’m always growing deeper into letting myself love differently and loving myself as different.

Still, it’s only been three years since I got to meet this part of myself, after over two decades of living cluelessly. And I don’t think those lingering traces of the self-doubt we have to slog through in self-discovery ever completely go away - especially with ace and aro orientations, where you’re often forced to make do with the lack of data itself as your evidence. There’s always that notion that maybe you’re just plain wrong: wrong about yourself, wrong to cast off all the layers of invalidation the world has smothered you with, wrong to even consider the possibility that you fall outside the parameters of the norm.

These doubts can be tamed and managed, and some days I brush them off like nothing more than water droplets on my skin. When I’m well grounded in myself, I know that I wouldn’t have named myself this way if the words didn’t fit, and I remember how powerfully these concepts and experiences resonate with me. But the doubts are always there and ready to flare up when the rest of life runs you down, and on those days (and I have many), I’m afraid lest anyone put pressure on my identity when it, and I, am vulnerable. I know I cannot defend myself.

I’m hardly out to anybody offline. I know how awful and invasive people can be, and I’m not the kind of person who can handle that as I am right now, except on my very strongest days. On those rare days, I’m ready to meet the world exactly as I am, and to hell with anyone who has a problem with it: I exist thoroughly and cannot be taken from myself. But on harder days, I am too full of fear.

You’ve probably heard about how important minority representation is, and how profound and positive a psychological effect it can have on those who are starving for it. Having canon asexual characters normalizing my experience gives me backstops to catch myself when the tide wants to wash me back to what I was before I became more myself. Being able to relate to someone who experiences the world the way I do and not the way I’m ‘supposed’ to is so incredibly validating. And I don’t know that I’ve ever had a canonically asexual character that I relate to more than Sally Grissom.

I just wanted to say an open thank you to @arsparadoxica for all of Sally, and especially for the coming out scene in Ep16: Greenhouse. Her explanation of asexuality is so concise and elegant that I’m going to draw on it the next time I need to explain it. All of Sally’s dialogue is so beautiful in both writing and performance, and the particular way she speaks resonates with me on a very personal level, so hearing her discuss a topic so important to me in much the way I myself wish to is a blessing. 

Furthermore, as someone who identifies as not only asexual, but wlw and arospec, and lives at the intersection of many layered identities, I endlessly appreciate the open-ended non-exclusivity of orientations and experiences in this scene. Lastly, the solidarity and acceptance Esther and Sally find in each other is the driving strength of this scene that I’ve been listening to on loop for the past few days since I listened to Greenhouse. This is what queer women supporting each other really looks like, and that in itself is incredibly precious representation, as well.