Aro Army

Context: my squish had a performance and I wanted to bring them flowers, but I was afraid it’d be interpreted as a romantic gesture. So my mom suggested I bring them a friggin cactus. 

While I did not take that advice, my best friend said that it was my duty to make the aro community claim cacti, so here I am!

Our arguments in favor of cacti are as follows:

green!

our answer to an object with romantic connotations (bouquet of flowers)

sends the message of “I love you, but respect my boundaries”

for those in the community who experience them: squishes feel like those gifs of happy dancing cacti!

like the cactus, our needs are fulfilled in a different way than is seen as typical, but we still thrive on care and love!

Thank you for coming to our TED Talk!

aro version !!

But like, if you don’t find any turtles it might be that there are no turtles or maybe you’re just really shitty at looking for turtles and maybe you THINK you saw a turtle over there or maybe it was just a stick. Maybe there are only a few turtles. Maybe you need to do something special to find the turtles. Maybe a bunch of these rocks are actually turtles but you couldn’t tell them apart. Maybe there are no turtles. You have no idea. Meanwhile some people are saying “Oh there have to be turtles! You’ll find them eventually ;)” or “How many turtles have you found in your pond?” or “Try planting some vegetables at the shore to attract the turtles.” Or “Oh no! What disaster happened to your pond that there are no turtles?” And you’re just standing there wet with an empty net and a tired expression.

But whatever because whether there are turtles or fish or not your pond’s ecology works just fine without them because that’s what eco-communities do they form a system around what they have. You aren’t missing anything if you don’t have turtles you just have a pond system without turtles. If someone tried to change you by pouring a bunch of turtles into your pond it would probably fuck something up.

Aro survivors who feel broken, because their trauma stops them experiencing amatonormative relationships.

Aro survivors who are continuously reminded of their trauma by dealing with fluctuating, grey or spiking romantic feelings.

Aro survivors who can’t reconcile the fact the only romantic relationship they have to look back on was with the person who traumatised them and stopped them ever happening again.

Aro survivors who aren’t sure if they’ll ever recover.

Aro survivors who aren’t sure if they want to recover.

Aro survivors who are trying to negotiate a new relationship with boundaries and feelings completely different to how they were before.

Aro survivors who are constantly measuring their new relationship against their pre-trauma ones that seem so easy and simple now.

Aro survivors who are constantly doubting whether it’s fair to put partners through a relationship like this.

Aro survivors who some days cannot be in love, cannot be intimate, cannot have their partner/s near them, cannot bear for them to be affectionate, can’t even gather the energy to talk to them.

Aro survivors who are so romance-repulsed that consuming any kind of mainstream media is impossibly triggering.

Aro survivors who have to deal with everyone assuming they’ll get better.

Aro survivors who constantly question whether they can truly be over the ex who traumatised them if it still affects them this much.

Aro survivors who can only imagine romantic relationships with those who traumatised them.

Aro survivors who want to reclaim their romantic attraction.

Aro survivors who can’t go back.