#And I know I'm lucky not to have been subject to any major medical discrimination

[aroandawkward]

When I was 16, my parents took me to the doctor because my periods hadn't started yet. And my mum told the doctor that I hadn't had a crush yet and asked if that could be connected. And the doctor didn't really say that my lack of attraction was a sign of something wrong, but he didn't say that it wasn't. I remember him using the word limerence and I didn't know what that meant. I remember him saying something about the age at which it's usually experienced and it was an age which I'd already passed. I remember him changing the subject without any real resolution to my mum's question.

At the time I didn't think much of it, but looking back now, I'm angry. I'm angry that my mum, with all her good intentions, thought that (what I now know to be) my orientation could be a medical problem. I'm angry that that possibility was raised to me before I learnt the words asexual and aromantic. I'm angry that my mum probably doesn't even remember this incident. I'm angry that the doctor didn't tell me that some people never experience attraction and there's nothing wrong with them. I'm angry that none of us - not me nor my mum nor the doctor nor anyone else I knew at that point in my life - knew that me never feeling attraction was a perfectly healthy possibility.