#but i hope you enjoy my tired‚ post 8-hour-shift ramblings about asexuality

[melynnwater]

ah shoot I missed asexuality day by a day

oh well, I wanna write my thoughts anyways :)

asexuality fucking rules and it holds a really special place in my heart (for sure) and identity (sorta)

tl;dr: I used to be ace. I am no longer ace. but boy do I still love my experience being ace and do I love all ace people

asexuality was the first step I took into queerness, it was the first piece of my identity I discovered about myself, and it kind of kickstarted the entire path that led to me now

I'm not ace now, but I sincerely don't think I was incorrect about myself when I IDed as ace, I think I've just changed and grown as a person

I remember discovering the term, discovering the specifics, and immediately feeling seen in a way I had never felt seen before. It made me recontextualize my entire life up to that point, realizing just how many oddities from my childhood and early teens made sense through that lens

I was so fucking excited that I was finally allowed to be queer. My aceness became a fundamental part of who I was, something I could be proud of, and perhaps the first amount of certainty I had ever felt in my identity

I made friends at college when I met other ace people! I helped a surprising amount of people realize that they were ace, and I started my journey away from being a vaguely liberal centrist.

cw for the next couple paragraphs: sexual trauma, sexual coercion

I had a recent realization about my last relationship (one that, I should note, went from when I was 13 to 22), namely that, a majority of the time that we had sex, I was coerced into it in one way or another. I never l almost never actually wanted to have sex with him. asexuality gave me a more "legitimate" reason to say no, and acted as a barrier in that way, something that I'm ultimately thankful for looking back on it.

pretty much as soon as I got away from that relationship, I started to feel actual sexual attraction for the first time pretty much ever. a big part of my journey of healing has to do with getting to have sexuality on my own terms, and to explore sex for myself, instead of for someone else.

I'm weirdly sad to no longer ID as ace, honestly. I wouldn't be surprised if I still exist somewhere under that umbrella, but regardless, it was such a huge part of my identity for so long, it's odd to completely redefine myself.

I'm always going to have an attachment to the ace community, and I am so happy for every ace person to get to exist comfortably as themselves, and I'm still proud of my aceness, even if it's not here in the present <3