#i am the perpetual 'walk behind the group on the sidewalk' friend. and the frustrating thing is that it's often by choice

[cosmiicfairy]

🗑

[hecktic-creations]

Growing Pains

Intro

I at first wasn’t going to do anything for Pride Month this year. I haven’t been in the best mental space and couldn’t think of a topic of discussion. But in an effort to figure myself out and reconnect with me, I have been writing an essay in my head. I’ve been referring to it as Growing Pains, so I suppose that ended up being the title. This essay I owe more to myself than anyone else, but I wanted to share it too, to give others a new perspective on things. I have been seeing more and more people excluding acespec people from LGBTQ spaces saying that they aren’t oppressed so they shouldn’t count. As someone who’s identified as Asexual but never really felt comfortable bringing it up, since whenever I did people told me I was lying or I would grow out of it, this feels like an attack from a community that I thought supported me. Most of my posts are on my trans identity, and this is because I feel more comfortable talking about it. I still hold a grudge against myself for being ace, because I’ve only ever been told that life isn’t truly complete without a significant other. I’m done ignoring this part of my identity though, as it has been such a key part of my being for such a long time. While discovering my relationship with gender has helped me feel more whole, it hasn’t been until more recently. I have been fighting a battle with myself my whole life about being ace, it wasn’t until I looked back that I realised this though. So that’s what this is, me finally coming to terms with my ace identity in coalition to a past I only vaguely remember.

Growing Pains

My younger years weren’t easy for me. All the situations and all the circumstances of my life, logically have been fine. Quiet, maybe. But for me, they have been hurdles. Each and every action. I describe a day by how much “effort” I have. There are good days with plenty and bad days where I have none. If I’ve run out of effort, I won’t be able to do much more that day. It’s always been like this but I’ve mostly ignored it, not a good idea. Because of this, I didn’t do much outside of school with anyone as it was “too much effort” in the way that I couldn’t bring myself to get over the hurdle and into the action. If something required more than a few steps I simply couldn’t do it. But there weren’t many people to do extracurricular activities with anyways. I never felt like I belonged to a group, more an outsider allowed to interact because everyone else was too polite to say anything. As a result I’ve never really allowed myself to get close to anyone, expecting them to one day betray me, or simply move on and leave me behind. Maybe we can blame my inability to connect, my personality, my being queer but not knowing it, the people around me. All of this, none of this. Doesn’t matter in the end. Most of my younger personality felt like a lie I had constructed to be able to interact with my peers. Elementary school I had to make up crushes I’d never felt before. Middle school I had to try and feel excited about a future I never really expected to come. Every interaction felt like perpetuating the lie, until it became my truth. I‘ve never had much in the way of romantic experiences. There was a boy in fifth grade who asked me out when I was in third, I was uncomfortable with the thought of dating --let alone someone So Much Older than me-- so refused. He thought it was because I hated him. I told him it wasn’t but he didn’t speak to me again. Later that year he got expelled for stealing money from the book fair so maybe that was for the best. Depending on you definition of it, my first kiss was a surprise to both me and the kid who kissed me. I was leaving an event with my family, but had walked too far ahead. I stopped by the edge of the sidewalk to wait for them and a boy I had spoken with on several occasions but we never really interacted was walking by with his mother. I think it was his idea of a greeting, but he kissed me and moved on. His mom told him not to kiss people like that, he said he was just being nice.  Beyond that, I haven’t kissed anyone. Nor do I plan to. I remember someone telling me that once I kissed someone for real I would understand how good it felt and would want to do it again. But I just don’t see the appeal. Maybe I gave off a vibe of not wanting to, but after elementary, no one asked me out during school. Indeed the next time anyone would was outfront of the liquor store I worked at last year. He quickly dropped it when I said I was trans. I am glad no one ever did because I think the sheer shock of it would have done me in. I’d never seen myself as good enough to date in the first place. I was never bullied, more like ignored entirely. Which was perfectly fine by me then, but looking back it was lonely. There were close friends through it all, and I think I owe it to them that I made it this far. Not gonna name any names, but I hope you know who you are. It’s hard for me to remember my childhood. Really, anything past a year ago is hazy at best. It’s not a poor memory exactly because I’ve proven to have a good one, it’s more. There wasn’t enough good to remember so my brain decided throw all of it out. If I can recall, it feels like a story I’ve read. Something to think about, but not my own experience. It’s not me. I can’t connect. 

High school is different. Newer in my mind, and more intact. More friends, more experiences. Really it’s where I as a person began. It’s where I learned the words that described me, learned that other people like me were real. I wasn’t just broken. It’s where I started to sluff of the lies from my youth. As a defense, I’d shut down my connection to my emotions. I remember clearly the last time I fully felt anything. I was seven. I was angry about something petty, I got scared of my own anger. Promised I wouldn’t get that mad again, guess that was true. I always thought that my inability to think of anyone else romanticly was because of that detachment from myself, and would not be surprised if it played a part. But in an unofficial poll of the one queer table at my high school Freshman or Sophomore year, I accidentally identified myself as asexual, at the time I didn’t even know what it meant, and I don’t know why I did it. Later I looked it up, found out the definition, and everything felt right. It made sense. I cried with relief because I belonged somewhere. I was real. When I found out that Asexuality was an identity, I connected with it immediately. This had been my whole life. All of the awkward dodging of strange questions about my tastes and who I was attracted to, and wondering if I would ever get it; or if I had to lie about my romantic inclinations my whole life made sense. It didn’t make the questions go away, but I at least understood that when I responded that I’ve never had a crush before I wasn’t saying I was incomplete. It’s more recently that I started to accept that I’m also aromatic but that’s for different reasons, a different post I think. Around that time I also learned about trans people, that they existed. Many of my friends were. It sent me on a three year soul-search. After many sleepless nights, crying in the shower with confusion and frustration, hiding in my bed paralysed with fear of what it meant for the future I never got around to planning, and frantically scrawled notes to myself that are now lost to moving out, I figured it out. I reached an understanding of myself that I never cared to have before. It was a struggle through the barrier in my mind between my thoughts and emotions. I made a deep connection with myself I had never had, and have since lost again. The first time I said aloud that I thought I was trans, I was crouching backstage during rehearsal for the winter performance of the drama club my senior year. I was stage crew, crouched next to me were two friends. I don’t know what finally pushed me to say it, but that same feeling of relief and the realness of my own existence rushed through me again when they asked if I’d picked out a name yet and started using the right pronouns straightaway. It was different than learning about my asexuality, but nonetheless fulfilling. I’d quietly expected everyone in my life to deny me because of it. Didn’t matter to me if they themselves where trans, or they had shown support for it in the past. I was going to be a special case. But these were mostly baseless worries. I’ve noticed plenty of quiet prejudice and some not so quiet since then. But I was lucky in seeing little of it from those close to me. 

After high school was college, but not for long. I don’t remember for the life of me if I ended up going to two or three semesters, though I’m leaning more towards two. Those semesters where the darkest of my life. I remember trying and failing to do as good in college as I did in high school, I’d graduated with an honours diploma after all, college should be easy right? I hadn’t fully realised all the brand new stresses of having to choose what you wanted in life. Nothing could have prepared me because I hadn’t prepared myself. With a future so vast and endless, I shut down. My first choice was art college, I got accepted into the one I was looking at most. They ended up giving me almost a full ride scholarship, but it was in Portland and I couldn’t come up with enough money to live there. That plan fell through. Then I figured I’d just get a job around town and save up for next year, the college told me they’d reserve my spot and everything. But no one wanted to hire me. That plan fell through. I ended up at my community college. I hadn’t exactly wanted to pursue higher education in the first place, but I couldn’t manage to do anything else. The first semester was alright mostly, I finished it with average grades which for me was abysmal. My last semester there I’d only attended two of my originally scheduled five classes. The rest I hid from in the cafeteria. I was too afraid to tell my parents that I couldn’t get myself to go to the classes because they were so much more excited for my future than I was, and this was a good next step to whatever it ended up being. I didn’t want to let them down. I was working part-time then too, the job --my first-- had taken me more than a year to get. I think it was a combination of my inexperience and my being trans which led to so many rejections. At this point I’d applied to the majority of entry-level jobs in my hometown, and was running out of options. I went to campus as if I was taking class, instead hid in the cafeteria, then went to work. This continued until I moved out. I’d basically already quit college at that point, so when the semester ended, I didn’t register for new classes. But with the prodding of a friend during the campus tour the beginning of that year, I signed up for the GSA of the college. I really should thank that friend. They probably saved my life. The club was what got me through college. It was why I hid in the cafeteria. Between classes my friends from GSA would go there for meals or to do classwork. I met some people there who changed the direction I was heading. It is more sideways now than down. They helped me connect more to a community I hadn’t even known was established. I’m not the most active online or in person, and never had many friends to begin with. But even after I’d dropped out I went to the GSA meetings. They were, and are, the most supportive group I’ve ever been a part of. The more recent stuff I’ll keep to myself, at least for now. It’s been more than a year since I dropped out of college, and that year has seen even more of a dramatic shift in my life. It is all too close to the present now to discuss. I don’t regret my choice to leave college, and at the moment I’m not planning on returning. It has left a big angry mark on my life, and whatever good it would do me isn’t worth revisiting that part of my mind. But because of what I’d been through then I know who I am now. I know what it means to be me.

I don’t know where I’ll fall or how far till the bottom, but I know this. I’m ready to fly. Too much of my life has been clinging to a cliff, hoping for everything to pass me by. Waiting for it to all be over. But while I waited, my wings grew. I’m not ready. I don’t think I ever will be. But if I don’t go now my arms will fail and I will fall anyway. I liken myself to the mythical figure of Icarus often, mainly saying my pride will send me into the sea one day, which it will. Hubris will be my undoing. But maybe before that I should have the same fierce confidence to leap. To soar. Because I hope to be smarter than he, more cautious. It might not sound like it, but I am proud. I know the person I am now is better than the person from last year, last month even. And I am proud to belong. Because the rest of my life I never felt like I belonged, never fully connected. So this month, and beyond. You can catch me breathing deeply, knowing that whatever happens, I exist and I should be. It means so much more to know you aren’t alone in your experiences. Though no one else can be you, that doesn’t mean no one else can know you. It’s important to know where you come from, but it’s even more important to know why you got here isn’t just because you have a past, it’s because you also have a future.