#this is part questioning aro positivity part journal entry

[ilovedthestars]

it's the first aro visibility day, ever! It's also my first pride month where I consider myself to be part of the aro community. there's something about that that I find very satisfying, almost comforting. this is new for me, but in some ways it's new for all of us. it's nice to feel like i'm not figuring myself out all alone.

i already did questioning round 1, back in middle and early high school, and came to the conclusion that I was queer (i used queer to describe myself more often than gay or lesbian, but that was the kind of queer that i meant.) i figured out that i thought girls were really pretty, and couldn't really see myself ending up with a guy, and could sort of see myself dating a girl someday, and once I got that figured out I thought I was mostly done. orientation solved, check! just in time to join the high school QSA and wear rainbows during june and joke with my friends about how everyone we knew was queer.

in retrospect, i definitely sort of knew that there was more going on, even when i went thru that first round of questioning. i learned about aspec identities in middle school, via the internet. i distinctly remember a late-night text conversation with a friend in which i told her I thought I might be demisexual (i think my own sexual and romantic orientations were tied together in my mind at the time, and still sort of are, although it's more complicated now.) I was maybe twelve years old, and had never had a crush, and had stumbled upon some words that maybe explained why I wasn't even sure what a crush would feel like. My friend pointed out that lots of people don't have crushes until they're older, and it didn't necessarily have to mean i was aspec. I don't begrudge her this--at the time it was comforting to hear. I think I sort of put the idea away on a "more data required" basis, and didn't think hard about it for years.

it wasn't until within the last six months or so that I started seriously thinking about the possibility that i might be aspec again. i found a fandom community that was full of proud aspec people, and conversations with them started to ring some bells. I read Angela Chen's Ace, which also described some experiences that clicked with me. it occurred to me that while girls are pretty, and the abstract idea of a romantic relationship sounds like it could be fun, i still have yet to actually think "i want to date this specific person." it's always been a pure hypothetical, maybe-one-day thing. i started to think--okay, so maybe i might be some kind of aro or ace. possibly. perhaps.

so now i'm still deep in the quagmire of questioning round 2, trying to fit together "girls are pretty" and "i think would hypothetically date someone" and "i don't actually know if i've ever felt romantic attraction in my life" into something that I can understand. i still feel weird about calling myself aro--i don't feel like I'm certain yet. i think i'm just starting to get to a place where i feel comfortable saying that i'm somewhere on the a-spectrums. but i'm really grateful have found a community where I feel like I can be uncertain and still be included. thanks to the people who have helped me down this road so far--you know who you are, and i love you.

happy aromantic visibility day, and happy pride, to all the aros (and possibly-aros, and maybe??? aros, and i-think-i-might-be-aro-but-i'm-not-sures) out there 💜