mostlydeplorable:

Every time I check the asexuality tag and all of it’s derivatives, even some of the equality tags and things, I see spatterings or sometimes tons of positive stuff and negative crap about invisibility. My god, I wish I’d known asexuality was a thing when I was even six years younger than I am now. It would have saved me so much trouble, anxiety, and a seven-month bout of emotional misery.

(tw; vague sexual content)

Is my story the worst one anyone is ever going to read? Oh shit no, fuuuuck no. But it’s a story nonetheless and one that deals with the impact of invisibility and what it can do. I’m beyond positive that other people who are asexual or anywhere on the spectrum are going to say they had a worse time and I’m not going to doubt them. 

In high school when everyone around me started talking about how hot this person was or how hot that person was, I just sat there looking a little stupid and nodding along or shrugging. I knew that this or that person had a nice face, or looked good physically, but the way they were talking about it didn’t make sense to me. So rather than think about how I actually felt and what it could mean, I just ignored it and decided that maybe I just had higher - stupidily high - standards about other people.

Eventually I gave up sticking to that and thought, well shit, everyone else is all about this stupid… sex thing… so maybe if I just try it, I’ll like it and suddenly this magical fire will be lit beneath me, resolving all my problems and making life fucking magic and glory. But I didn’t give a shit about dating. I never thought about that either… in fact, in high school, I didn’t do much thinking about myself at all. I just studied. Eventually a person I knew developed interest in me. They really liked me, they said so, and asked how I would feel about dating them. The person in question was about two years younger than myself and in high school, for some reason, that somehow was a pretty big deal.

Anyway, I didn’t really want to. I was too nervous and felt a bit like throwing up in the hopes that everything inside me would come out through my mouth and therefore stop twisting up in there. But I said sure, I would date them and shit. That relationship lasted six miserable months. And I committed my first sexual act. Remember for just a moment that I’m genderqueer and refuse to state my physical gender here, so any reference to sex is going to be vague, like that one. The specifics aren’t even important. To this day I feel disgusted and miserable thinking about it because, no, I haven’t forgotten what I did. But I regret it with every single fibre in my fucking being. What I did, by the way, happened five years ago. I still can’t stop reflecting and regretting.

Since then, I tried sleeping with women and men. For a time I identified as bisexual because, well hell, if I’m not attracted to the opposite sex (… remember, this was high school and first two years in university, having come from a small all-white bigoted little town in the middle of nowhere. I was pretty ignorant), then I must like the same sex. There aren’t any other options are there? I knew there was something up with me and how I worked. So I tried sex more. First year of university I tried sleeping with a nice person I haven’t spoken to since. In fact, I outright turned around regardless of where I was or where I was going, and hid until they were gone whenever I saw them. Because I was disgusted with what I did. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the touch of bare skin on skin. I didn’t like… how empty I felt, or how regret sunk in so fast it made my head spin, or how my head would blank out right afterwards like some panic-induced white noise. In fact, during it my head would go empty. I wouldn’t think, I would just do, and the only thought that would come up from time to time was “why isn’t this done yet?” 

I just wanted it to be done and over with so they would go away. So I could leave and do something that was fun and actually did feel good. I imagine now that, if I trusted someone, and they knew me for every word and every fact that I am, it wouldn’t be so bad. But then? I didn’t know asexuality was a thing and I didn’t know I was asexual. I just thought, after that experience, that I was broken. The whole lack of success in something that apparently everybody just fucking loved was making me miserable. But as per usual, I ignored it and tried to convince myself it was their fault and not mine. If I just had a better partner it wouldn’t suck, and I wouldn’t hate it. Maybe someone with bigger boobs, because apparently those rock, and nicer hands. Or maybe someone with a huge dick, because apparently that’s a really big deal too. None of it really registered as true to me, personally, but because it was the general consensus… well, it must be right. 

So I just kept trying. I slept with a few more people after that before I felt so sick of myself for not being like everybody else that… I stopped doing a lot of things. I stopped writing, I didn’t read very much (and trust me, that’s… I mean usually I’m reading a book every week, I love books. They’re my cocaine). I didn’t want to do anything but I wanted to… do something, create and be completely motionless at the same time. Around then I started to see a counsellor who prompted me one very faithful day about two years ago to make a list of all the things I was. 

And you know… that was an unholy fuckton harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t know who I was or what I was. I couldn’t write down anything I really believed in or anything I felt about myself because I had never thought about it for myself. I had only thought about life outside myself as everyone else saw it.

Heteronormative glasses.

They’re like beer glasses, except they make everyone’s life suck ass if they aren’t heteronormative too.

That’s when I started having minor meltdowns when I realised that I really honestly didn’t feel the way everyone else seemed to about sex. When a dear friend of mine (a brilliant and hysterically funny white hetero chick I love to fucking pieces. Perhaps one day I will tell her she’s my platonic mate and she’s going to have to accept it. She’ll understand.) pointed me towards AVEN and a few sites about being genderqueer. There was zero judgement, zero bullshit, and zero misjudgements. She didn’t know all the facts but she knew enough to point me in the right directions for definitions.

So, then I read it.

Then… I kind of had another serious meltdown that had aftershock tremors for two weeks, where I would have to hide in the back room at work until I stopped wanting to scream and either murder everything within a ten block radius, or bawl like an infant. Which isn’t easy when you’re working a customer service job and you have to, like, help people and give them greasy-ass food. Why was I having meltdowns? Oh, because I didn’t know what asexuality actually fully meant or that it could be so varied between people. Also, I wanted to be fucking normal. I thought to myself “why can’t the universe cut me a goddamn motherfucking break and just let me be normal like most people in just one goddamn way.” Because I didn’t understand that asexuality was okay.

After the intial shock set in, then I worried about ever finding anyone to love me. That eventually passed too. Either they will and we’ll compromise or I’ll tell them to fuck off. I’m not going to be bullied or pressured into doing something I don’t actively like. I couldn’t give two damns about anything anyone has to say about this maybe being some sort of cold, frigid response, or calling me a prick or a twat or any other body part. I’m sticking to my goddamn guns.

But I wish I had known about asexuality before, in high school, so that I could have bypassed some of this anxiety and personal unhappiness. I could have skipped the sex and dealt with how I felt about myself rather than subject myself to things I was just trying to force myself to like. Thinking back on it, I was never sexually attracted to any of the people I slept with. I just did it because that was, I thought, just what people do. They have sex. End of story.

I wish I knew earlier that that isn’t how it works and that I was never, at any point, broken or a freak.

This is why visibility is important. Visibility is important because there are asexual people out there having a much harder time than I had and still sometimes have. They’re feeling it a lot more than I did and that isn’t fair.

starvedstar:

Here are a few short pieces of my life and whenever people wish to bring up the topic of sex with me and do it in the wrong way.

• I once had a friend and I thought they were nice. They seemed nice. Well one night I was with them and their partner at their house and they asked if I was dating anyone. I told them that I had no interest in people. Then they asked if I had a first kiss and I told them that I have not experienced those feelings and therefore didn’t act. Then their partner asked if I had slept with anyone and I told them that I hadn’t. I told them I was asexual and explained what it was and how I was. Then they went off and brought sexy toys and I was sitting there confused. They asked me if I needed medication and if I needed therapy. I told them I didn’t. Then they asked if they kissed me or touched me if that would work. No. It wouldn’t I told them quite disgusted. Now this bit terrified me was when they said some people would think I was a challenge and I told them I was not a challenge and trying anything would be against my will and I would consider it molestation. To say the least I never spoke to that person again but not because of that but because their room mate who is much older than I am and who was a sexual deviant kept getting into my space and it bothered me.

• The other time was with friends when I mentioned it and they did ask me if I mate with myself. I told them I didn’t. They asked if I was a plant I told them I wasn’t. They told me I needed to get laid and I didn’t know what I was missing. They also said my sexuality couldn’t exist when they were bisexual. I was their opposite. How could they accept other sexualities but not mine?

• There’s times with old family and friends who say about meeting the right person. Well…no. That’s not how it works. I’ve been ranted at for being asked if I found this person sexually attractive and stared at this photo and said, “I don’t know anything about them. They seem all right.” 

• I think one thing that bothers me is that people think because I am asexual means that I don’t know anything about sex.When in fact I am discovering I am the most informed in my family about sex because I’m open to knowing the different ways people engage in sex. Personally I don’t know anything from experience. I know only what I’ve been told, what I have read, and what has been discussed with many other people. I am open to discussion because I know people who were ignorant and I come from a family that has males on one side that are guilty of rape and molestation and had to hear the stories from their victims. That is one of the reasons I am open to knowing and learning about sex. I am not disturbed by it. But I am not sure what to do when people wish to tell me of their sex lives because I consider what happens between you and another person is your private business and not open to everyone to know, I think it’s breaking trust, unless you are concerned about what happened and you need to talk. Otherwise if it was a good roll in the hay then that’s good. I don’t want details. 

• Then there’s touching. My friends know if I know them well and trust them that they can kid around. They can invade my personal space. One my close female friends like to grope me because they know nothing happens except I might squeak (think of the high pitch sound a bird makes) due to surprise or physical pain or fear of physical pain. Now a while ago at a party a friend’s partner was kidding around and decided to get into my space. I just started laughing because I knew they were with someone and that friend was asexual and knew I was asexual so that nothing would happen. 

• As for people of the male sex who don’t have partners…I’m wary of them due to the one incident when a much older man who was a teacher outside of school had started doing what some would call a comforting squeeze except it was around my upper thigh and it scared me very much. I kept moving away and had my backpack over my legs and then they were groping my arm. It scared me and it kind of caused problems with other guys because of how ‘shy’ as they call it I get around them. I actually tremble sometimes around people and that is one of the reasons why.

• Somewhat funny incident was when a person was hugging me and slid their hands to my ass. I was confused. I didn’t feel anything but they obviously were. Those are the few times when being asexual can be funny because it’s obvious the other party is experiencing something but they can’t understand that you are not.

• What else can I say about asexuality? People don’t seem to understand or accept it much at all in my life except one person in my family who identifies as being asexual as well. It annoys me every time someone compares me to a plant, says I needed someone and that’s a sure way to piss me off, tells me to get laid, and other such things. I find it disrespectful and unfair when these same people defend homosexuals, don’t take this as attack against homosexuality, and how people treat them when they themselves can’t treat my sexuality with any respect because it doesn’t people having lots of sex. Right now I have no interest in people in, I am happy with being friends with people right now. And honestly no one would be able to tell the real difference if I was dating someone except we’d probably cuddle more. Many times people have thought I was gay or straight because of who I was cuddling on a couch or whose hand I was holing or who I kissed and kissed me. I’m affectionate and asexual get over it. 

theimprobableace:

So, I’ve started to see someone.

And I’m absolutely terrified.

I usually try to stay away from dating, but there are times when I’ll get swept up in the mindset of maybe it’ll be different this time. My trepidation has always sprung from the fact that I know whoever I’m dating will expect the relationship to turn physical. Prior to discovering asexuality, I operated under the notion that sex is something I should want (and yes, I know asexuality =/= no sex. But this is what’s true for me, along with the lack of sexual attraction). It was, I thought, a necessary component of relationships. I wanted to want it. Sometimes I still do. And while the beginning stages of dating - the getting to a know a person - were always exciting, when that wore off all that was left was fear. Most of my past relationships ended before they could turn sexual simply because I couldn’t stand the physical intimacy. I don’t want that. It makes me almost begin to resent the person that I’m seeing - why does he want that from me? Why isn’t the emotional connection enough?

Anyway, long story short, I’ve gone and done it again. I started seeing someone less than a week ago, and it’s strange. We’re connecting, emotionally and mentally, in a way I’ve never felt with another person. One of my roommates commented the other day that, watching us, it looks as though we’ve been together for years. Our rapport is just that strong. That’s good to hear, and sweet of her to say, but I’m still terrified. I’ve been able to put off the most physical of activities, but I’ll be seeing him again tomorrow night and I don’t have the excuse of having work on Sunday morning to keep me from having to stay over. It’s like being caught in a strong current - I’ve started something that I don’t know how to stop. And I feel like an asshole every time I make an excuse about not sleeping with someone, as though I owe it to him. I know that I don’t owe anyone that, but it doesn’t stop that knee-jerk gut reaction of guilt. It’s horrible.

Sigh. I wish I would stop getting myself into these situations.