wait no go back
go all the way back
~2015 - i was handed a note by some kids who i didn't really get along with. it was a written confession of love from a girl i kinda knew. we were both smart, and were somewhat acquainted with each other. i don't remember any passages from the note. it was hand written on loose leaf, and the writing was messy, so i assumed that it was a prank that the kids who gave it to me tried to pull. i showed it to my friends and laughed, thinking that it was an absurd concept for a girl to be in love with me. i imagined her and i exchanging a knowing glance, one that said "ha! we'd never fall in love with each other."
throughout middle school i heard more and more about people discovering their sexuality and going on dates and stuff. i thought that this was amusing. what do you do on a date with another middle schooler? hang out at your house while your mom makes you grilled cheeses? what a dumb idea. being in love was for high schoolers, i thought. but i never thought about the fact that i might fall in love. love and myself were never placed together in my mind's logic. in freshman year of high school, i was not thinking about love at all. i was enjoying talking with my new friends at a new school. i wonder what would have happened if COVID-19 hadn't resulted in the lockdown and the virtual year. when that was over, i had become so withdrawn that i only spoke to one other person. i'm not sure exactly when, but at around that time i realized that something was amiss. when was i going to fall in love with someone? did i want to fall in love with someone?
i was very certain about using the term "aromantic" but after a couple strange experiences i think i am going to start not saying i'm anything in the fear that i am wrong. i'm just going to say what i know here. for the first time ever, EVER, in the summer of 2024, i fell in love. i don't ever remember a desire (while conscious) to like or be liked by a girl. i've always found it rather annoying when people in movies fall in love. like, god, does this have to happen EVERY movie? i do think that love can be quite pretty, though. but i felt like love never occurred independently within me. i think an idea was fostered within me at a young age that traditional romance and common decency cannot coexist. how does one communicate affection for an acquaintance/stranger (or even a friend) without being weird?
romantic love, so far, has not been a positive feeling at all. i might have gotten a head rush a couple times, but the majority of its effects on me have been overwhelmingly negative. at its worst point, every time my biggest crush would say something, i would be hit with a devastating depression and i would mull over things i would say to her and how she would react. before i even realized i was in love with her, i felt a particularly poisonous kind of aggressive jealousy towards anyone who spoke to her. especially if they said something that i thought was dumb. back the fuck off, idiot. leave her alone.
i am distinctly attracted to femininity. i do not find masculinity sexually* or romantically attractive. i have never felt sexual frustration before. baseline stimulation is enough for me. sexual fantasy is very vague. only short snapshots are visible to be at any moment in time, and the entire body is never visible at once (the head is never visible). if i put too much thought into me being the one who is having sex with somebody else, i don't like it. it feels ill-fitting. i think this is the kind of thing that would be more satisfactorily explained if other people weighed in.
verdict: perma-virgin "yikes! that's gotta sting!"