Latest Posts by let-me-be-ace - Page 5

My dog died and fuck anyone that says I'm incapable of love because I've been miserable for two weeks.

Hahaha, yes!

Attempting to cheer up your friend after a break up:

I bought a silicone ring from Knot Theory on Amazon. I abuse the hell out of my hands and I ruined six different rings until I found Knot Theory. They even come in different colors.

new ace and aro rings!! honestly i just want a whole bunch of different pairs to wear every day and alternate and stuff

made by wrapping old, tarnished, too big rings with embroidery floss. it does make them a bit smaller tho. these originally fit onto my thumb (i dont have very thick thumbs tho) and now theyre pretty much perfect on my middle fingers, plus the traction of the thread prevents them from falling down, although i have a feeling they might wear the inside of the surrounding fingers raw. oh well, ill see.

Try Knot Theory on amazon too

Ace Rings on Amazon

If anyone’s looking, a reader sent in these two lovely options:

Black 7mm Stainless Steel Ring Band Engraved Florentine Design - $9.99

Stainless Steel Black IP Grooved Edge Center Chain Spinner Ring - $0.99

Only you can decide if you want to come out. Personally I don't foresee myself coming out to my parents unless my aromatism becomes an issue with them. But at 27 they haven't really pushed the issue of my complete lack of relationships. I have told a few friends but no one has really given me grief. I don't make a big deal of sexuality irl.

no ones paying attention to me anyways so i doubt people will answer me but?? are u supposed to tell people ur asexual?? or like come out to ur parents as asexual?? or no one care?? idk!! or what about demisexual too??

You are not alone here. Check out acesovertwenty .

I really think I’m asexual. I’ve been wondering about it for years but i’m pretty sure of it now. I’m almost 21 and have never had any desire to have kiss anyone, let alone have sex, and other than harmless innocent celebrity crushes I’ve never had a crush on anyone, male or female. I don’t check guys out when i go out nor do i stalk them on facebook, insta, twitter, etc. I see couples holding hands or kissing in public and don’t feel jealous at all. I’m very unattractive to say the least so avoiding relationships will never be an issue for me but i just wish asexuality was more talked about and recognised so that i wouldn’t feel so alone. I just wish I could talk to someone who’s going through the same things and who could give me advice on how to deal with being asexual and how to tell people about it without creeping them out

Even if you identify as asexual you can still experience sexual intimacy. Orientation does not dictate behavior. Asexuality will probably color your perception of sex differently but everyone perceives differently. I lamented this same thing for many years, I spent so long wondering and upset that I didn't fit into the categories of straight or gay. I'd advise against putting pressure on yourself to identify. Be comfortable with what you decide.

Honestly just so sick of thinking about everything right now it all seems so confusing ugh. I thought I was done with the whole “trying to figure out my identity thing” and now it’s like… Occupying 90% of my thoughts and I hate it right now. Why can’t I figure it out? Like how am I supposed to know if I’m asexual if I’m not even sure I know what sexual attraction feels like? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a person and immediately thought “yeah I’d like to do them” like I generally just really love looking at people aesthetically?? I don’t KNOW I don’t know I hate iiiittt. I mean idk I guess I very rarely have sexual thoughts but not the urge to act on it really? Like I think of it in passing as an entertaining thought and then I just go on with my life and never really dwell on it.

idk I just feel really confused and not sure what to do. I seem to be really fighting against these thoughts like for some reason I don’t want to be asexual, I want to experience that part of life sometimes but I just never really… Feel it.

Keep the flame going for those we have lost to suicide. 

So I woke up this morning in a pool of my own blood. The

Wait, let me back up.

Hi, my name is Cara and I’m a 21 year old woman. Every 28 days, give or take, I have a period. And it fucking sucks. Today, was one of those where I take from the 28 day cycle. I wasn’t due for another period for at least a week, but considering that my period is pretty much permanently irregular, I get to wake up a lot of mornings in a pool of my own blood. Hmm. Lovely.

I then proceed to dump my sheets, my underwear, and my pajamas in my laundry room in a tub filled with cold water, with the hopes that this time I haven’t ruined them permanently.

What next? Well, a shower of course! To wipe off the smell of rotting blood from my body! Squeaky clean and towel fresh I have about a two minute window before the volcano of blood begins to erupt again from my vagina.

What will it be today? A piece of chlorinated toilet paper cardboard with a string that I get to shove up my hole wherein the blood will sit and rot until the next time I can shove another piece of chlorinated cardboard up the same hole? Or, a plastic lined toilet paper diaper attached to my underwear that causes rug burn to my vaginal area when I walk? Well the later requires less coordination, and it is early, so I guess I’ll be sitting in a period diaper today. The best ever.

Of course, I could always just get birth control, and lessen this whole shit. But 1) I can’t afford it 2) I can’t ask my dad to pay for it because, guess what? Just like the men who run my government, my father correlates birth control with sexual promiscuity! Thus, sitting on my rotting blood, undergoing severe cramps that have on more than one occasion caused me to black out, it is! (Not that birth control is such a walk in the park either, our bodies have to learn to deal with the hormones and other chemicals and consequences that birth control entails.)

Then, I get to go to class, where I have to pretend that I am not a leaky faucet of blood and tissue. I get to sit in Calculus, and if heaven forbid, I need an additional pad, I have to be discrete about it, so as not to offend the men’s gentle sensibilities to the fact that I am the one dropping tissues and blood from my body through my vagina.  

I once asked a male to take me to the pharmacy so that I could pick up (GASP) pads, or as we like to call it “feminine products” (again, so as not to offend the gentlemen’s overly sensitive natures) and had him equate me talking about my period to him talking about his erections.

ARE

YOU

FUCKING

KIDDING

ME

No.

This is nothing like your fucking erection’s. I don’t derive any enjoyment from this. I can’t mentally control any ounce of this entire process. I can’t masturbate my problem away. My period does not end in orgasm.

It stays. For at least five days in my case. Draining blood out of my body. Causing me severe cramps, making me irritable -not because I’m uncomfortable (which mind you, would be reason enough) - but because my hormones are all over the place, bloating me up to two sizes larger than I normally am, I have to actively fight not to smell like a fish market, and on top of that, you want me to be hush-hush about this? Because it’s icky for you?

And this is not an attack on that one man, this is an attack on ALL MEN who on top of sitting on their throne of gender privilege want me to stay quiet and be content about the fact that five days out of every month I get to undergo this happiest of joys.

And then, these very same men have the audacity to get annoyed because we don’t want to listen to their bullshit complaining about traffic? Or whatever other meaningless story they happen to tell us while our bodies are actively fighting against us? Then we get to be the butt of their tired-ass jokes? Sorry, I am most certainly not sorry.

I repeat NO. I say women come out of the period closet and say, “You know what, this happens to me. Every. Fucking. Month. And it’s terrible. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY MORNING.” Because the truth is, if I live in a country where Viagra is covered by medical insurance, but birth control isn’t, I can no longer keep denying that I live in a country that is actively waging a war on women. And if I live in a country that is actively waging war on my sex, the least I am going to do is break patriarchal social propriety to inform anyone and everyone of the shit biological process I was BLESSED enough to be born into.

Hello, my name is Cara, I’m a 21 year old woman, and today I’m on my period. Let me fucking tell you about it.

Oh the breakup phone calls. How I loath them. I've received so many and talked about so many breakups (weirdly always when I'm sleeping) I thought for a while that I was just jaded instead of aromantic. Now I know it's both.

Social events with friends are slowly turning into a study in frustration and loneliness. An evening with friends now include their partners. Don’t get me wrong they are great people (the partners); but a girl can only accept witnessing so many public displays of affection before she feels really uncomfortable and fairly ignored. I’ve even been skipped on the invitation list because I would arrive unattached. Worse, friends have canceled plans with me because their partner has suddenly become available. I thought I felt loneliness before but this is a whole new level.

Though, I'm still figuring out where I am on the spectrum I felt like I "found myself" when I read about demiromantic people. I really got that "Maybe I'm not broken after all"- feeling.

It’s was a very ‘oh’ moment for me. I almost felt silly that I didn’t recognize it earlier. But I tend to be really good at denial. I still have a little trouble with romantic orientation, it remains a very nature vs nurture problem for me. A recent terminology update gave me platonic relationships. Something I hadn't considered but the more I find the idea appealing the more I accept being aromantic.

SINK INK

Dr. Woo

always difficult for me

i wonder how aromantic people deal with loneliness

not just, you know, the standard loneliness where you feel like you need someone’s company

but the inherent “emptiness” associated with not being understood by a lot of people, or always never being first in your friends’ minds because they don’t see your friendship as better than their romantic relationships.

the loneliness associated with the general stigma against “not being able to feel anything”, not being able to fall in love and get married, not really, not like how others would want to experience some day.

of wanting people to just understand and acknowledge that you exist, that how you think and feel is valid, and you’re not any less of a person and should not be valued less just because you can’t feel the same way most people do.

that you need relationships too, and companionship, and to be loved. just not in the way most people feel, but that doesn’t make it any less of a need.

i wonder how aromantics are supposed to deal with all of this, honestly.

Friend: *comes to me with romantic relationship problems*

Aro/ace me: *tries to remember everything i have learnt about relationships from fiction and tries to give useful advice*

I like this sign...not like-like, but it’s aesthetically pleasing

when people think you’re flirting

Looking back, it is really embarrassing the amount of sexual innuendo and flirting I didn’t catch. I don’t mean as a child. I mean as a teenager in high school AND as a twenty-something in college. Yikes. I thought I was just being nice and people thought I was flirting.

Social events with friends are slowly turning into a study in frustration and loneliness. An evening with friends now include their partners. Don't get me wrong they are great people (the partners); but a girl can only accept witnessing so many public displays of affection before she feels really uncomfortable and fairly ignored. I've even been skipped on the invitation list because I would arrive unattached. Worse, friends have canceled plans with me because their partner has suddenly become available. I thought I felt loneliness before but this is a whole new level.

well put

It’s often really hard to imagine or empathize with experiences outside of your own, which is why most often the people who head up movements or charities for particular issues have had some personal experience with it, and why it’s really hard for privileged people to understand systematic oppression etc.

I feel like that’s also why so many ace/aro spectrum people don’t realise that they’re ace/aro for a long time, because they honestly don’t know they’re any different to everyone else. Usually, I’ve found, this manifests in one of two ways - we assume that everyone else is like us (ie nobody actually experiences sexual attraction, nobody actually falls in love like they do in movies and it’s all some collective delusion or joke), or we assume that we’re like everyone else (ie thinking what we’re feeling must be sexual/romantic attraction because that’s how we’ve been taught to quantify our feelings and experiences).

With asexuality, I spent most of my life mistaking aesthetic (and the occasional sensual) attraction for sexual, which is why I didn’t realise I was asexual until I was 19. With aromanticism, for me, it was a combination of both; assuming all feelings I had towards any boy ever must be romantic, but finding some forms of ‘love’ completely implausible and genuinely totally unfathomable.

And that’s totally fine. Having a new word in your vocabulary may completely change the way you view yourself and may even shift your entire worldview because you have a new way to quantify your and other people’s experiences.

I have to remind myself not to judge my life by my narrow view of the lives of the people around me. Those around me appear to have such fulfilling lives and relationships. But I don’t know their whole story and they don’t know mine.

this is my FB cover photo, i have zero mention on what the colors are supposed to mean so only anyone already in the know will understand. baby steps

Low key wanna shake things up and make it general knowledge via Facebook that I’m asexual but low key not ready to find out how many of my friends don’t think I exist so

Thank you beekeepercain for a great scene. It’s a lot like my own experiences. 

                      “So basically you just want me to shut up.”

                   “Basically I just want you to shut up and believe me.”

HA! I have the same problem with the adjective ‘sexy’. 

weird asexual experience: i used to think i was straight and everyone around me was just grossly exaggerating sexual desire. like with the internet, and everything here being “the best thing ever.” so i started doing it too. and now even though i know that when a sexual calls someone “hot” they really do mean “i actually want to have sex with that person,” sometimes i see someone and i think or even say “he’s hot,” because even though i don’t want to have sex with them, i find their appearance pleasing and i have learned that that’s called “hot”.

I feel very much the same way. I have a sad feeling that my friends will never know because the thought of non-sexual love will never cross their minds.

I want to be out but I don’t want to have to come out over and over again I don’t want people to question my sexuality when I tell them I’m ace I want the world to already know what asexuality is/what it entails and just have it be a chill, accepted thing I don’t want to be thought of as a freak or made fun of for not wanting sex

Being an Aromantic Asexual is Weird

Being an aromantic asexual is weird. We defy not one, not two, but three societal norms; heteronormativity, compulsory sexuality, and amatonormativity. It gets even weirder when you’re indifferent (even favourable!) when it comes to sex and romance because you think your experience is universal, that everyone feels the way you do. It’s not feeling wrong and broken and out of place. It’s feeling normal, and then realizing that you aren’t.

Thinking (read: assuming) that you’re straight for most of your life and then finding out you’re not is weird. Mostly because once you realize you’re not straight, it dawns on you that you feel the same way about boys that you do about girls and non-binary people. And then you wonder if you’re pansexual because they’re attracted to all genders, and you have to be attracted to someone, right? And then that thought is immediately dismissed because you don’t feel attraction, at all. But it doesn’t stop you from contemplating every other sexuality and romantic orientation, because you’ve been taught that everyone wants sex and romance.

And then you remember: you like sex and romance in fiction. You like seeing your friends in happy, healthy, consenting relationships, and you’d always assumed that one day, you’d be in one too. But you’ve never pursued one. You never had more than a fleeting interest in boys, and lingering but still platonic affection for your female and non-binary friends. Those “crushes” that you had in elementary school? Maybe not crushes after all, because God knows you haven’t had one in nearly eight years. The most powerful feelings you’ve had for another person have been squishes so intense that you had to look back and question if it was actually romantic attraction (spoiler: it wasn’t).

And then there’s that epiphanic moment when things start to fall into place. Why you were always so vehement that soulmates could be platonic too. Why the idea of loving someone more than your best friend is incomprehensible (because romantic love is always shown as being more. Hello amatonormativity). Why when you ship fictional pairings, there are people you want to get together romantically, people you want to be friends so bad, and the ships that you like the most are the ones that could go either way. Why you desire emotional closeness and intimacy with the people in your life, but that had always been conflated with sex and romance so you wondered if what you wanted was more than friendship. Why you want to take the expression “more than friends”and burn it to the ground because there is no vocabulary for friendship that exceeds “best friend” without crossing over into romantic and/or sexual territory.

You realize that your ideal relationship isn’t necessarily romantic. It’s best friends who cohabitate and snuggle and hold hands and go on adventures to the library together. Kissing and sex? Well, that’s more of an afterthought. A “yeah, that’ll probably happen somewhere in there.” An assumption, because you’ve been taught that primary, monogamous relationships are always romantic and sexual. You reflect and see that there are very few things that you see and inherently romantic, and that there is a lot of cross-over between things you consider platonic, sensual, and romantic. A grey area that you can’t define.

Being an aromantic asexual is weird, because while I’ve always said that you don’t need romance and sex to be happy, I now realize that it applies to me too.

______________________

Note from mod fitz: This has to be one of the most moving descriptions of this I have ever read. This exactly describes how I felt coming to the realization that I was not straight, and I think had I read this when I first began questioning it would have made things go a lot smoother for me. Thanks so much for submitting!

squeezy-cheez The greatest factor for me has been the consistency of my experience. I spent years deeply confused about what I was feeling. At first I thought I was a late bloomer. Then I thought I was homosexual, because I think a lot of women are beautiful. Then I thought I was straight, because men are gorgeous. But during conversations about sex I was firmly not interested. I've repeated my disinterest over and over again in conversations and journaling through the years. And this was long before I knew and used the term asexual. I was talking with my cousin over coffee one night. We were discussing her new boyfriend and so forth. I confessed that I was a virgin; she was a little shocked and asked why. I told her I wasn't interested. She said that maybe I was asexual, it was something that had come up in her human sexuality course. I remember the next day I sat down and researched asexuality. I cried. No label has ever given me so much relief. This thing I was internally agonizing over for years had a name. I don't really think about sex on my own, the subject typically has to be brought to my attention. When the conversation does get going I feel so abnormal and uncomfortable. I feel broken almost every time. I struggle all the time with who I am. I worried, like you, that I was making it all up in my head. But the history of my experience is there. And most importantly, when I identified as asexual nothing about my experiencs changed, except that nowadays I am on average happier.

You need to find someone,” they say. “There is someone out there for you to make you happy!” They promise. “Look for your other half,” they chant. Am I half a person? Am I not enough as I am? Can I not depend on myself for my own happiness? I can enjoy music on my own. I can laugh and sing and dance on my own. “Poor thing, still alone?” They murmur. I don’t always want to be alone, you know. But I know I’m not incomplete. I am happy being who I am, and only I drive myself to be a better version of myself. I have found solace in the silence, and peace in my quiet thoughts. I wonder if the ones who beg me to find someone never had that, and I am sorry for them.

finish-the-hat-george (via wnq-writers)

I was sent this GIF version of my last project by Eli Bary (be2212@gmail.com)

I’m flattered and impressed.

A guy at my work wears a black ring on his middle finger. I tried to ask but I failed. But to be fair he hasn’t asked about mine either. Also work is not a great place to discuss sexuality. 

Asexual Rings

Finally got myself an Ace ring… The good thing about Ace rings is that as long as their black or a mix of black and purple your good. They can be black roses, spiraled, plain, jeweled…

Now the problem is… The uncertainty…

Is that person asexual? Or is that ring a fashion statement?

I’m actually not all that outspoken about my sexuality. But youth are often confused about their sexuality because of things like this. Every day when I was growing up this is what I saw. One man and one woman fall in love and have sex, get married, sometimes have babies (or it is implied). Over and over and over I see this. The message I got from movies, TV, books, and my peers was that I was defective and broken--lesser. Trying to speak up against the constant stream of ‘one man and one woman’ is difficult; so sometimes you find yourself shouting a little, putting it out there more and more. 

Honestly, my sexuality isn’t your problem. What I want is a day when I can be who I am without having to explain what I am; I just want acceptance. I worry that without speaking out, without getting ourselves heard, there will never be acceptance. Keeping a part of yourself in the dark implies shame; I don’t want to be ashamed of who I am. 

Consider this: what sexuality has the most voice? Is it possible that millions of people feel the same as you about the constant stream of heterosexuality being ‘shoved’ in our face.

Please do not misunderstand. I am not trying to shame you in any way shape or form.

Whats with any sexuality shoving shit in our faces.. Great you’re gay/asexual/etc… But why is it my business.. Unless we are talking about civil rights. And why can’t I think trannies are weird without being called hateful things. It is weird. Will i give them or anyone respect until they dont deserve it? Of course I will. Why are we trying to force everyone into thinking the same way by shaming?

Agreed. I’m the first one they call after a break-up and the first one they ditch when they hook-up. Then they don’t want to hang because it can’t/won’t be a double date.

Honestly my biggest problem with being ace is not being anybody’s bae. Like, everybody seems to have that one person they always call first. And who is the first to get their claim on free time. I’m not even jealous, I mean, good for them, but it’s really fucking lonely being the only person who’s been single for 25 years.