Happy Aromantic Awareness Week to all! In the spirit of proudly wearing aromanticism on our sleeves (or at least on our anonymous blogs in obscure corners of the internet), without further ado I give you the top five times I should have known instantly I was aro (if only I’d known it was an option).
“I like you, too! …ok, bye!”
Deciding with immense relief that my squish on an overly friendly theater kid was a crush, I fantasized that we’d become better friends, or most sordid of all – he’d confess romantic feelings. Daydream Alice’s response? “Yay, I feel the same way- now let’s go on being friends, high school dating’s much too idiotic~” It never even occurred to me to fantasize about actually dating him… or touching him… or doing anything that society deemed “romantic” with him. In fact, aside from the entertainment aspect, what had me most excited about the whole ordeal was that I could tell my friends about it and relate to them and their boyfriends and constant crushes like never before. The day the squish was squashed, I was almost eager to tell them all the gory details… yet something stopped me (probably an inherent sense that I was lying to myself- even in a poem detailing the affair a line crept in confessing that I was never “200% sure” of my “crush” like all the songs claimed I should be). In the end, it never even occurred to me that this wasn’t a crush, that I might not want the romance. Of course I wanted it, it just had to be the right kind of romance- the fluffy far away kind in K-Dramas and angsty anime- not holding hands in high school hallways or sitting in the local movie theater at- gasp!– 8 PM or whatever high school sweethearts actually did. Already more cynical of my fellow humans (and especially men) than I really had any right to be, I assumed I was just too realistic to even enjoy the fantasy… even though the fantasy epidemic had already started, which brings us to…
Sordid Tales of… Friendship?
Confession: I spent way too much of my high school and college years dreaming up far too detailed fantasies involving a recurring set of original characters- not from my “serious” works, mind you, created just for my own amusement, if that does anything to quell the image you’re probably getting of a 14 year old self insert fanfic writer as if that wasn’t also a thing. They were supposed to be “romantic” fantasies, hence why my internalized queerphobia stuck strictly to guys. However, in practice… 99% of them were all about the friendship. In fact, something about the “post-confession” relationship just felt so awkward I only ever crept into the enemy territory if I just had to have the cuddling or chaste kissing, seeing as society had convinced me that such non-romantic affection could only be a precursor to a one night stand or worse still an ongoing sexual relationship. It was still too easy to hide behind my partition and pretend this was normal. What really should have hit the message home? When I fantasized myself a love triangle where I just couldn’t choose one or the other, and instead of dreaming up romantic polyamory or simply god forbid imagining separate universes… I imagined myself a co-living co-sleeping cuddly QP trio without knowing that this was a thing outside my own mind… and liked it a hell of a lot better than any of my romantic delusions.
“Strong feelings… girl…?!! FRIEND CRUSH!!”
Deep in internalized queerphobia throughout my high school years, only once did I have such a strong squish on a girl that I actually took notice… and my carefully constructed partition began to shake. Not ready to lose even a single brick, I quickly decided on the spot, FRIEND CRUSH! I still have no idea where my best friend and I picked up the term or who used it first, but in our world that was always a thing albeit seldom talked about… probably because she was as much in denial about being ace homoro as I was about being ace aro. Of course, terrified as I was of being ‘not straight’ in any way, boy squishes were quickly upgraded to crushes, while girls were ignored… except for this one, who had me giddy with every interaction and constantly starved for more. If I hadn’t been so quick to seal the thing up in a heteronormative box it would have probably taken down the partition like dynamite- alas, considering it was carved into my subconscious that there was only one form of attraction, I was far more likely to have added further fuel to my internalized queerphobia by assuming I was bi than I was to recognize the validity of ‘friend crushes…’
“Strong feelings… he has a girlfri- FRIEND CRUSH!!”
Finding myself unable to deny how giddy I was about spending time with and getting to know a male friend my freshman year of college, I analyzed my feelings… and decided easily and comfortably that it was a ‘friend crush’ just like that girl of yore. Who knew I could get them for guys as well? I do believe I was able to come to the realization thanks to my fresh start- far from everyone’s preconceived notions, for once I was confident enough to live my best life without throwing the word ‘crush’ around. Considering I would sooner proudly proclaim that I was in love with an anime character (literally) than simply acknowledge that I never had any crushes, I don’t think simply wanting to save myself the heartache of ‘crushing’ on a guy with a girlfriend would’ve stopped me in high school…
“I’m bored- let’s have a crush oooooon… that guy!”
It was freshman year, and “bonehead English” was an understatement. I put only 70% effort into my writing assignments because I just couldn’t be bothered… and they were consistently handed back with a slick 110% simply because most of my classmates didn’t even do their assignments. When I wasn’t nagging a slacker friend or staring at the dancing Snoopys on the teacher’s tie as channeled a preschool teacher, whatever was there to save me from absolutely dying of boredom? Then it struck me- have a crush, those are entertaining! I scanned the room, and quickly settled on the one boy in class who I had seen hand in assignments but had not seen open his mouth. Bonus points- I could swear he was in my P.E. class, though it was hard to tell when nondescript white boy in jeans and a t-shirt matched the description of half the male population (nondescript white boy in camouflage and cowboy boots described the other). So, I consciously decided that this convenient target would be my crush, it never occurring to me somehow that this is not how crushes work even with my vast repertoire of genuine organic squishes… probably because I’d been doing this ever since a boy in my fifth grade class had been less than subtle about his own crush- nice kid, he likes me, of course I have to like him back, right…? At any rate, I eavesdropped on this classmate’s conversations for a day or two, trying to discover something to actually like about him or at the very least his name. I gave up when this quickly proved even more tedious than the teacher’s bad Mr. Rogers impersonation.
Life Through the Looking Glass 