![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zavodilaterrariumThis one's a doozy in terms of my post lengths so far aha
For anyone with access to my locked posts, you might have seen this post with some of the details I mention near the end, but it's a very different theme of discussion imo.
In primary school, I didn't really think about romance, though I had a couple of 'crushes'. They did not occupy really any thoughts when I couldn't see them in front of me. At that age, I almost exclusively hung out with girls (they did more of the things I liked, and we all thought I was a girl), while my crushes were on guys. Arguably, I wanted to be their friends more than anything (a 'squish', if you will). There wouldn't have been as much opportunity to develop those feelings over a girl, because I was 'friends' with quite a significant portion of the girls in my grade for a couple of years — nothing to long for there.
There was one incident when I was like 10? that didn't make me 'realise' anything, but did open my eyes very slightly to the world of queerness; I told my best friend at the time that if she was boy, I'd marry her. Now, I don't remember if there was a particular reason for saying that (the easiest assumption is that I didn't understand romance and marriage), but some people overheard and called me a lesbian.
At that point, I didn't know about gay people, so I didn't have any particular reaction beyond asking what they meant and not getting a response. I suppose my friends must not have known either, or I forgot to ask. When I got home, I posed to the question to my mother. Just like how she impersonally and briefly described sex to me around that age, all she said was something like "Just like how men and women can fall in love, women can love women and men can love men. A lesbian is a woman who is in love with women." Of course, whatever she said was not totally accurate, given that I had to explain a lot of nuances about queer matters to her later, but that's beside the point. I'd also later learn that her acceptance was at least partly due to one of my uncles being in a gay marriage.
Probably sometime after the lesbian incident, that friend and I did end up kissing in my bedroom. The way I remember it, it was a purely scientific endeavour — "What is kissing on the lips like?". Answer: insignificant, at least as a prepubescent child. It was mostly just evidence that I didn't like my friend that way. Unsure if I had any particular thoughts about if it meant anything in the bigger picture.
I can't remember if we had any discussions about queer topics at the start, but I joined the beginnings of my current IRL friend group in about Year 5 (half the group is the grade above me). By the time I was in Year 7, we had definitely become a "queer group", open to talking about all sorts of identities and orientations, leaning quite heavily progressive. For the most part, I had no mental barrier to accepting queerness. It was really the nuances that sometimes confused or frustrated me, but I would say it was never a big enough problem where I had to actively work on it — passively gaining new understandings from LGBTQ content did a lot of the work (this was during a period where online resources were decent enough and the bigotry was a bit more understated). I pretty easily adopted several labels, which I still generally identify with; pan aro-ace spec and non-binary (though I have gone back and forth a few times on additionally calling myself genderfluid).
Still, the question of "Am I really aroace spec?" reared its head. The crushes I was forming in highschool were a little more obviously crushes compared to primary school, since I had actually male friends to compare to at that point, but they were so unimpactful that I barely remember they happened most of the time. Of minor note, for like a millisecond, I liked this one girl, but then I realised she wasn't really the best person. It was an interpersonal conflict, not an ideological conflict though. Fun fact, I actually did stop crushing on a guy because his new haircut was ugly as fuck.
In 2023, I finally developed a "real crush". That is to say, I actually thought about this person a lot and generally had a lot stronger feelings about them. Helped that this was the first crush that I became friends with and regularly talked to. Little hiccup though, a little complication in this longing — I started liking this person because they reminded me of someone else, and I realised that I was romantically interested in that someone else after a dream I had about them on the night of the 31st of December, 2024.
I woke up on January 1st, 2025, thinking "Fuck, I like this bastard, don't I?".
In retrospect, it was REALLY obvious. Just a little too happy when any sort of friendly 'flirting' happened. Too invested in consistently comparing us to a fictional couple we both know. Touches that were normal with other friends feeling different with this one. Like, I am genuinely flabbergasted at how every single one of those moments over many years were immediately and methodically swept away and forgotten by my brain until it suddenly clicked together because of that godforsaken dream where they flirted with me for real.
I could embarrass myself so badly by explaining in detail all the dreams I've had about them since then, but I might cry. None of them were sexual though, interestingly. Just... ugh, so clingy! I think there could be genuine analysis to be made here about why this is the case; we're both aroace spec and I really dislike the idea that any sort of even mild thoughts I have might make the subject uncomfortable, so how much is my aroace-ness, versus my desire to be not offend, versus my assumptions about what other aroace people are comfortable with?
The important part is that at this point, I think about my crush daily, and I just can't make fun of people for being "in love" anymore. I actually had gone through the classic aroace experience of thinking everyone was exaggerating how crushing and love feel, but holy fuck a lot of them were right, and I wish desperately right now that they weren't. No idea in any way shape or form if my crush could ever like me back, and I'm not really willing to test it currently. I'm a little too tired and a little too all over the place to feel comfortable either successfully pursuing or getting rejected.
Also, there's a part of me that still expects to wake up one day and find out that this whole crush thing was some weird hallucination that my brain cooked up for entertainment (to be fair, it is quite entertaining when it's not painful!). The feelings weren't too strong at the start of 2025, but gradually grew and grew, culminating in thoughts so pervasive in December that all I could think was, "Is this some strange manic episode? Do I need to go see a doctor??". Now, I'm not trying to downplay manic episodes, not at all, but I need you to understand that I felt unlike myself because I was so used to not having this type of romantic inclination that I had no way to handle something so extreme. Well, I'm still not discounting the idea that I'm going through something 'medically unfavourable', whatever that means here.
This sense of discombobulation was not helped by what I did to try and 'rid' myself of these feelings at 3am of December 26th — like a normal, well-adjusted mentally ill person, I said fuck it and chanted to myself in a dark room over and over various phrases such as "let go of these feelings", "it's not worth it", etc. before immediately passing out. For whatever reason that I'm sure a psychology major would love to pick apart, I dreamt about painful time loops, and woke up really confused about my feelings for my crush, characterised by decidedly mellow opinions on them and a significant decrease in unprompted thoughts. Not having pervasive gay nonsense in my head all day was such a relief, and I had honestly hoped I could just leave this crush business behind me. Unfortunately, the dream from the next night predicted that the feelings would come back and now we're here. Crushing but thankfully not losing my mind again yet. I'll probably just confess next time I'm gonna be so fucking real, that was the most unfun I've ever had crushing on someone.
Uh, if this person or any of our mutual friends/acquaintances are reading this and can figure out who is who in this recounting, congrats? I wasn't trying to hide it in particular, but I'm also too cowardly to say this to y'all directly, this is so humiliating LMAO please don't bully me :kneelingpray:
For anyone with access to my locked posts, you might have seen this post with some of the details I mention near the end, but it's a very different theme of discussion imo.
In primary school, I didn't really think about romance, though I had a couple of 'crushes'. They did not occupy really any thoughts when I couldn't see them in front of me. At that age, I almost exclusively hung out with girls (they did more of the things I liked, and we all thought I was a girl), while my crushes were on guys. Arguably, I wanted to be their friends more than anything (a 'squish', if you will). There wouldn't have been as much opportunity to develop those feelings over a girl, because I was 'friends' with quite a significant portion of the girls in my grade for a couple of years — nothing to long for there.
There was one incident when I was like 10? that didn't make me 'realise' anything, but did open my eyes very slightly to the world of queerness; I told my best friend at the time that if she was boy, I'd marry her. Now, I don't remember if there was a particular reason for saying that (the easiest assumption is that I didn't understand romance and marriage), but some people overheard and called me a lesbian.
At that point, I didn't know about gay people, so I didn't have any particular reaction beyond asking what they meant and not getting a response. I suppose my friends must not have known either, or I forgot to ask. When I got home, I posed to the question to my mother. Just like how she impersonally and briefly described sex to me around that age, all she said was something like "Just like how men and women can fall in love, women can love women and men can love men. A lesbian is a woman who is in love with women." Of course, whatever she said was not totally accurate, given that I had to explain a lot of nuances about queer matters to her later, but that's beside the point. I'd also later learn that her acceptance was at least partly due to one of my uncles being in a gay marriage.
Probably sometime after the lesbian incident, that friend and I did end up kissing in my bedroom. The way I remember it, it was a purely scientific endeavour — "What is kissing on the lips like?". Answer: insignificant, at least as a prepubescent child. It was mostly just evidence that I didn't like my friend that way. Unsure if I had any particular thoughts about if it meant anything in the bigger picture.
I can't remember if we had any discussions about queer topics at the start, but I joined the beginnings of my current IRL friend group in about Year 5 (half the group is the grade above me). By the time I was in Year 7, we had definitely become a "queer group", open to talking about all sorts of identities and orientations, leaning quite heavily progressive. For the most part, I had no mental barrier to accepting queerness. It was really the nuances that sometimes confused or frustrated me, but I would say it was never a big enough problem where I had to actively work on it — passively gaining new understandings from LGBTQ content did a lot of the work (this was during a period where online resources were decent enough and the bigotry was a bit more understated). I pretty easily adopted several labels, which I still generally identify with; pan aro-ace spec and non-binary (though I have gone back and forth a few times on additionally calling myself genderfluid).
Still, the question of "Am I really aroace spec?" reared its head. The crushes I was forming in highschool were a little more obviously crushes compared to primary school, since I had actually male friends to compare to at that point, but they were so unimpactful that I barely remember they happened most of the time. Of minor note, for like a millisecond, I liked this one girl, but then I realised she wasn't really the best person. It was an interpersonal conflict, not an ideological conflict though. Fun fact, I actually did stop crushing on a guy because his new haircut was ugly as fuck.
In 2023, I finally developed a "real crush". That is to say, I actually thought about this person a lot and generally had a lot stronger feelings about them. Helped that this was the first crush that I became friends with and regularly talked to. Little hiccup though, a little complication in this longing — I started liking this person because they reminded me of someone else, and I realised that I was romantically interested in that someone else after a dream I had about them on the night of the 31st of December, 2024.
I woke up on January 1st, 2025, thinking "Fuck, I like this bastard, don't I?".
In retrospect, it was REALLY obvious. Just a little too happy when any sort of friendly 'flirting' happened. Too invested in consistently comparing us to a fictional couple we both know. Touches that were normal with other friends feeling different with this one. Like, I am genuinely flabbergasted at how every single one of those moments over many years were immediately and methodically swept away and forgotten by my brain until it suddenly clicked together because of that godforsaken dream where they flirted with me for real.
I could embarrass myself so badly by explaining in detail all the dreams I've had about them since then, but I might cry. None of them were sexual though, interestingly. Just... ugh, so clingy! I think there could be genuine analysis to be made here about why this is the case; we're both aroace spec and I really dislike the idea that any sort of even mild thoughts I have might make the subject uncomfortable, so how much is my aroace-ness, versus my desire to be not offend, versus my assumptions about what other aroace people are comfortable with?
The important part is that at this point, I think about my crush daily, and I just can't make fun of people for being "in love" anymore. I actually had gone through the classic aroace experience of thinking everyone was exaggerating how crushing and love feel, but holy fuck a lot of them were right, and I wish desperately right now that they weren't. No idea in any way shape or form if my crush could ever like me back, and I'm not really willing to test it currently. I'm a little too tired and a little too all over the place to feel comfortable either successfully pursuing or getting rejected.
Also, there's a part of me that still expects to wake up one day and find out that this whole crush thing was some weird hallucination that my brain cooked up for entertainment (to be fair, it is quite entertaining when it's not painful!). The feelings weren't too strong at the start of 2025, but gradually grew and grew, culminating in thoughts so pervasive in December that all I could think was, "Is this some strange manic episode? Do I need to go see a doctor??". Now, I'm not trying to downplay manic episodes, not at all, but I need you to understand that I felt unlike myself because I was so used to not having this type of romantic inclination that I had no way to handle something so extreme. Well, I'm still not discounting the idea that I'm going through something 'medically unfavourable', whatever that means here.
This sense of discombobulation was not helped by what I did to try and 'rid' myself of these feelings at 3am of December 26th — like a normal, well-adjusted mentally ill person, I said fuck it and chanted to myself in a dark room over and over various phrases such as "let go of these feelings", "it's not worth it", etc. before immediately passing out. For whatever reason that I'm sure a psychology major would love to pick apart, I dreamt about painful time loops, and woke up really confused about my feelings for my crush, characterised by decidedly mellow opinions on them and a significant decrease in unprompted thoughts. Not having pervasive gay nonsense in my head all day was such a relief, and I had honestly hoped I could just leave this crush business behind me. Unfortunately, the dream from the next night predicted that the feelings would come back and now we're here. Crushing but thankfully not losing my mind again yet. I'll probably just confess next time I'm gonna be so fucking real, that was the most unfun I've ever had crushing on someone.
Uh, if this person or any of our mutual friends/acquaintances are reading this and can figure out who is who in this recounting, congrats? I wasn't trying to hide it in particular, but I'm also too cowardly to say this to y'all directly, this is so humiliating LMAO please don't bully me :kneelingpray:
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2026-02-16 18:22 (UTC)hopefully things get worked out!!!
really neat to see ppl’s history with queerness, i only had a tiny touching of it at the end of high school when one of my friends came out as aro and it ended up nuking the relationship between them and my other friend, rest was mostly thru online and my closest friend making me realize im also ace like her
(no subject)
Date: 2026-02-16 18:39 (UTC)Things will probably be fine! Even if they reject me, I'm not desperate for a relationship, and we mostly only DM nowadays (my close friends drifted away from my crush), so the fallout wouldn't be that bad.
Yeah, I've found that I'm quite lucky that my in-person friends are all so queer, but all my aroace friends have had quite different experiences to me so far (or just haven't said anything), so I thought I might as well share. I haven't had any queer-shaped explosions amongst my friends yet though!