Let-me-be-ace - The Ace Me

Why Did They Come?

Simple planks, designed for iron bridges in ACNH

After some weeks of being uncomfortable I finally bit the bullet and had a coworker verbally warned about his sexual misconduct towards me. Standing very close just behind my shoulder, saying I'm beautiful, staring. I've asked him to stop but he and a few others thought I was joking; his comments towards me aren't bad they make me highly uncomfortable. I hate the idea that I should be flattered. Fuck that. I don't like that, I don't want that. I don't care if you don't mean it that you're just joking. It adds stress to an already stressful job. I told you to stop, end of story.

I can't stop watching this omg 🥺💞💞💞

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!

If anyone deserves a raise it’s the employee from four seasons total landscaping who answered the phone and went “yup, we can set up a podium and everything” and just acted like nothing was out of the ordinary.

Crap

How Long is this Fic Really?: A Guide

Word count in the HP Series: 

Sorcerer’s Stones: 76,944  Chamber of Secrets: 85,141 Prisoner of Azkaban: 107,253  Goblet of Fire: 190,637 Order of the Phoenix: 257,045 Half-Blood Prince: 168,923 Deathly Hallows: 198,227

Word count in the LOTR Series:

The Hobbit: 95,022 Fellowship of the Ring: 177,227 Two Towers: 143,436 Return of the King: 134,462

In the years before I found asexuality, the thought that repeatedly ran through my head was “I don’t like boys… but I don’t like girls either. Can’t I just be nothing? Just nothing?” And for a year and a half now I’ve had a name for it. I love knowing that there are so many of you out there that feel the same, and that it’s not just me. Thank you tumblr and thank you ace awareness week!

I was kicked out of my best friend’s wedding party and then the next week I was told I wasn’t allowed at the wedding. It’s been a year and haven’t spoken with her. Still not over it.

why does no one talk about how friends can break your heart so devastatingly intimately sometimes a million times worse than romantic partners why does no one talk about friend break ups