Ace Admiral

I haven’t had the energy/emotional wherewithal to deal with the fail of the internet re: asexuality recently, as you may have noticed, so I’ve been spending some time surrounded by happy (fannish) things to recharge my batteries, so to speak. And one of the things I noticed, leaving my cozy bubble of asexy peeps behind for a little while, was two or three very similar posts going around in this non-asexy space that boiled down to: Does anyone else get, like, friendship crushes on people?

My first thought was to respond with that pic from a google search saying “did you mean: my life?” Of course I am familiar with squishes/squashes/whatever! But I thought about it for a minute, and decided against enlightening them that we have this word for it. Because… I feel like I’d be butting in.

As I’ve gotten to know my classmates here better, I’ve been more open about who I am and the people who are important to me. So far, no one’s really batted an eyelash when I say I prefer girls. It’s been really nice, being able to say it, because it wasn’t that long ago that I was in denial about it to myself. But, for some reason, I haven’t been able to tell them (with the exception of the group I mentioned coming out to during AAW) that I’m asexual, and I don’t know why. Again, it feels like I’d be butting in, somehow. The same feeling as if I talked to them about the intricacies of thermodynamics or something.

I know, objectively, that asexuality is an obscure topic. To understand things like demisexuality and romantic orientation and stuff, you do have to start getting into the weeds of what sexual orientations are. But there are pedestrian explanations of asexuality that are easily accessible to the average person… so why can’t I bring myself to give one?

I dunno, being outside the tumblr ace community for a little while has really given me some perspective on the difference between the stuff we talk about, and even the stuff non-activist aces talk about. There are a couple of aces I’ve run into in the fannish sphere, and I have a feeling if I was like, “oh, I have a massive squish” or “I’d hoped she’d be my zucchini” they’d be just as confused as if I said that to my classmates.

That said, I like the high level discourse :D I like intricacies and obscurities. I just have to get better at bridging the gap between in here and out there.