I feel like it’s never easy to figure out yourself, but the task of figuring out another comes naturally.
I’m six foot five with long curly hair and blue eyes, hard to slip past anyone but noticed when you’re the size of a fridge and as frizzy as a lion, but most days I wish I could be a ghost, a shadow in a quiet alley, because inside me there’s a calm lake where someone’s smile is just a pebble dropped into still water: it makes a tiny ripple and then it settles right back down, and that’s enough. Growing up the “grey sheep” in a family that spoke in megaphones, my parents voices were the brass band and I was content to stand offstage in the wings, taught me to choose retreat over roar, to make my presence felt only in small gestures, a soft smile, a well-timed question, or even a playlist shared like an offering. Those surface level ideations and sudden sparks of flame I think were just habits I picked up from the performance of romance everyone else seemed to be rehearsing, they feel like masks I tried on and discarded, because when I actually reach for something deeper, something that hums instead of flashing neon, I realize I’ve been longing for a partner who can sit with me in silence, and appreciate the little kindnesses I offer instead of expecting fireworks.
And I think I do truly want someone; A single person, however unknown to me they are, and not some army of lanterns to light my way to some fucking mystery unknown locale. I’m learning to distinguish between the flash of a crush, bright and fast, and the ember of connection that might really endure, to journal the moments when I feel seen versus when I shrink away, and to explore quiet communities that speak my language of asexuality, aromanticism, or whatever the hell it is.
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