Late night conversations for the sleepless

05.07 - Old Tree

You know what I like so much about the aromantic community?

We have so many concepts that the average alloromantic person has never heard of. Concepts that make it so much easier to explain our experiences, desires and struggles to other people. They make it so much easier to exist as an aromantic person in this world. Of course, every aromantic person can decide whether they find these concepts helpful and applicable to their experiences. But I find it amazing how many cool concepts the aromantic community either came up with or took pre-existing concepts and made them our aromantic 101. I don't think the allos really get how being aromantic can fundamentally change your worldview. And to be honest, I think they're missing out because I think everyone would benefit from at least being familiar with those concepts.

Being aromantic is basically like this:

Aromantic shrimp colours are real.

Anyways, aromantic community, y'all mean a lot to me and I'm so happy I found y'all and now share your "secret" knowledge!

I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself.

the past lives in you

Late night conversations for the sleepless

my favorite genre of bird picture

My growing collection of tin woodsman(and a few scarecrows) art from the books

Moreeee

Lights and Shadows of Cyber City.

The first asexual person I met outside of the internet was a 65 year old woman.

I’d been interning with her as an artist/executive assistant for some time. To put a long story short she’d developed a tremor that kept her from doing a certain amount of studio work, so in between sending emails and invoices for her I’d chip in and help with line art or drafting on longer projects. A lot of it was the two of us sitting in her basement studio, doing our own thing, waiting for the phone to ring. We got to talking a lot. I’d just moved across the country and was still finding my footing.

There was a handyman she had over occasionally — he was a personal friend who enjoyed her company more than she enjoyed his. She didn’t dislike him by any means, but he definitely had feelings for her that she didn’t reciprocate. One day, after he’d come over to repair something-or-other and left, she and I started talking about relationships.

She asked if I had a boyfriend. I told her I wasn’t interested in being in a relationship with anyone and that I’d never had a desire to be in a relationship. Admittedly, I was bracing for the “You’ll meet the right person someday” response. I knew it generally came from a place of care, but it never changed how much I dreaded to hear it. I really respected my mentor and I was prepared to nod along to whatever response she gave me. Instead of anything I expected her to say, she just kind of nodded and said, “Me neither. I think I’m — what’s the term — asexual?”

I was ecstatic. I told her I was asexual, too. I saw her sigh in relief, the same way I did. I couldn’t believe it.

We didn’t get much work done that day, we just started talking about our experiences. She’d been married once when she was younger and even during that period of her life her disinterest in a sexual relationship didn’t change. She had a roommate after graduating college who confessed to having feelings for her and she had to tell her “It’s not that I don’t like girls, it’s that I don’t like anybody.” The roommate harbored enough bitterness over this that they had to split ways. Her mother told her that she would quote “rather have a gay daughter than a daughter who didn’t fancy anyone at all” unquote.

I didn’t have nearly as many experiences as she did, but I was able to share my own for the first time. I shared how it was easier to say I was taking time to work on myself than to say I had no interest in being in a relationship. We talked about the words “You’ll meet the right person someday” and “You’ll know when you’re in love” and “Don’t worry, one day you’ll meet some guy that changes everything.” As if something was broken.

“I’ve been alive for sixty five years,” my mentor told me, “and I’ve never felt like I was missing something, even if everybody told me I was.”

Currently, my mentor lives with her parrot, her cats, and her backyard-wildlife pals in a house that she owns. She makes art and hosts community art groups and volunteers at care homes and is the most self-fulfilled woman I’ve ever met. And she loves her life. She loves the people she knows and they love her, too. If I could be half as cool as she is when I grow up, I think that’d be pretty amazing.

“Asexuality” isn’t a problem to be fixed or a phase to grow out of. Sometimes you’re fifteen and sometimes you’re sixty-five. I knew in my heart that older asexual people existed but it changed me completely to meet one. We were here before and we always will be.

Vigil.

meet the artist !

been working on this creature for a while now I'm not yet sure about what he is

You actually cannot skip to being good at a creative endeavour that you haven't put much practice into. You cannot trick your way out of the 'knows that your work is not what you want it to be but don't know how to improve it' stage by planning or reading or talking about it really really hard. At some point you just have to craft through it until your brain finds it's own unique way back to the 'everything I make slaps' stage and be prepared to start the cycle all over again. You just have to make that project you're excited about slightly less good than you want it to be. (Says this standing in a pool of blood and covered in blood and also coughing up a little blood)