35 Attempts at Writing Aromanticism
1// After more than half a year of writing and rewriting, I again try to write this essay, to make some truth out of all of my experiences. I don’t think I’ve ever written something this challenging; I don’t think I’ve ever needed to write anything more. I hold within me two facts: one, that I need to find some way to communicate this, and two, that it might not be communicable.
I try again.
I’ll start here: I am aromantic. I know I should define that; I know that I need to, but it simply feels to be an impossible task. (No, it is impossible.) I suspect my readers will make efforts to come to some sort of definition on their own regardless (and I can’t blame you, otherwise the essay becomes a lot more hostile), but either way, I refuse to give a definition myself, even if leads to confusion, upset, or strangeness left lingering in the air. I almost want it — that vagueness, that feeling of being unsettled by something left unsaid. And I accept both potential fates: understanding or lack thereof, maybe even simultaneously. This is a story of contradictions.
Another contradiction: I have known I was aromantic since I was young, although I can’t name the specific age. At the same time, I still do not know I am aromantic now, not really, even as an adult. I learned I was aromantic when my parents split, when they both remarried, when my sister got her first boyfriend, when my friends first started having crushes and dating each other, when they asked about my crushes, when I had answers and when I didn’t, when I had crushes and when I didn’t, and when I gave myself sleepless nights out of twisting and turning romance around myself, like a mouse dressing up for a night out by twisting a python around its neck.
I unknew it at all in the same moments.
What a fucking mess.
2// Maybe this is better suited for some kind of poetry. Maybe it’s better suited for a play, for actors on a stage. Perhaps a visual novel or some other fictionalized story. They’re all creative mediums I’ve tried my hand at and failed at so many times before. I have no more confidence in them than I do the traditional essay; in fact, I have less confidence in my ability in these mediums than I need to in order to make use of them for this kind of work. I think, perhaps, the best and only way to write this would be to force you to live my years, walk in my shoes, see through my eyes, hear through my ears, feel my emotions through that strange thing we call the brain. It’s easier said than done, even if I just want to simulate it or approximate it, to have someone just imagine it. And it’s far easier said than done if I want to do it in a way that doesn’t make it sound simultaneously melodramatic as all hell and completely and utterly underwhelming at the same time.
Sometimes, I hate writing, talking about, living aromanticism.
There are so many questions that I ask that I can’t answer, so many questions the people around me ask that I can’t answer, so many questions that are so utterly the wrong question to ask whatsoever that I lose hope in knowing the right answers whatsoever, in ever being able to do anything with the goddamn thing at all.
It defies all logic. At least for me.
What do I do with this?
3// Every time I write this essay, it turns out different. Every time I try to write, I try out every strategy I know, every strategy I’ve become confident with, every one that I’ve been suggested and taught and told about. I had a strong hook and my professor told me I should use it. It goes something like this: “My mother married a Lambert before she married another Lambert, my father”. I guess it’d catch reader’s attention, and I feel like I can spin it in a number of interesting directions. I can and I do. None of them feel meaningful, feel good, feel like they communicate the incommunicable. I guess they’re all ideas, but if I show it to my friends who I’ve been trying to talk about this to for years, will they understand me anymore?
Perhaps not.
I talked about labels, I talked about terms. The aromantic community has so many of them. Grayaromantic. Demiromantic. Lithromantic. Quoiromantic. Abromantic. Aegoromantic. Aroflux. Arospike. Autochorisromantic. Caedoromantic. Idemromantic. Oriented aroace. Alterous attraction. Queerplatonic partnerships. These are only some; all of them attempt to describe different experiences with romance, put names to the nuanced and complicated relationships we have to our attractions or lack thereof. None of them feel right; I keep using the world “aromantic” but I can’t put a finger to why. I know some of these are arguably a better fit. I know some have pulled to me, I know some keep pulling to me. Every time I these terms on, I feel like they just weren’t made for me. I feel like I slipped my right shoe on my left foot, and everything almost lines up, but the curves of my body are always pushing against the fabric. If I wore them long enough, my skin would irritate, blister, bleed, god knows what.
I move on, but not without ever looking back.
4// In my writing attempts, I make a list of “maybe-crushes” that I’ve had in my lifetime. Snapshots of relationships, insecurities, small moments of anger and intimacy and trauma. Maybe it’s deeply meaningful, but not out of context, and how can I possibly ever, ever write context here that means anything whatsoever?
I also keep finding myself writing in metaphors, which my readers have mixed reactions to. I really like them, though. Keep getting drawn to the same ones. They’re metaphors I wrote into my poetry years ago, that felt so physical and visual that I keep coming back to them, reusing them in new contexts.
(If they’re so visual, even to me — well, that says something. I have pretty bad aphantasia. That means I don’t really have the ability to visualize things in my head.
Except for this.)
So, I’ll say this: aromanticism feels like shadows darting at the corners of my eyes, always just barely out of sight. It feels like pinpricks on the surface of my skin, like the numbing static I feel on my face when I hyperventilate, the pins and needles I get from sitting on my feet too long. It feels like sand falling through my fingers. It feels like swimming through some kind of air so rough that it might as well be made of tiny, invisible sandpaper particles, rubbing my skin raw layer by layer until I’m meat and bones, muscles and blood spilling out, until there’s nothing left inside. That raw. It feels like all of that and more. I’ll keep these metaphors for myself, lock them up in a box somewhere, and take them out again when I feel ready.
All I have are these, and it’s not enough.
5// I think about the places where I have and have not found myself. The toxic queer folks I hung around in high school, the (usually) much more well-adjusted and kind queer folks I hang around in college. The spaces I find online that are set up specifically for aromantic people to get together and meet. The times and places I lay in my bed, listening to love songs. The painfully romantic books, movies, TV shows. All of it.
I think about them, and I realize that I rarely find myself in the places that seem to make the most sense, that seem to be the most expected. The media, the experiences, the relatable Twitter posts that my friends send me — even the ones written by aromantics about aromanticism — feel alien too. The ones I seek out, the spaces, places, people I seek out… well, I can’t say any of it has felt especially fulfilling.
And, really, I don’t mind love songs — in fact, I often find some kind of home in them, but many of my aromantic peers do seem to mind them. (The few songs that are written about aromantic experiences have never really clicked for me.)
I hate myself for it, but that…
6// I mean, I mostly just hate myself. A lot of the time. Is that too dark to write in an essay like this?
7// I guess I feel some need to explain or justify to myself and the people in my life how much of my aromanticism has to do with hating myself. And, the answer is:
9// When I wrote my asexuality essay, the asexuality essay to end all future asexuality essays of mine for good, I had so much to show the readers. All sorts of images — most were snippets of posts from social media, but I felt they did what they needed to. They provided good credibility; they backed up the points I made about asexuality’s place in queer discourse, they got to the raw points where rejection stung and where hostilities lay. What do I show here? Aromanticism for me does not leave evidence, only space where it lingered and moved on.
More metaphors make better writing, right?
10// I’ve been told it’s effective essay-writing to be specific. To name the sensory details, the lived experiences, to point towards things that give readers a solid ground to stand on and let them stand on it.
I question how much I want my essay to be solid ground. I question if that defeats the whole purpose of the essay. I think about my essay as a kind of platform above a deep ocean filled with god-knows-whats, maybe big sharks with teeth ready to saw you up, manta rays ready to shock you, schools of fish to swarm around you, endless deep ocean really, something else —
— a platform I can open up when I want to, to drop the reader in when they’re feeling most safe. Wanting to have that in my hands, to be able to control that, is maybe sadistic, and is definitely an urge I don’t know how to explain or justify. When I recently talked to friends about the ways in which I wanted my gender to unsettle people, to make them uncomfortable (surprise, I’m trans!), they didn’t seem to understand; they seemed offput by my desire to offput others. And I think my desire here is similar. Maybe sometimes it’s vindictive; a sort of response to all of the unsettled ways in which people have pulled that same discomfort out of me by force. Either way, I’ve come to the conclusion that not all writing has to be comfortable. Not all experiences, not all stories, not all arguments should be comfortable. I don’t want it all to be safe. I don’t want it all to feel like home. Some of it is a platform that can drop out from under you at any moment, to some fate you don’t know, to some questions that, like this essay, don’t have answers.
I mean, is anything I’m writing impactful enough to do that? Is anything I could ever say about aromanticism powerful enough to unsettle you? In the ways that I need it to?
11// Still, I suppose that not all detail should be forsaken for the sake of some greater point. Maybe I’ll leave you with some hints, even if it risks giving you solid ground.
Because, well, I keep wanting to write out some of these details, even when I tell myself they don’t matter. It’s all so vivid, and it keeps haunting the back of my mind.
12// we sit on the grass. i don’t know why, or how, or when, but at some point, for some reason, i’ve decided to glorify, to romanticize friendship, long-term friendship, the concept of a friend you met so early on that you never knew anything else. a friend you stay friends with until you have endless stories to draw from, an endless relationship to call back upon.
is that middle school rose-tinted glasses, naïveté, or a longing for the romantic in some part of the platonic? regardless of the answer:
one of us runs our hands through the other’s hair. i don’t remember who. was it me to you? you to me? both at various times? either way, something about it is particular. i’m so particular with you; i keep trying to find reasons to spend time with you. for your birthday, i try to unironically make you a mixtape. when you spend less time with me to talk to your other friends, and later your boyfriend, it crushes me. i feel so stupid for being angry, for being betrayed, for not just quietly letting you abandon me like it feels like you are, for fighting with you about this.
i wish the platonic was more often treated this way. maybe it is; my friends and i have always been so intimate, and i rarely know people who genuinely seem against it or confused by it — that is, the intimate platonic. still, that half-acceptance of the platonic, that tolerance of it, whatever it is — doesn’t quite feel like it allows or makes space for the kind of relationship we had back then, doesn’t quite feel fulfilling. at least, most of it. and i’m too scared to ask to make it more.
13// Am I happy having written that? Do I feel fulfilled?
Does it even work in the essay?
I suppose I’m not sure. Better leave it in, anyway.
Platonic longing is a hell of a thing. I can’t let it go.
14// I barely know anyone I can relate to about this, who I can see myself in. Honestly.
One person who I do know of? Simone de Rochefort. A video games journalist. I was so surprised when I realized she was aromantic; I don’t know if I’d have expected that. It feels tacky to write about her here, like some stupid secret. I suppose I don’t care.
We don’t have much in common. Unlike me, she isn’t asexual. Still, something about her personality… rambunctious, funny, and at times, well, flirty. I can relate to it, in a weird way.
Also, her Twitter bio reads “Non-romanceable NPC”, which is pretty funny. I don’t think anyone would ever mistake me as romanceable, but I know an artist I like used to sell pins with that phrase on it, and, well, maybe… that’d be the only kind of aromantic pride type stuff I think I’d really wear.
15// Most of the other stuff I relate to has nothing to do with aromanticism. A lot of me feels contradictory to aromanticism. Did I mention that this essay talks about contradictions?
I guess this is my short way of saying that it’s really nice to flirt with the right people and all of that. (And this one’s more asexuality than aromanticism, but it’s also funny as hell to call things “sexy” when they are utterly unsexy to anyone who has actually experienced the phenomenon of thinking something is sexy.) So I guess I like to appropriate these things, which is probably… odd. It’s certainly hard to explain.
I call one of my friends my “gf” a lot. She said she prefers that over girlfriend, which feels too serious. We aren’t actually dating. If I wanted to actually define our relationship, I’m not sure how I would. I don’t really care. I have the feeling she’d just call it platonic either way.
That’s fine by me.
16// An incomplete list of things that I’ve tried to make this essay about, or I think it should be about:
1. How I realized I was aromantic;
2. How I am currently realizing what aromanticism is;
3. How it doesn’t matter what aromanticism is;
4. How it does matter what aromanticism is;
5. The many ways aromantic is defined;
6. My own disregard and lack of care for defining it;
7. The ways I’ve totally and utterly appropriated romantic terms for my own sake because I honestly don’t care anymore;
8. Isn’t there a term for that? Quoiromantic/WTFromantic — not knowing the difference between the romantic and the platonic or not caring or saying fuck it;
9. Not knowing the difference between the romantic and the platonic or not caring or saying fuck it (but also not liking the term quoiromantic for myself);
10. Sometimes liking the term quoiromantic for myself;
11. Queer time;
12. Aromantic time;
13. The ultimate failure of the nuclear family structure;
14. How the current standard in which we expect people to have romantic feelings and relationships and get married is all part of a larger system of queerphobic structures and really ought to be taken more seriously and analyzed;
15. Trying to take it more seriously and analyze it (and failing) (there’s no research on this) (or I’m not good enough at researching it);
16. The way I’ve almost alienated myself from most of my friends by really fucking hating romance so much and never shutting up about it, oh my god;
17. Feeling like I totally don’t belong in queer spaces but also feel they are the only spaces that I will ever make sense in;
18. All of these goddamn contradictions;
19. Ambiguities;
20. Certainties;
21. Incommunicabilities;
25. This list;
17// Either way, I like my standard ending for it. Mal Blum’s song, “Cut It Off”, (which by my word is definitely not about aromanticism because it’s written by someone who by all means is not almost certainly not aromantic; it’s a song about a failed romantic relationship), but also, I don’t fucking care. Contradictions or something.
18// If I had my way
Every day would be my day
I would ask you out
And you would say “okay!”
And I’d come get you at 8
8 ‘o clock right on the dot
19// As I edit this piece again, for probably the 18th time, I realize why I struggled so much to explain how this song fits into it all.
20// ’Cause sometimes when I am late
Then I can’t get you to talk
And it ruins our whole date
And if I had my way we’d go out every night
It’d be a perfect time and we’d never ever fight
21// I think most people understand aromanticism as a lack of romantic attraction, that’s all. If they understand it all.
22// You know, you used to call me up when you were high
And I never ever asked you
So you never told me why
No, you never told me, never told me why!
Your hair is green, your hair is pink
My heart can’t think think
I drive my car, and I ride the bus
And I stay too long
And I ask too much
23// And sure, that’s a fine definition.
For me, though? It’s more about a relationship to the hierarchy; a complete inability to and disinterest in defining yourself within it.
24// Your hair was black
’Til it was blue
I always had a crush on you
You dye it back when you need to
And I’m still deciding what to do
25// If I’m aromantic, it’s not because I say “I don’t experience romantic attraction”.
26// But if I had my way,
I would ask you to the prom
You would want to meet my mom
And you wouldn’t even tease me
For rhyming words in my songs
’Cause I wrote these songs about you
But I hope you understand
They were actually about me
And I hope you’re not mad
27// It’s because that model doesn’t work for me, never worked for me. It’s because I spent years shaving off parts of myself to fit into it and ended up destroying myself in the process.
28// Your hair was black ’til it was blue
Just cut it off if you want to
Just cut it off if you want to
I couldn’t care less what you do
29// Does it matter if I define something as romantic or not when that system of understanding has never done anything but harm to me?
30// Does it matter at all?
31// I wrote Mal Blum a while ago. I said, “Hey, I know it’s not — but I guess it just feels like Cut It Off is about aromanticism. It resonates so much with me.
32// I never got a response. I didn’t expect one.
When I told my friend about my take on the song, all she really said at the time was something like, “Well,
Well. It feels romantic to me.”
33// There’s this podcast I used to listen to. Wolf 359. It’s this grand… space-opera comedy thing. In the tenth episode of its first season, one character, an AI named Hera, monologues. She says:
I’d describe it to you if I could. But I can’t. I don’t have the words. You didn’t even give me the words. Your species never invented names for these colors, just because you couldn’t see them, couldn’t paint with them, couldn’t smear them all over your faces.
Such a big, big universe, and you only ever gave yourself the tools to think about a tiny portion of it.
It’s been more than five years since I first heard those lines, but they still haunt me.
34// Will we someday have names for all of these colors?
35// Will I ever use them?
