“Cake or Love?” “Chocolate one, please.”

To be honest, I have never thought that I would expose myself to the world someday, especially about something quite sensitive like sexuality. However, I think I should do it, for my community and myself.

Yes, I am a part of the “LGBTQIA+” community. My letter is the last one before the plus, “A” - Asexual, or in more detail, Aromantic Asexual (AroAce), the one who doesn’t have romantic or sexual attraction to other people.

That’s just a very short explanation. I will write a detailed post about Asexuality when we get to Pride Month. In this one, let me tell you the story of how I can identify myself as an AroAce.

Introduction

I was born with two X chromosomes, and have lived inside a female body since then. However, at the first time you see me, you might be confused for some seconds because I look exactly like a boy, from appearance, personality, to behaviors. The only two things that I cannot fake are my high-pitched voice and my small, short body, since I don’t have enough Testosterone to develop male secondary sexual characteristics properly. I actually don’t really care about them, because my target is never to transform myself into a boy, but to live strong and hard like a man. Wearing boy’s clothes is just my hobby.

But, before becoming the me you all see now, my closet used to be crowded by dresses and girly clothes, my personal things used to be nothing but pink (it's in my name too :) ), my hair used to be long and lustrous, and I also used to try becoming a proper daughter of my family.

Used to. Now, even my stethoscope is full black.

Put aside all the pinky things, my family does me a favor, which is never asked about my lover. Maybe they have recognized who I am, or they just think that I am still a kid that doesn't know anything about romance (I have more than 100 reasons to confirm the last one, but I want to think it’s the first). That idea also affected me, so until near the end of secondary school, I still thought that the reason why I didn't want to have a boyfriend or girlfriend was simply because I was too young, and my family would get angry at me if I had one.

Fun fact: My 6-year-younger brother has his first lover in 6th grade. All of my family members knew about it, and the only thing they did was…tease him. :)

The last years of secondary school were the time of puberty. I started to be more aware about my body, and know more about romantic relationships. Know, not interested in. Like everyone around my age, I searched about everythings, including the things that have ratings more than my age, observed all the relationships I saw, but not like them, I never thought that I would be in one of them.

Now, the interesting part.

In secondary school, I had a male friend. Actually, I always have more friends of the male gender than female, because I enjoy hanging out with them more. This boy is, however, different. He liked me in a romantic way, or that was what everyone told me.

What was my reaction?

I did not believe it.

As I said, at that time, I still thought that me and my friends were all kids, and kids should not think about romantic stuff. There were also many people who were teased like us. I considered all of them as childish teasing (although some of them are quite…), and didn't pay any attention to them, including the rumor of me and my friend. I still don’t know whether he truly liked me or not, but I hope he didn’t.

Similar things also happened sometimes, and I did not know anything until my friends and family told me. I don’t know how many of them are true, but thanks to them, I recognized something very important, that is I have a terrible ability to sense the feelings of others, especially the romantic ones.

I have asked two people about that, since it made me curious. One of them told me that I cannot sense them simply because I don’t have them, so I can’t empathize. The other sent me a video about how to recognize the romantic feelings of others. This is my reply:

“Why should I? I cannot return those feelings anyway.”

That’s one of the checkpoints. Now, the second, also the biggest one.

In high school, I had a crush on someone.

Calm the hell down. I know you’re shocked, but let me explain.

At that time, I had 3 close friends. Two girls, one boy. The boy is straight, the girls, one is Bisexual, one is Panromantic Demisexual, plus the Aromantic Asexual me, make a quite interesting group. But not like me, all of them can have a crush on someone, and we all know that that’s something unavoidable.

What will you do when you have a crush? You tell your friends. And who was their friend? Who else? Me.

High School students are not kids anymore, plus the effect of people around me, I started to realize something is wrong with me. That’s why I tried to like someone like them, and my target was a male classmate. Why him? I don’t know, he was just…there. :)

After determining the target, I moderated my thought to like him in a romantic way, or at least the “romantic way” I know (aka staring at him and repeating “I like him” for some hundreds of times, not that difficult). I did it pretty well, even I myself was tricked, until I told my friends about him, and they asked: “Do you want to confess?”

Me: Con…fess?

Friends: Yeah, confess. We can help if you want.

Me: I…don’t know. What if he agrees?

Friends: Then you guys…wait, what? What if he agrees? Shouldn’t you worry more about him denying you?

Me: …No, I’m more worried about the agreement. :)

I did confess to him, by the way. He denied. After that, my friends treated me with a lot of snacks because they thought I was sad. I accepted the snacks, even though my feeling at that time was not sadness, but relief.

Sorry, guys. :))))))))))))

The relief gave me the first idea that maybe I am a “người vô tính” (Vietnamese term for “asexual”), then, after years of searching and observation, I identified myself as an Aromantic Asenxual. Until now, after almost 21 years, I have never, don’t, and don’t have any idea of starting a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone, whatever group they are in. That’s why when I am asked “have you got a lover?”, I always answer “no”, not “not yet”, because I will never have one, unless this life doesn’t allow me to say “no”.

Oh, and in case you are about to say “Maybe you haven’t met the right person yet”, then let me tell you our most famous joke to reply to the most offended comment people can throw to our face:

“Have you ever want to f*ck a cactus?

No?

Maybe you haven’t met the right cactus yet.”

(David J. Bradley, 2020)

Thank you for reading my story. Hope that I can help you a little bit in your self-discovering journey. I also want to hear your story, so please share with us under the comment if you want, we really appreciate that. And, if by somehow, you feel like you see yourself in this story, then...Welcome. It has been a while since the last time I met an Asexual.

See you in another post.

Sincerely,

VinUnians