My Personal Journey Through the Rainbow

It took me about ten years of term jumping before I finally realized what my sexual orientation was. Before age fourteen or so, I never really gave it serious thought. I just wasn't interested in dating, at all. My friends (girls and guys) would talk about who they had crushes on and the like and I just kind of awkwardly shrugged my shoulders. Did I have romantic fantasies? Sure, but nothing to the point of "sexual". Honestly, this should have been my first clue that I was asexual.

I remember going through old worksheets from middle school (about ages 10-13 for where I live in the world), I stumbled on some old health education class worksheets. The teacher asked something about romance and dating on the worksheet and when I read it now as an adult, I burst out laughing. Why? Apparently, my young brain thought it was okay to go on a tirade against dating, romance, sex, all of that. That should have been a huge red flag for my brain to go "hey, you're asexual". 

Around age fourteen I started to date seriously. I dated men throughout my high school years. However, from age 16 to18 I was sexually abused on a regular basis throughout the relationship. Around age 16 was when I started my journey of trying to figure myself out. Because of the abuse, I dissociated heavily when I was involved, personally, with any kind of sexual activity. I think this was what made it so difficult to figure myself out. 

At first, I claimed the title of "pansexual", a sexual orientation for those who feel sexually attracted to all consenting genders/sexes. After that I went to demisexual. I stuck with that term until around age 18 or 19 and I just didn't feel like "it fit" anymore. So I went through about a dozen of other terms found within the LGBTQIA community. 

It took me until I was 24 or 25 years old before I literally woke up one day (I believed it actually came to me through a dream) and I was like "Well hot damn, I am asexual." Romantically, I am panromantic. This means while I exhibit no sexual attraction towards people, romantically I am a-okay with all consenting adults who wish to have a romantic relationship with me and/or just do romantic activities with me. I jokingly will tell people "I am attracted to you in all ways except sexually". 

A subset of my asexuality is aegosexuality. In simple terms this basically means "I might have fantasies where I find you hot in the moment because I feel 'the horniness' come over me and I just need to clean out the pipes, but outside of these moments, I might say "you're beautiful", or "I want to date you" or "let's do sensual things", but sexuality wise, sex is fun when it happens, but I am perfectly okay with never having sex again in my life. I don't go out of my way to engage in sex with people." While speaking to other aegosexuals online, there seems to be a similar sentiment of "I was so confused for so long because I thought I had sexual attraction when in reality I was just horny and needed to 'let go of the urge' and then that was that". 

I am making this post to let people know that it is okay to take your time to figure out who you are. Sometimes people know from a young age. Others, it takes well into their adult years (I have heard stories of people not realizing what their orientation was until in their late 50s and 60s!). It is never too late to figure out who "you" are and whether or not you belong to the LGBTQIA community.