A Twisting Tale of Personal Identity

Written by Alex Crook (contributor)

Word count: 1777
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

The journey to figuring out your identity is a deeply personal one, and completely different from person to person. For some, the path is short and simple, but for others it can wind unpredictably, sending you to all sorts of identities that never feel quite right. My personal journey isn't quite as long as some, but it still took me many years to settle into where I am today.

I don't remember when I started thinking of myself as 'not straight'. I know I felt differently from a young age, because I remember sitting in the car with my father at the tender age of seven, thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think I love people’. I was right of course, but at the time, I didn't give it much thought, because I was seven. I figured love was one of those grown up things I would eventually experience, like driving a car and actually wanting to eat vegetables, so I promptly forgot it like I forgot most of my childhood thoughts. It would be years before this thought would come back and form the basis of my aromantic identity, but at seven I had no context or idea of the complexities of orientation. I was instead engrossed with playing with friends, spending entire summers in the pool, and exploring the monkey bars at school (I was the undisputed master of hanging upside down from them, head rush be damned).

I don't know when I learned about bisexuality, but I remember that I considered myself bi throughout most of high school. I never had an 'aha' moment, nothing that defined when I began identifying as bi, no coming out to my family. I just have vague memories of primary school, with no idea of different orientations, and then high school, where I was bi. My memory is fairly atrocious, and I have enough trouble trying to remember last week, let alone 15 years ago, so it all sort of blends together with a hand wave of 'oh who knows'. I would go on to keep the bi identity for nigh on five years after high school.

A lot of my personal history is vague to me. Certain childhood stories I only know through family retellings of them, and my own memories are fuzzy, more half remembered feelings and occasional mental pictures then anything else. I can't tell you exactly when, or from who, I learned about aromanticism. I think I'd heard of it before, but hadn't paid much attention. I'm not sure what it was about this time that caught my eye, just that I was scrolling through tumblr one night, sometime before November 2014 (I know because I found out just in time for the first aromantic awareness week), and one particular post jumped out at me. It was your usual 101 post, explaining common aro narratives and how it might feel to be aromantic, and, while this is probably more then a little cliche, it was a lightbulb moment for me. I read it. I said 'huh'. I read it again. And then I promptly went off to look up other information because by golly some of those aro narratives hit very close to home.

I didn't claim the aro label straight away, but after about a week of research I was sure. I was aromantic, and it explained so much. Why I never felt as connected to my partners as they seemed to be to me, why I tried to mirror their level of connection, often overshooting the mark entirely into 'way too much'. (Which is how I ended up almost engaged to a guy I'd met through my WoW guild when he came to stay with me for two weeks. He also got me kicked out of my rental house, before heading back to Canberra and never speaking to me again. I.... I dodged an ENORMOUS bullet there.) I remembered back to that thought at seven years old, one of my few clear memories of childhood, and going 'huh, little me was right'. I still felt connected to bisexual as a label however, and I'd found aro posts talking about differences in romantic and sexual orientation, so I decided I was aromantic bisexual.

Some of the information I'd come across also talked about aromantic asexuals, but that didn't ring quite true to me, because I didn't know much about asexuals at this point, and still thought that asexual meant celibate as well. I enjoyed sex, so I couldn't be ace right? I'd change my mind about 3 months later, in possibly the most ironic situation to realise you may be asexual, in the literal middle of a threesome. I always did like to be dramatic. Without getting into too much detail, it was a similar 'huh' moment, which I expanded into research. I wasn't as sure as I had been about my aromantic identity, but it seemed to fit what I was feeling well enough, so I called myself aroace. It was about here that I came out to my parents as both, my first actual coming out. They were confused, having heard of neither, but supporting. "As long as you're happy" they said.

I was indeed happy. It was only a month after identifying as asexual I decided I was also nonbinary agender, making three identity crisis/revelations in about four months, but after also coming out to my parents as agender I settled into my new labels quite well. I changed my name to something more gender neutral, and slowly came out to extended family/friends. Those I didn't come out to in person learned when I changed my name on Facebook (without notice). I decided those who cared enough to message could get an explanation, and others could wait until I ever saw them again (unlikely, given how little I see extended family. So far it's worked brilliantly). I still dated across this time period, just with a little more conversation about how my feelings worked, and how interactions/relationships worked best for me. I liked the affection that came with a partner, and most of the people I was involved with accepted that I felt things a little differently.

It was around then that I began to explore polyamory. I’d been interested in it before, but with little opportunity to experience it. When I did, I quickly found myself enjoying the freedom it offered, while still enjoying the trust and affection I’d come to appreciate from a more traditionally modelled relationship. Even today I consider being poly to be a central part of my identity, and how I relate to my aromanticism. I’m perfectly fine with a monogamous relationship, if that’s what my partner wants, but I feel just a little more comfortable in a poly one. 

It wasn’t long after that time period that I set myself up as an aspec community blog on Tumblr. I wanted to try to give back and help people in the same ways people had done for me, when I was a brand new baby aspec. I loved the sense of community that came with my blog, and indeed that blog is how I ended up involved in the AUREA project, so, while it no longer exists on Tumblr, it will hold a special place in my heart. It is also through this community blog that I started exploring my identity again, four years after supposedly settling as aroace.

I had always felt more connected to my aro identity then my ace one, and I began to question if I was really asexual, or some sort of grey ace. I felt increasingly disconnected from the ace community, partly because I was sex favourable and didn’t relate to many of the common ace narratives, and partly due to some of the divides that grew between the aro and ace communities. I spent some time discussing with people on tumblr, reading various ace, aro, and allo narratives to try and figure out where I fit. I tried the label quoisexual for a while, before thinking maybe my sexual orientation was neither ace nor allo. Eventually I decided it didn’t matter. Whatever my sexual orientation was, if I even had one, it wasn’t a huge deal to me. Aromantic had always been my most important identity, so I decided that I would only go by aro. It has been my label ever since.

I still have other labels I’m attached to, and will occasionally use. While I don’t consider myself bisexual or biromantic, I have deep connections to the bi label, and consider it an inherent part of my aromanticism. Like I mentioned, I also consider being poly to be a huge part of my identity, and how I approach relationships and being aro. After a short period of gender questioning, I switched from agender to genderqueer, because, like my sexuality, whatever my gender is doesn’t exactly matter to me. I just know it’s not cis.

Queer itself is a HUGELY important label to my identity. My journey has been long and winding, and I spent a lot of time confused, wondering where I fit in and who I was. Through it all however, I’ve always had the label of queer to ground me, giving me community and a sense of belonging.

It’s taken a lot of struggles, stress, questioning, and exploration to get to where I am today. Can I say for sure that the aro label will be mine for the rest of my life? Almost certainly, but it’s not quite a guarantee. Can I say it’s my only label? Of course not! For some people, they can bundle their identity under one or two neat little labels. If that’s how it works for you, that’s fantastic! For some of us however, it’s a bit more complicated, as evidenced by myself. I am aromantic, but I am also queer, and bi, and polyamorus. These labels aren’t separate for me, but rather an intricate, interwoven tapestry that makes up the fabric of who I am as a person. I can’t point to any one part and define it as a singular label, because it’s only together that you see the whole picture, the picture being me. My identity is an inseparable part of me, and without it I wouldn’t be who I am.

I first realised I was different when I was seven years old. It took me many years to find the words to explain that difference, but the peace it has brought me is invaluable. The journey has had its ups and downs, as all journeys do, but I wouldn’t give mine up for the world.