It sounds dumb compared to what so many more-clearly marginalized people have to go through, but I’m starting to understand how many of my problems in life have centered on misunderstanding or suppressing or denying my absence of sexuality. So many bad decisions.

I kind of resent having to define anything by what it isn’t. Like, I’m not an atheist; the concept of religion just doesn’t apply to me. By similar logic, I don’t know that I’m comfortable defining myself as asexual, as such. I just… don’t want to play that game, as it turns out.

So many of my meltdowns in life have come out of trying to force the issue for one reason or another. I’m really not made for that kind of a relationship. I don’t understand its demands, and frankly they creep me out. I think I have some serious body issues. I need distance.

And so, there’s this kind of a built in wariness that I carry around with me. As long as I can remember, I’ve… kind of been afraid of being, er, physically imposed-upon. I think on some level most of my intimate relationships have been an attempt to find a safe place to hide, so I don’t have to worry about anyone else imposing on me. I’ll just have the known problem to deal with, and maybe that’s something I can manage.

What’s kind of frustrating is that as a general rule I’ve always found women way cooler than men, but it seems any social situation ends up kind of like this. So no matter who I’m close to, I wind up feeling on some level unsafe.

I just want to be left alone, basically. But, in this culture it’s hard to resolve one’s self to that. There’s this association that people make between sexuality and basic personhood, and I find it… gross? And sad, and insulting. And small. Which isn’t to diminish what anyone else cares to do. But, it’s all very… loud.

I don’t know. I think it’s just taken a long time for me to realize how much of a problem this is, my trying to play this system that I don’t feel I really fit into. It’s done a real number on me over the years.

I’ve always felt a sort of adjunct affinity for queerness, like a familial understanding. Not because—I mean, I guess I don’t really get any sexuality, very much—but because of the sense of expectation and pressure. The misfit factor. Like, awesome; you go define your life. And, like, always being told you’re playing the game wrong must be far more problematic than this expectation that you have to play at all. But, I get it, you know. Big sympathy there. It’s all on a spectrum of being wrong, just because you exist. I’m way on the shallow end, but.

Anyway. I guess through trial and error I’m starting to figure out what I’ve been doing wrong in life. Keep this up, and maybe I’ll stumble onto something right for a change.