Pride
Some people seem to have themselves figured out pretty quick. For the rest of us, identity is like a Matryoshka doll. Pull one layer off, and you don't seem to change much, but the process of coming to terms with it teaches you to see the crack that reveals there's another layer underneath. If you're remotely curious about yourself and the world, there's always a new layer and you don't live in fear of it.
Asexuality is one of those things, along with other kinds of queerness, I'd heard about but didn't give much thought to. I'm just broken. That's not me: those people aren't broken, they have a thing that works for them.
Figuring out I was asexual this year was similar to figuring out I was bi or nonbinary: I had no models of what it looked like when you experienced a + b, but all the models were for a or b.
You're either gay or straight. You either want to fuck the people you find cute or you're broken. You're either cis or binary trans.
Until I started listening to experiences online.
Then a little crack opens in your reality and all kinds of weird stuff spills through. First, I realized I wasn't straight, and tried on gay for a while. Then the cracks formed in that reality.
And the cracks kept coming, and they don't stop coming.
Like queer, each word for each aspect of identity comes with explanations, assumptions, beliefs, community. And conflict. I am simply too old and too gay for that noise. They go into the same basket with musician, artist, writer, photographer, and so on.
These days, I'm just Kye. All that stuff matters, but it only comes up when it's relevant, or when someone tries to tell me who I am based on assumptions they make without knowing anything about me.
But the label most relevant for this post is asexual, because I figured it out this year and it's Pride month and I haven't done a formal coming out since 2014 when the first crack formed.
I'm some kind of asexual. What kind is still under evolution as I learn how to open the next level.
happy pride fuckers (and non-fuckers)