The thing about "love songs" is that, I would describe myself as "demiromantic" :ms_aromantic_flag:. I don't think I experience "love" in the way most people talk about it. I think it's also in part because of autism but anyway. When I see people in love, it's beautiful how they can feel this intensely about someone but I'm not like that. I have a girlfriend. And I love her the absolute shit out of her. But it never feels like what everyone describe it.
I have "special people" and she's like, the most special of them all. :neodog_hug_bun_heart:
But the thing that bothers me is that, everything is about love. It feels like every story ends up being about some guy loving some girl or vice versa. I'm not going to talk about how heteronormativity bothers the shit out of me because otherwise this post would be five times longer than my average post size and if you've read my posts, you don't want that, trust me.
[^ now that I'm done writing the post, I have to say, this wasn't meant to be foreshadowing about the length of this post. It just kinda happened.]
Like, ok, I get it, people love each other, and it's beautiful, it's cool and all that but like... can we talk about something else please?
If you're not on the aromantic spectrum, you may not realize how everywhere it is. But it is so prevalent that as a child and a teenager, I felt this intense pressure to actually be in love. I wanted a girlfriend, because, that's just what every other boy wanted (she in fact, was not a boy) and it was just this normal thing.
It's like, every little boy get asked this question by relatives: "And do you have a girlfriend?", all smiling and so on, teasing him (it also happened to girls with boyfriends of course). Which, first off, why not say "And do you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend"?! Why is it always the opposite gender?! And then people tell us queer people that we're pushing shit on kids, AAAH I SAID I WOULDN'T TALK ABOUT IT
Alright. Rewind(time (this joke is too old)). So as I was saying...
It's like, every kid get asked if they have a [insert one or multiple genders in the coin slot]friend. It's so normalize and that creates pressure on kids to actually do. So I forced to do so. I talked with the boys of how attracted I was to some girl because like, it was the thing that I was expected to do. Was I swimming in cognitive dissonance? I mean yeah, but I was also actively daydreaming about being a girl all the time that was kind of a fact of life for me.
I spent ten fucking years in a relationship before actually realizing that actually, my brain never worked like that. I was using the "romantic language" to get by, it was just another survival mechanic for me. I still use it, as a shorthand because saying: "Hey Nitsa, I adore the absolute hell out of you, you're like my favorite person on the planet, and I'm so happy that you're in my life, we understand each other so well, you're a joy to be around, and I really like this special thing we have between us", is a bit of a mouthful. Instead, I can just say: "I love you so much my wonderful Nitsa." I say both, but the latter is considerably more practical. She's my special somepuppy. :ms_light_blue_heart:
I think about her a lot, she's super cool. She's in love with me, I think. And it just so happens that our energies for one another, while being different, do match each other quite well so it works well. But like, we're poly. And I've seen her be in love with other people. Not just her, I've seen plenty of people being madly in love with other people. And it's a level of "this person is living rent-free in my mind and I can't get enough of it" that I struggle to empathize with.
When I started getting close to Nitsa, I thought of her all the time because what we had felt special. It wasn't because: "She's so beautiful, she's so funny, she's so AAAA", although, she very much is. No, it was because I had never met someone that was autistic in such a similar way. After spending just an evening together, I realized that this deep wound that I had been carrying forever, was suddenly healed, just like that. Because I had just met someone like me.
I've always felt like I was an alien, crash-landed on this planet, and that I had to constantly work to understand others, translate their language. And for the first ever time, I'm spending time with this person, we're talking, we're laughing, and we both have this moment where we look at each other and realize: "You're like me."
Relating to each other was effortless, in a way that I have never before experienced and probably feel like I'll never experience ever again. We were just this perfect match. Because while we had wildly different interests, so much of our history and how our brain was shaped just happened to match. That felt like absolute magic, the type of stuff that made me believe in fate.
...but even that was nothing compared to how she talked about another romantic partner of her. I had begun to understand that I was aromantic at the time and seeing the way her and other people in my life were about love at the time, it was the missing piece for me understanding myself.
I like kissing people. I like being intimate. Deeply affectionate. Spend endless hours doing nothing but talking with them. But this whole "I have butterflies in my stomach" thing? First off, get that checked, that can't be good for the butterflies, it's full of acid in there. And second, yeah, I've said similar things as a shorthand, because I know it's a good way to portray a specific emotion but also, I still fall into the trap of "I have to say this, because it's expected of me", but it's not really something I experience.
So, when I make a post saying that I like metal because it tends to be about literally anything else than love, it's because it's about things that I can relate to more. It's media that makes me feel human, in the sense that it connects me to humanity, in a way that media about love doesn't. It makes me feel less "broken", less of a perpetual outcast.
I listen to a lot of love songs, but it's not because I relate, not at all, if I listen to the lyrics too much, I start getting annoyed. No, I do it because I simply love the melodies and everything else about the song. But in the back of my mind, I always have that feeling of: "I wish the lyrics were about literally anything else."
Finally, I'll say this. I know that I've said a lot of things in this post about how I feel things that probably made you go: "That sounds an awful lot like love to me." but it's in the same sense of reading some symptoms for ADHD and thinking "We're all a bit ADHD, aren't we?" (:bunhdknife:) it looks similar, but it's not the same at all. It's all about the levels of intensity, the amount of space it takes in your mind and all that (for both aromanticism and ADHD).
Thank you for coming to my FED talk! Get it? 'cause Fedi? Wait, no, that sounds really bad, actually. Uuuuh— Thank you for reading this long ass post that I didn't expect to be this long! Love you! :3 (I said that without thinking about it, but it's very funny considering the subject of the post actually, so it's even better.)
#love #aromantic #aromanticism #demiromantic #sexuality #relationship #queer #trans #LGBTQIA #LGBTQIA2S
