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By Tia Weldon
Being seventeen brought with it many new prospects into my life. Feeling the rapid ascent into adulthood, a tidal wave of academic pressure over the Leaving Certificate, and a particularly strong connection to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”, I couldn’t fathom how my last remaining teenage year could be any less challenging or daunting.
And then I got asked out by a female friend of mine.
“I like you, romantically” is what I read in a love letter, received in combination with a gaudy, over-sized collage with indulgent Taylor Swift lyricism before this girl bolted out of the building. I was left startled and nauseated as the reality of the situation dawned on me. I had been asked out...for the first time ever...and I felt nothing short of repulsed. I had always known I was queer in some shape or other. The labels I used to describe myself warped and contorted over the years before I had settled on the term “lesbian”. As Chappell Roan put it, “boys suck, and girls I’ve never tried”, and I explained away my total disinterest with sex or romance with men with understanding that I only could feel attraction to women.
Yet, here I was, freaking out and hyperventilating, over the romance that had been thrust upon me by a girl. I fundamentally did not want this relationship. And in that shortmoment, my identity, stagnant as it had been for years at this stage of my life, shattered in an instant. The quiet comfort of having something concrete tethered to my understanding of myself was no more.
Not long after I realised I was aromantic. Not aromatic, like smelling like a rich, fragrant soup, but aromantic. Defined as “having little to no romantic attraction to other people”, indeed like a rich, fragrant soup, being aromantic simply means you don’t desire romance to the same degree as much of hetero-society or much of queer society. For me, this new truth meant vomiting and ten-months of bullying. A truly turbulent state of affairs.
When people find out I’m aromantic, sometimes they are put off by it and confused. I understand why. Amatonormativity is rife everywhere, from movies and tv shows to real life. There’s this tacit implication that in order to achieve happiness and fulfilment, you need to find someone to fill the ambiguous role of “the one”. This person will kiss you, fuck you, and maybe you’ll share a spaghetti noodle together, and this will solve all your problems, their problems, and humanity’s problems.
However, people don’t need to be confused, confuzzled, or even bamboozled. Being aromantic is simply an area of queerness just as is being asexual, polyamorous, or anything else. Breaking the boundaries of what defines normality in a cisgender andheterosexual society will always be a valid form of queerness and I hold so much joy in my heart for my aromanticism.
My friendships are stronger in the knowledge that emotional vulnerability is not something that needs to be confined in a locked box where only one person owns the key. I tell my friends I love them, and I mean every single word, and know they do too. Friends who understand that an exclusionary comprehension of queerness fails to address the nuances of human connection. Platonic love is the ultimate queer connection.
My identity as a woman has been deeply impacted by aromanticism. We are expected to crave romance just as much as we are supposed to crave the colour pink, pregnancy, and small puppies in even smaller bags. The idea that women must adhere to these expectations severs our connection to ourselves. Being aromantic showed me that I can define womanhood on my own terms. Throwing outdated dictionary definitions and stereotypes in the bin, all queer women are defining identity for themselves, and not what people force upon us.
I love myself for I am my own soulmate. Sue Sylvester had the right idea of marriage. You’ll always be alongside yourself, so you might as well learn to cherish yourself. I treat the woman I am with the respect, care, and compassion that I know I deserve. There are no preconceived ideas of how this relationship with myself can or should be, and I adore that.
Labels can change and fluctuate, and maybe I won’t be aromantic in the future. Ultimately, labels are only as helpful as the person using them feels that they are. Queerness is a beautiful and everlasting thing, and being aromantic is only one form of it. So sorry to Taylor Swift, but sometimes we don’t need an endgame. We just need ourselves.