I discovered I was aromantic sometime in late high school. I stumbled across a tiktok called "How to Know if You're a Lesbian." I knew I wasn't a lesbian, I'd never felt any types of romantic/sexual feelings towards women, but for whatever reason I still watched it. The first few bullet points were centered around the actual attraction towards women, which is expected. But then, she brought up "comphet" or compulsory heterosexuality; the example the creator brought up was the idea of "choosing" to have a crush on men. And the more she talked about it, the more it made me realize that there was something more to myself and my identity than I thought. The difference between me and the closeted lesbians I imagine stumbled across this video, is that they probably realized they liked women. While I discovered, I liked no one.

I knew I was sexually attracted to men, but I had never once felt the so-called "butterflies" that were promised to me. This combination caused a lot of feelings of guilt and shame, because society doesn't like when you want sex but not romance. You're either superficial or slutty or immature or all of the above. So I tried to force myself to feel these crushes, which only ended up fueling the confusion and subsequent shame at failing. I have a lot of diary entries around this time talking about how alone I felt, and how I was such a bad person simply for existing the way I am.

After discovering this revelation, I googled something like "what is it called when you like no one" and discovered the term aromantic. Which, I know every queer person telling their self-discovery story says this, but I genuinely felt such a relief to know there were other people like me in the world.

This was also my first introduction into being queer. At the time I still identified as a straight girl, and aromantic was the first queer label I ever adopted (after some good old fashioned imposter syndrome).

Aromantic people are not widely discussed, and doubly aromantics who aren't ace, so I always feel a duty to my people to be as open and proud about it as possible. I have patches, pins, and even as I type this I have a big aromantic pride flag on the wall beside me. I want other questioning aros to know that they aren't broken or evil or doomed in life.

I used to call myself "cupioromantic," which means being aromantic but still desiring a relationship, but currently I'd describe myself more relationship-neutral. An "if it happens, it happens" sort of thing. But no matter what may happen in the future, I know that I will never feel romantic attraction and I love every moment of it.