“Ace”: Yet another “coming out”

[Trigger warning: sexuality.]

I have conflicted feelings/thoughts around the phrase “coming out” — e.g. why do queer people have to “come out” while straight people don’t, i.e. being straight is taken for granted, as the norm?!? I usually prefer to describe my “coming outs” as “coming into myself more” — that’s a phrase that aligns with me better. 

Today, however, I have a “coming out” to make, maybe the hardest for me yet. And it’s a “coming out” rather than a “coming into myself more” because I’m still grappling with this truth myself.

I have a high sex drive — I always have had: at age seventeen something was switched on in my hormones (not towards anyone in particular, just internally & physically within me) and it’s never been switched off apart from some sparse phases. 

I have a strong aesthetic sense or drive, i.e. I can feel strong aesthetic attraction (like the feelings towards beautiful paintings or statues), especially towards male/masculine types and androgynous bodies.

I am physically (& sexually?) attractive, at least by current, Western standards. 

In our binary society soaked in pervasive compulsory sexuality and brain-washed into damaging amatonormativity, this has led me and those around me to believe that I’m a very sexual allosexual person. And I went from being considered a “dyke” in high school (because I presented boyish and apparently didn’t date any boys but only hung out with them as buddies) to being perceived as a (attractive) “straight girl” to being a (handsome) “gay boy”. 

But the truth is that I’m actually asexual. Or maybe gray-A. But definitely on the asexual spectrum. And also aromantic. 

All of a sudden, everything about my close relationships makes sense to me. And yet, somehow, it’s also hard for me to grapple with and accept. 

I still haven’t integrated all the emotions that this is bringing up for me, and I still need to get more familiar with the weeds of the terminology and definitions. And I don’t have the emotional or mental energy to go into all the details just yet. 

It feels super scary and painful to make this “coming out” now but it also feels necessary to me, like relieving myself of a burden: I am an aromantic, asexual (or gray-A) person with an internally-driven high libido and the capacity, or orientation, to feel strong camaraderie and/or intense “platonic” love, and thus deep commitment, towards my close friends & buddies.