I wish the story ended there.
Feeling happy and free.
But I'm still healing even today.
After all this scar is fifteen years deep.
I think about it a lot.
What things would be like if I was "normal"
If this were a different world; one where I could love the way everyone else does, a world where I have a soulmate just like everyone else does.
I wonder how we'd meet...
Would it be at one of my cousin's basketball games? Or perhaps at the library because we both reached for the same book. Maybe at camp when I mutter about the annoying sermon and you agree. Or at the river where I hide my body in the deep water and we talk about how insane everyone else is for jumping off the bluff. Maybe at the shoe store where we lock eyes a couple of times as you walk through the isles.
Maybe I'd have already met you, you would have helped me get through the rough times. Maybe I wouldn't feel bad for telling you everything. Maybe I'd be happier. Maybe.
Sometimes as I put in my earrings before going out I wonder if there'll be a cute boy. I wonder if I'll look at him and he'll look at me and we'll connect. I wonder how we'd talk and how it'd feel. I wonder if today's the day I finally find someone.
Oh, the bittersweet sting of heteronormativity. Or rather allonormativity. The pang in my chest when I remember that I'll never have a meet-cute, I'll never lock eyes with that one person and know that they're my forever. The sheer thought of having that with someone makes me want to fake it, pretend to fall in love, just to feel that.
I'll never feel it.
The butterflies.
The blush.
The lightning.
My heart will never stop when I see someone.
At least not in that way. And I guess after all the healing I've done I'm still trying to find a way to be okay without it.
The biggest damper on said healing process has been hope.
Yes, hope.
The magical thing so often talked about.
It's said that the smallest spark of hope can fuel a fire. Well, I suppose it's true because the little hope in my chest likes to start a forest fire that always ends up burning me.
No matter how hard I try I can't shake the hope that I could have that relationship. What if I'm not as emotionless as I think? What if there's that one person that I actually do fall in love with?
It's that little voice whispering "What if" that's been like a thorn in my side, the strain that tears my stitches. Every time I hear it my heart listens, it gives in because I yearn so desperately for that person.
My "soulmate."
The thing that so many see as good is what's keeping me chained in my pool of torment, it holds me just under the water so I can see the escape, but I can't reach it.
It's cruel.
It's the thing I hate most.
And yet, I cling to it as though my life depends on it. Because what if it's right?
One time I was reading a book about an aromantic person and one of their friends asked them how they know they'll never fall in love.
That's where I was.
How do I know?
The protagonist put it simply; they know they won't ever fall in love the same way their friend who's a lesbian knows she'll never like guys.
That answer felt unrealistic to me. Maybe that's because I'm such a hopeless romantic.
How do I know I will never fall in love?
For six months I couldn't answer that. And I hoped no one would ever ask me because I didn't know.
For me the answer is complicated.
I know I'll never fall in love because I don't want to.
And it took a while to get to this point.
How I went from hating my aromanticism to feeling grateful for it was hard and gradual.
So gradual, in fact, I didn't notice it until recently.
The fact is I don't want a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or any sort of romantic partner and really, I never did, not in the truest sense of the word anyways.
I wanted the over-romanticized version of a relationship I made up in my head.
When I first started this story, I was lost. I needed a way to express myself because my mind was a mess.
In a poem I wrote one time about being aromantic I ended it with something along the lines of
"I'd love to end this all with something inspirational, but I can't because even if I wanted to there's nothing inspirational to say."
And there wasn't. I didn't have anything inspirational to say because I was lost and alone and I know that if someone tried to tell me it would get better, I wouldn't have believed them.
This story is my inspiration to any baby aros out there. It's not a happy ending, or at least I didn't mean for it to be. It's my ending because the last thing I want is more unrealistic expectations for what life should be. My journey was, and is, hard and messy. Full of pain and doubt. There's no fairytale ending for me. No one's gonna come along and "fix" me because I'm not broken.
I still struggle. I'm not going to lie and say I don't.
My only inspiration to you is you're not alone and your aromanticism is valid no matter where you are on the spectrum.
-Casey Dithers
YOU ARE READING
How The Cookie Crumbles
Teen Fiction"Hi, I'm Casey Dithers, and I want to tell you a story..." All Casey ever wanted was to grow old with someone. She dreamed of late nights with someone who meant the world to her. And yet she's fifteen and hasn't had a boyfriend...until now. But dati...
