Open Closets

Ace Of Hearts

A/N: hey lovelies, this is the 41st chapter and it's written by the sweet geminithewriter. Thank you so much for helping girl, <3.

So... my nickname is Cheshire Kitten (or Lynn) and this is my "realizing I'm asexual" story! Yaaay! *jazz hands*

I figured out I was Asexual when I was about... 14. As with a lot of people, this involved a lot of sneaking around on the internet during school or in the middle of the night, but I'll get to that in a minute.

As far as my childhood, I've had a relatively easy one, for the most part. I had great parents, an annoying brother who I will defend to the death (but don't tell him that), and I would regularly give my mother a heart attack by climbing to the top branches of the tree in our front yard.

I come from a Christian family, which means my family has more conservative rules about what they think marriage should be. Still, my (practically adopted) uncle is gay and we love him just the same in his fabulousness. With that in mind, homosexuality was something I never had a problem with and I passionately defended my uncle and others whenever I found someone talking shit.

I myself as a result of afore mentioned family (so I thought, not so sure now) was all for the idea of "waiting till marriage". Waiting for what, I wasn't sure but I was all for waiting. So figuring out I was anything but completely straight wasn't something I ever had to worry about. So I had fun, talking about guys and asking who was interested in who, but rarely answering that question myself.

That went on until I was thirteen or so, which is when my parents decided that public school was doing me no good (my grades had been absolutely horrible my entire life) and put me in online school in hopes that I would "reach my full potential" or something. I mean I can't complain. my grades have improved, but I digress. Coincidentally, this was also when I learned about Tumblr for the first time.

I mean, I always knew it existed, but as for what actually happened on Tumblr, I knew nothing. Until I finally convinced a friend to tell me. She gave the the bare minimum:

"Oh, it's really fun. people share art and theories for TV shows and stuff. It's great: you should check it out!"

So I did. At first it was just like she said, with fun comics and BEAUTIFUL fan art, with a few people making fun of Trump dashed in. I followed a few people, made a couple posts (which I sorely regret now and will be haunted by until I die don't look for my old Tumblr) I wasn't even looking for LGBT+ stuff. Why would I bother? I was straight, right?

I'm not entirely sure how the dashboard works, but I think I followed an asexual person, or liked a purple dragon without understanding the meaning, because suddenly I was getting all these posts with Ace puns and something about the "asexual sandbox". Me being me, I had a) never really been able to pay attention in school, so even the scientific term was lost to me and b) become very curious by the time I found this post:

so, naturally I searched for the word asexual on Tumblr, opened the first page I found, and read. (I think it was for anyone who wants to maybe check that out) I was immediately greeted my a community, full of puns, cake, and love, and after some organizing of thoughts, which took a week or so, I read through the "if ____ you might be Aspec" things. A lot of the points matched up with what I'd always felt - or didn't feel, as it were, and decided that the term Asexual matched up perfectly with me.

As for telling anyone about this revelation, that was more... difficult. My parents are all accepting, including my step dad (my parents split when I was seven. It sucked, but now I have two sisters! :D) but I remember once I accidentally phrased an answer "wrong" and they flipped out, thinking I was gay. it's funny now, but then it wasn't. it went something like this: