[essay] Aroflux But Not Aro
I'm aroflux but not aro. There's a difference – for me, at least – between the specific experience of not having romantic attraction and feeling like part of the aro community. Some of the time (about 25% of the time, in fact) I do indeed not experience romantic attraction, but I've never felt like I fit as part of the community. I've never really wanted to.
There are multiple reasons for that, some of which would need a whole new essay, but part of it is that the times when I'm alloro are really important to me. I understand myself as a person who experiences queer romantic attraction. I've worked hard to accept that part of who I am.
I'm gay, in a romantic way, sometimes gay for people I have a lot of guilt over being gay for (thanks, internalised queermisia), gay in a way my aro friends don't seem to have the context to understand. I've worked hard to find ways to make romantic relationships work for me as a disabled person, creating new ways of doing relationships with very little guidance because the typical ideas of what romance looks like are for abled people only. I did that, I wanted to do that, because those kinds of relationships are important to me. And, yes, sometimes I don't have those feelings, and that occasional lack of attraction is also a wonderful part of what makes me me, but I feel like describing myself as aro ignores important aspects of myself. It gives people the wrong impression of who I am.
The aro community is doing something separate from what I'm doing. And that's okay! It's good, in fact, for people who are not me and who have different needs from me to have their own space. But it's a little strange and lonely, sometimes. I don't really feel like part of the allo, or alloromantic ace, queer communities either. As usual, I'm kinda doing my own thing, I guess.