please please please i am begging for more books and tv and movies featuring adult aros PLEASE koisenu futari got me addicted to the euphoria of seeing my experiences reflected through the lens of being an adult w adult problems and not the lens of being a teenager AAAAAAA

on being your own aromantic role model

This post of mine is suddenly blowing up for whatever reason, and I had honestly forgotten I wrote it waaay back in February 2018. I was a whole baby in my freshman year of college, and in some ways I am still a whole baby which is going to make this next post seem really disingenuous and retroactively funny in four more years, but things are a lot different now and I want people who see that post of mine to know that hey!! It isn’t all bad and scary and confusing forever!!! And ironically I’ve been making much more deeply personal posts lately, so I thought I might as well.

Many truths from 2018 remain truths in 2022. Yes, the aro community is still relatively small and fledgling compared to other queer communities. Yes, we are still relatively invisible and don’t have much documentation on our history (after all, it’s not as though a generation has passed). Yes, our representation in media and in the public eye still leaves very much to be desired. And all of those things (visibility, history, representation) are still things we have to build for ourselves, and ARE building for ourselves, step by step.

But I am four years older and four years wiser and two years fist-deep in “graduating into a pandemic” early-twenties life and I also know this to be true: For all that aro adulthood is often weird and difficult, it is also deeply, deeplyfreeing.

Often, I am met with a chilling uncertainty in my life. Despite the aromanticism of it all, these days this just makes me ordinary, I think. I often worry about the too-quiet of empty houses, of familial disappointment, of being left behind, of running out of Life Milestones to check off a list of “ways to make people proud of me.” I am permanently single, unmarried, child-free, openly aro, and living with two roommates who are on the cusp of getting married (to each other). I am hurtling towards an eventual age where those aspects of my life are no longer understandable or quirky and instead become disappointing, confusing, or alarming to people in my life and in my roommates’ lives. I am curating a life for myself on shaky ground, knowing that home is a thing I have built for myself and will inevitably have to build for myself again some day, over and over. I am not unique in these problems, but I often feel profoundly unique in their cause, as the haze of uncertainty hovering over a future with no predetermined path or destination makes an attempt at striving for anything feel futile at times.

But other times, when my mind is kinder to me, I am met with a startling clarity that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, that I am unbelievably lucky to be who I am, and that my aromanticism is a priceless gift.

Four years ago, I was deeply closeted and lonely and confused and hopelessly 19. I have since graduated, gotten a job, moved more than once, etc. etc. and despite everything I am content. I still don’t know what I’m reaching for in life, or how to make those good things last. I still don’t know what I SHOULD be doing with my life, as there’s still no real cultural framework for life as an aro adult, in any of the many, many forms it may take. But little by little, choosing gets easier. Your life, your future, is something you have to forge for yourself. You HAVE to, aro or not, and the gift of being aro is how quickly you realize that there are no rules. The clock’s all zeroes, and the only step you have to worry about taking is the next one, day by day. You have to take control of your own future, and you have to talk about it, with other aros and with people in your life. I talked about this before when discussing Koisenu Futari, but you really do have to build your own castle. You don’t have to make yourself small or force yourself into a new box that’s just as restrictive as the old ones. You have to create the life you want to live for yourself. You get to decide what that means.

There is an inherent freedom to aromanticism, and no matter what anyone says, the only person who can decide what makes you happy is you. So find out what makes you happy and choose it, on purpose. I am not saying that it’s easy or that the infinite barriers in life (aro-related or otherwise) do not exist. What I am saying is that you don’t just have to wait to be someone else’s future aro role model, you can be your ownaro role model. Sometimes, this will be hard. There will be moments of struggle, of darkness. But there will also be light again, and life will fall into place, and you will feel so, so warm when it does.