u/feigning_originality

The Knack by Mother Mother

As an aromantic graysexual person I sit somewhere between aroace and aroallo I experience attraction it’s just usually not strong enough to make me want to do something about it, for me sex with other people can be fun, I’m mostly attracted to fem presenting people of any gender preferably with titties, but it can also feel like a chore if you get too in your head and I’m not fond of the idea of a one night stand I prefer to know the person well enough to find them interesting so it can be hard to find someone interested in a friends with benefits arrangement as an introvert content with my own company, I prefer to fantasize I basically think up sexual fanfiction scenarios but I don’t write fanfiction it just lives in my head and that does more than for me

My advice, don’t worry about a label right off the bat, try thinking about how you want to look, how you want to be able to see yourself, what would make you comfortable in your own skin in a hypothetical perfect world where no one would ever judge you and then figure out what label best explains how you feel you want to exist and be seen and treated and start advocating for yourself with that label, it doesn’t need to be a perfect fit it doesn’t need to be part of how you identify internally you don’t have to label your internal subjective experience of existence, but using a label to communicate and interact with other people can help you feel more comfortable in social settings

Christmas would be so much cooler if a giant festive centipede climbed down my chimney to deliver me presents

Oh god I grew up in Oregon and we had three maple trees in our backyard and these things were everywhere in the the thousands all over our backyard and inside our house they’d lay their eggs in the old nail holes and grooves of the old wooden posts holding up our back porch roof they were a menace

Jesse

Margo from The Magicians she wouldn’t be strictly aro she’d be arospec because she does end up in a relationship at the end of the show and states that she loves the guy and that she’s loved before but to my memory at no point in the show does she go looking for a romantic partner or complain about not having one, she ends up falling for someone she slept with and respected and at one point when she thought she had to make a hard decision between saving him and saving a bunch of people she was fully willing to let him die she does not interact with romance in a stereotypical way at all and for most of the show seems happy to be single as well as willing to marry for political reasons not that she wants to but if I remember correctly her reasons aren’t that she isn’t in love with the person and wants to be able to marry someone she loves

Locked in my room alone curled up in bed with the warm sun illuminating the room, high off my ass watching timelapse renovation YouTube videos

That’s totally fair

That’s fair there are definitely times where I feel like one sidedly emotionally charged conversation are grating, I think maybe it doesn’t bother me as much as it sounds like it bothers you though, not that I’m judging I don’t judge people negatively for anything other than actively behaving cruelly towards other living beings, I don’t think you can be an asshole without actually acting like one, thoughts and feelings are things that take place solely within your mind and don’t need to be morally judged until they become actions, personally I’ve taken to viewing those interactions like puzzles to solve like how do I get this person to a better place where they’re no longer upset and not okay, if there’s genuinely nothing I can do to positively alter the situation I remove myself because I will get annoyed and “normal” people don’t deserve that version of me, but if I can do something it’s like I get a little task to complete I’m not emotionally involved but it’s something to do and doing it can be satisfying or at least whatever the opposite of boring is, entertaining maybe? People view me as a good caring compassionate person and I like that, that reputation benefits me as well as the people around me, i feel content with how I live my life and treat others, I never use people I’m very very careful about that but if they knew what motivated me to do the good things I do they probably wouldn’t like me anymore, I’m fully aware that people are people they have thoughts and feelings, needs and wants, and yet in a sense sometimes I still feel like they’re NPC’s trapped in a game they’re unaware of and I’m a player on the other side of the screen not that I’m god or better than them but that I’m extremely removed

No problem

Of course i like writing out my thoughts when I come across posts like yours because writing it out like I’m actually going to share what I’m thinking helps me process things, I only post when I think it might actually make someone feel seen or understand themselves better, I hope you can get to a place where you’re at peace with your sense of self, I believe no one deserves to dislike themselves unless they’re actively choosing to cause others suffering, unless you believe in a higher power that can read your mind and judge your thoughts and feelings then no one exists who can judge what you don’t act on except you alone, my advice is don’t measure the value of your internal subjective experience based on what anyone else says they feel or thinks you should feel, I hope you don’t go twisting your mind into knots over not having the kind of happiness other people have just because you think you’re supposed to have it, the only thing your internal experience of being is supposed to be is something you personally are able to be content with, if the way you feel and exist right now was how you were supposed to be and how most people were would you be upset about that? if not then there’s no reason to stress over being different, if it would upset you then I hope you can grow into someone you like being more because you deserve that because everyone deserves that just because we exist

I have a very similar relationship with crying, and relate strongly to what you think when other people are very emotional for me it’s started after an extremely traumatic even that took place within the midst of a lot of other chronic traumatic circumstances, I was backed into a mental/emotional corner pushed to the point where I did not have the option to kill myself but psychologically could not continue to cope with having emotions wants opinions and needs and something in mind changed all of a sudden I realized I could just choose to not want or need or care or feel I could just choose to shut it all off completely give up on actively participating in my own existence without dying, I’ve recovered a lot from that I’m in a safe good place I’ve recovered a lot of my capacity to have emotional reactions to things I actively participate in existing I’m okay with still being here most of the time sometimes I’m even glad, I’ve never been diagnosed but why I think I have schizoid personality disorder and not solely trauma is because in retrospect I’ve realized though I used to feel some emotions quite intensely there were always a lot emotions I faked because I knew I was supposed to feel them things like loving and missing people but I didn’t I’d just say the words because I was supposed to plus I have a family history of schizophrenia and related disorders including my mother who has schizotypal personality disorder, now that I’m on the other side of knowing how to shut off my emotions and feelings of caring I can’t unlearn that bizarre skill and even though I’ve healed significantly I feel even more removed from humanity than I did as a child, the way I see it though there’s nothing/no particular way I have to be, I don’t have to be normal I don’t have to be human I don’t have to be what anyone expects me to be it’s not some cosmic law of the universe, I’m the only person that can give me permission to accept and be content with myself as I am, it’s completely in my control it doesn’t have to depend on how others view me, if no else existed to place judgement on me and make situations awkward or punish me I would have no reason not to be perfectly content with myself so I decided to be content with my whole self on the inside of my mind and only change myself in terms of outward behavior to avoid negative social consequences when necessary idk if any of my personal perspective helps sorry if you choose to read this all and it’s a waste of time

Dude same, I’ve been faking emotional reactions basically my whole life I don’t even notice when I’m doing it, it might be part of why I dissociate so hard from my body when I’m chatting with people because my body is running on autopilot subconsciously producing facial expressions and tone of voice when I’ve learned I’m expected to when 85% of the time I’m feeling nothing or not feeling strongly enough to actually feel compelled to outwardly react. The cognitive dissonance just makes me check out, but there’s no one safe to learn how to drop the mask with because they’d think I was creepy or discomforting or something they’d think I was less of a person

To be fair I’m not diagnosed with schizoid but I do have a lot of the traits of it and would probably qualify for a diagnosis, I have ADHD possibly autism and survived severe psychological abuse in my teens but somehow have almost no symptoms of PTSD/CPTSD no nightmares no heightened anxiety no flashbacks almost no triggers I just feel extremely on the outside of humanity even among my autistic friends I don’t experience emotions or empathy the way they do and I care significantly less what others think of me if I’m accepted by my peers or if I even have friends, I’d happily move to a remote cabin and live in my imagination for the rest of my life only occasionally chatting with internet strangers, I am a trans masculine nonbinary person, for a long time every time I looked in the mirror something felt wrong I couldn’t figure out what it was my face just looked wrong, over time I noticed that any time I’d do something that masculinized my appearance I’d feel less uncomfortable with my reflection for a while, so eventually I concluded that I was a trans man, I then started transitioning starting with my hair then my name and pronouns and eventually started taking testosterone, for as long as I kept actively changing myself I felt less wrong when I looked in the mirror, I was much happier with my deeper voice and more body hair and masculine clothes, but something still wasn’t right, for a while I even thought I wanted top surgery, as more time passed though something started to feel wrong again, eventually I realized I was not happy trying to fit myself into the man box and that I had just been leaning into the label trans man because I didn’t want to deal with being questioned and figured a binary transition would be more easily believed by the people around me, but I didn’t want to be stuck in a box I just wanted to wear what I wanted and just exist and not have to question what label fit me best, the more I just allowed myself to exist as I was without trying to cater to any particular label the more I liked myself and the less it mattered how I was perceived because I knew myself therefore others not seeing me didn’t bug me I saw myself and that was more than enough, I don’t have preferred pronouns I dress and behave how I want and the only time I think about how I’m perceived is when I have to use gendered public restrooms, I’d probably be agender at this point but labeling myself beyond not cisgender seems useless at this point, I’ve come to realize while some of my past discomfort with my reflection was gender dysphoria that wasn’t the whole picture, there’s really nothing I can do to fix the fact that I don’t perceive my body as part of my sense of self it’s just an object I own not a part of me, my reflection will always feel somewhat foreign no matter how I change it because when I look in the mirror I see a face that belongs to me not my face and at this point I’m at peace with that, also weed helped at lot with many of the revelations I came to about my sense of self lol

I don’t hate dogs but I do not enjoy them at all, I have a strong aversion to any living thing I may be morally obliged to show affection towards on a daily basis, they’re also just uncomfortable to have on your lap because of their nails and bony legs, cats are wonderful some can be very demanding of affection but for the most part they just want to be near you doing something similar to you or their own thing and they’re so soft to cuddle

I think of myself as something other inhabiting a human body playing along with the little games of human society and culture when need be, I don’t know what I am and though I’m curious I don’t really need to know I just am, I’m not here to be a part of humanity I’m here to learn what it is to be human and that’s all

Me in my head: “Well I’m glad you got me out of bed and outdoors, but now I’m obligated to put on a mask and pretend to have emotions and interact with you, I enjoyed your company for 20 minutes now I wish I could go back to my internal world and be outdoors by myself with my own thoughts, but I can’t ask you to leave me alone because that’s socially unacceptable and I don’t want to deal with you being upset with me and that is ruining this experience for me”

I experience a lot of sexual attraction in the sense that I enjoy looking at people and feeling and thinking sexual things about the person I’m attracted to but I’m pretty indifferent to the idea of actually having sex it would be fun it has been fun but I don’t care enough to put effort into making it happen 95% of the time, I do not experience romantic attraction in the sense that I feel compelled to form a partnership with anyone ever but I do desire to exchange physical affection and do little nice things for people I get along with really well on occasion and to like go on a romantically coded “date” with a friend every once in a blue moon but never actually date anyone, I’m touch starved and I like doing nice things for people when I actually have the energy to spare but I have zero desire to maintain any kind of consistent romantically lableable relationship

I like the metalwork on the left one better but the stone orientation of the right one better

Only when I empathize with movie/tv characters or I watch a really awe inspiring nature documentary never any other time and it’s barely crying just a few tears falling

I don’t think I ever feel true loneliness anymore not for many many years just a special kind of boredom only conversation with another human being can satisfy its unpredictable engaging and informative to converse I’m fine with having no real friends so long as i have people I know well enough that I can chat with them occasionally like a quad roommate who you get along well with but only talk to when you both happen to be home and in a talking mood

I could never imagine myself living with a partner and I’m aromantic but to have a consistent dependable conversation partner who actually understands me in my full extent would be really nice, someone who isn’t more than superficially emotionally attached someone who isn’t hurt that I’ll never miss them but someone who also values my occasional presence enough that they’ll be around in my life for a while till our paths happen to diverge, plus having a sexual partner can be nice from time to time there’s kinky acts you just can’t experience to their fullest by yourself

Pumpkin bread pudding

After all the hell, the dehumanization, the gaslighting, the stripping of my autonomy that I’ve lived through and that some barely recognizable fragments of me made it out the other side of, and after all the work I’ve done to learn how to be some sort of person again, to willingly forfeit my right to continue to exist to continue to be a person who gets to make choices and have opinions, someone who has free will and autonomy would be the ultimate betrayal of myself, it would be throwing away all the progress I’ve made towards owning myself again