I Love You
Love truly is a miracle. For all my life, I know I have felt a lot of love for the people that have been close to me and important to me, and I know that some of them have truly loved me too, still do to this day, or have once loved me but no longer do. The funny thing about love, though, is that there are many different kinds, many different flavors of love out there, but we don't talk about all of them as much as we should. Maybe that's how you get confused oblivious idiots like myself, someone who does not see that they way they feel about the gender society tells them to be attracted is love, yes, but it's a different kind of love. Someone whose entire family have all known that their child is gay, while they are none the wiser. Someone who gets jealous of a dear friend of theirs when they tell them they have a partner of some kind, even though the two have never met in person.
You Don’t Have To Be Ashamed
It's taken a very long time for me to be comfortable with the act of sexual intimacy. I'm on the asexual spectrum, and sex has never been at the forefront of what I value the most in a relationship. It has never been a dealbreaker for me in any way, and lack of sex to me does not signify a failing relationship. But not all of that disregard is rooted in me being ace. A small part of it is due to learned – or taught to be more precise – patterns of thinking.
Girls?!
When I was eleven years old, I got my very first professional sketchbook. It was marketed to be specifically for artists that were looking for that authentic manga feel to their art – it even had a silly image of some anime boy on the cover. I was so excited to start drawing like a professional, to have a legit sketchbook with legit manga lineart pens, just for drawing all those pretty anime girls.
"They're Just Jealous"
“Why else would they say those kinds of things? It's all just envy, don't worry about it! You're way ahead of them, that's why they comment on your body like that. Just don't pay them any mind, they don't deserve your attention anyway.”
Taking Advantage
When I go back to those years, those days, those moments, a paralyzing sensation of dread sets over me. It makes me feel violated all over again, and in a lot of ways, I think I am just now truly experiencing the horrible emotions those events caused within me, because I just wasn't aware of any of it. I just didn't know what it even was that I was facing, and why years and years after, I felt uncomfortable and scared around other girls.
Is That Really Normal?
Gym dressing rooms. They were probably the single place in the entire school building that I was the most scared of. I remember entering the hallway on the basement floor that led to the dressing rooms, and the soul-crushing dread and fear that settled deep into my being. It wasn't just in my gut, it was everywhere; in my head, in my heart, arms, legs. Every inch of my body was screaming at me to not go there, but I knew I had no other choice.
Bullying Is Not Your Kink
It is strange how often I see people equating bullying to degradation. The internet is fantastic for this kind of rhetoric, especially in the form of memes. While irony dominates the humor and jokes of the online world, I find it interesting and also beneficial to analyze this kind of rhetoric as something more than just that. Because humor in itself is a rhetorical device that's used to convey different messages and tones – some more truthful than others. And in the case of these bullying/degradation jokes, I believe that there is at least some truth to them. Let's explore that thought here!
Don't Worry, This Is A Loving Punch
Violence is never an act of love. It's a myth that we have been force-fed, especially women and female-presenting people. That the reason that boy is being mean to you is that he just likes you. We've been conditioned to expect violent behavior out of the people closest to us. Almost everyone has some type of experience this with this, I'm pretty sure.