Just B
I’m a chronic self-improver. Books, therapy, bio-hacking — shockingly type B about it, but still. I sort of hate people who aren’t working on themselves in some way. And yes, I’ve had enough therapy and read enough books to know that is a reflection on myself. That while I cannot give anyone else a break, I am also incapable of giving myself a break.
What tools do I need? What muscles, physical or emotional, should I build up? And then someone says — actually, relax. Let go. Unclench. Unhinge. Um?
I vacillate between trying to be something, someone significant to the aspec cause… and just living my life. Because I like my life. Love it, even. I love our apartment, my kid, my job, my cats, my friends, my hobbies, my relationship with my body. It has taken SO LONG TO GET HERE.
I can’t remember what ace canon YA novel I was reading (Alice Oseman? Claire Kann?) but there was a line after the main character made their discovery asks, “what now?” and the answer is: just be.
I bawled when I read that. Could it really be that easy? Well, no. Because then, and upon every ace-awakening in my life (LiveJournal records point to three) I was not just me, I was part of a WE. I was not the singular sensation I felt I was, but part of an equation. And solve for X was always, always, solve for me.
I think as an aspec person, I carried a lot of assumptions for years. And when I really felt solidified in my ace identity (41 y), I felt the need to pick up new baggage. Time to fight for representation and visibility! Pick up a torch! What are your arms doing if not holding someone’s hand? Be useful!
But honestly, I’m still discovering, still learning and unlearning and to etch anything in stone (or on the internet) feels precarious.
Having freed myself from allonormativity, heteronormativity, fill in the blanknormativity, I felt like I owed it to the ace world to write a book. To write a message in the sand for the floudering aces flying by. To drop breadcrumbs, to show them there is another way — even if you have to forge that trail yourself. It’s possible, I did it. Show your work!
Get breesays’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
But what if, actually, the best thing for me is to shed the SHOULDs, since they have been guiding so much of my life so far.
I’m out, I’m here. I’m searchable and open to conversation. If you want to be invited in, if you have questions — all you have to do is ask. For the time being, I have little interest in fashioning a soapbox and trying so hard to engage and educate by force. I’m here, the blogs are here, there.
Every writer who has a Substack or a Patreon has a mission statement or a theme or a channel — I’m a floundering divorced asexual mom who loves live music and reading fiction and memoirs and making paper crafts and doing HIIT workouts. As an enneagram 5, I’m guilty of taking an excessive amount of time to gather information. I HAVE TO READ MORE MEMOIRS BEFORE I WRITE ONE.
The problem, thus far, is that I’m solid ace, a little aro, a little HSP (little-but-highly), a little do-it-for-the-plot, a little traumatized and babylordGod — I do not fit cleanly in any category, under any label. I wish I could free myself of this inclination to shove myself into a pre-defined shape.
All the reader of my drafts have said it’s not quite there, I am holding something back. I might be.
I think, though, its ok to take a break from excavating every once in awhile.
I know we don’t have a lifetime. Mine is, if we’re being generous, half full/empty.
I am always carpe-ing the diem. But maybe it’s ok to just sort of mingle with the day. Catch a whiff of it. Have a brush with it.
Anyway. I’m here.
