longer.blue

i finished reading loveless today! i really enjoyed it and i'm planning to write a proper review of it for my substack, but for now i want to ramble about some scenes that really got to me (mild spoilers if you wanna go in blind): there are several scenes from the first half of the book where georgia is at some place where romance and hookups are common or expected, thinking shit like "god why can't that be me what is wrong with me," the biggest example being the bailey ball which is romeo and juliet themed and also happening smack dab in the middle of her sexual / romantic orientation crisis so she just sees all the romance themed stuff and all the couples and feels fucking awful. and oh my god that hit me so hard because *i've* felt the exact same way several times in my life. some time ago i attended an old friend's wedding and it was lovely and all but also so frustratingly amatonormative and filled with couples doing couple stuff that i... felt pretty shit for like the first half of the reception! (i also felt like shit for other reasons but that definitely contributed.) there were so many comments that people were making plus all the couples that i saw and people making comments about *them* and how in love they are, and it just felt really fucking lonely hearing everyone talk about this as if it was a universal experience. and just the knowledge that i was watching something that i would never get to experience. and it's not really romance i crave for but like... the stability that comes with sharing a household with someone, or the comfort of knowing that you are your spouse's favorite person. idk it just hurt and it sucked. one of my friends actually saw me looking sad but i didn't want to be a debbie downer in the middle of a wedding so i just told them i was socially tired. so anyway reading the bailey ball scenes in loveless took me back to that time, but it was also strangely comforting knowing that my feelings were common enough that someone could write a piece of fiction with them. the thing is that georgia and i are at different points re: our relationships with our aroace identities -- georgia at that point was still figuring things out and was still far from accepting her identity, meanwhile i've been familiar with mine for several years now and have made peace with it. well, mostly. because moments like that wedding still happen and i get reminded that no, the rest of the world does not think or feel like me, and trying to make them understand how i feel is such a daunting task sometimes. especially in this hell of a country where lgbtqia+ rights are ass backwards and asexual / aromantic identities might as well be rocket science to the average person. anyway, the point is that i don't i will ever be 100% comfortable with my identity because, well, no human being will ever be 100% comfortable with themselves. the world is always changing, i am always changing, emotions are messy, and self-concept can be fragile. and that's okay! what i can do is work to make sure that my discomfort doesn't get the better of me or overpower me. if i'm only 80% or 90% comfortable with my identity then i can't let myself be drowned out by that 10-20%. and at the end of the day, i have no shame in being aroace. it is what it is, i am who i am.