Long post, or, hold on to your hats, m'dear

Remember back when I used to warn people about things before springing them on them? I know I do that considerably less nowadays, for a variety of reasons. Well, consider this your warning. This post will be long. It might make you uncomfortable / give you information you'd rather not know. You are advised to pause in your consumption of food and beverage at the risk of choking, etc.

Ready? (Okay, now my own level of anxiety has just gone from zero to sixty. Wonderful. Breathe. I can do this.)

So today I'm going to make a post about my sexual orientation, to put an end to the pondering and guessing and what-have-you for one thing, and because I want my friends, most of whom follow this on a semi-regular basis, to know.

That means that yes, I'm not really heterosexual. Strictly speaking I am asexual, though I am capable of having romantic feelings toward either gender. I have had a crush on a guy. I have had a crush on a girl. They are similar feelings and it is definitely a crush, and a very junior high girl sort of crush at that. It is, frankly, a little painful, a lot embarrassing, but also kind of fun. (It's really something to feel like your day has just improved, all because someone smiled at you.) (Yeah, I've said: crush. Believe me now?)

For those of you who have known me for a while this might not have been a surprise, given that I have asked at least some of you to explain to me, at one point or another, what a crush is, what constitutes a romantic relationship, and showed an appalling lack of comprehension at what "hot" and "sexy" really means when describing someone physically. (Pretty, beautiful and handsome I get: I have had art classes and am well familiar with the standards of beauty and how it's dependent on culture and society. "Sexy", though...do people really look at other random people and think about whether or not they'd have sex with that person?) For those of you who consider that I might just be a "late-bloomer" I'd like to acknowledge that yes, that is a possibility and I've considered it. I did reach puberty slightly later than the average girl. I did also have my first crush much later than the average girl. That is why I have waited two years to see if anything, in terms of my romantic interest and understanding towards others, would change at all. They didn't, and so, here I am.

This is, however, not the exactly two year anniversary of the day when I pieced all the clues together and thought "oh my God, you must be kidding me". Today is the day when I finally got the clean bill of health back from both the doctor (okay, a nurse practitioner; it's close) and the psychologist. I am considered normal in the professional opinion of both, which I find, against all logic, to be a sort of relief. I know sexual orientation variation is not a disease, though abnormal hormone &c can affect it. I have always believed that I am (give and take a few issues that I know about and am working on -- both doctors agree that I have excellent self-awareness) normal. Still, no one ever grows out of their insecurities, and I'm no exception. Sometimes, alone in the dark and pondering over the things that I've messed up that other people seem to do effortlessly, I do also have my moments of "what is wrong with me?". No matter back in the corner of my mind it is, it's good to be able to put that insidious fear to rest.

Which brings me now to my main point of concern: my parents. I plan to tell my parents. It's the right thing to do. They will have to know at some point (my mom simply because she is my mom) and now that I'm actually emotionally prepared to date, I am not going to be discriminating between the genders and so it seems only fair that they be prepared for that. I plan to tell them on my birthday, since they often try to be nicer to me on my birthdays. (Also, so I can have the time to find more information, such as pamphlets about sexual orientation our mother tongue so they can actually see it's not just their only child going mad. AND, in addition, to give myself enough time to get enough of the freaking-out out of my system so that I no longer feel like throwing up every time I imagine the scenario.) I'm not sure how it will turn out, since although they are decent people and my mom is much more open-minded than my dad, they, as a byproduct of how they are raised and what they have gone through, have a fairly traditional set of values. I am not going to get disowned. That doesn't mean that things won't get ugly. I don't know how long it will take them to come to terms with this or how comfortable they'll be able to be. I do know that traditional values, in their case, means that the first things they'll wonder is whether or not I'll should go see a doctor or a psychologist. That's the main reason why I went to see both, even braving my instinctive suspicion toward psychologists (my first time with one ever! Whee). I have started to make my opening moves. I don't dare hope for a checkmate. I don't WANT to checkmate if heavy casualty is needed to get there. I will play my game to the end though, and see this through.

In summary, the timeline went something like this:

1. Concern about sexual identity.
2. Research about sexual identity. (Go to this site if you're still curious about that asexual means. Reading the comments of the people there is one of the first things that cued me that I'm on the right track. I can identify with them.)
3. Concern about possibility of developmental delay, wait two years.
4. Confirmation of sexual identity.
5. Pondering dating. Decides that dating could be good.
6. Resolve to share information about this to friends and family.
7. Waffles, freak out, repeat.
8. Braces self and went to see doctor and psychologist.
9. Share with friends online.

I could've emailed, I suppose, but then I know I'd fret over who to tell and who not to tell &c and then I'd have to worry about the issue of obligation. Most people that I consider a friend has this url. My disclaimer is this: unlike email, if this is making you uncomfortable and want to pretend that you've never read this, I will honor your wishes and never bring up anything about this or whom I'm dating unless you bring it up. It's not hard. I'm a fairly reserved person by nature, as most of you know. I will post the next few days so this post gets snowed under and remove this post in a week from today. I don't keep track of who checks this blog or how often. If I emailed however, I do know who should've received the email. What's worse: you'd know I know. I feel like it might make you feel like you are obliged to respond. You aren't. I am providing the information. You are not obliged to deal with it if you don't want to.

I could've called, too, which would've raised the same concern as email. In addition, calling people up and going "Hey, guess what..." ? No. Just...no.

I do think most of you are going to be okay with this eventually though. A good portion of you are probably going "WTF" right now (I did warn you, choking hazard and everything), which I can totally sympathize with given that I went through my own WTF stage about two years ago. But I do know how lucky I am to have the friends that I do, and believe me when I tell you this:

This entire ordeal? Scary. All of it. There's a lot of self-incrimination, self-pity, and self-doubt at one point or another. I've lost sleep over it at some point in the beginning. I've freaked out. Cried. I gave myself a mild panic attack while waiting for the doctor and when the psychologist (after we figured out that the only help I really need from her is some advise on how to deal with my parents) asked me to imagine and describe the worst case scenario in coming out to my parents -- it would've been so easy to break down right then. (The scenario may be imagined but the pain is very real. My parents will always have the most power in hurting me and making me hurt myself, simply because they are my parents and I love them.) ...so whenever I imagine the scenario, as I've mentioned, the bottom drops out of my stomach. Last time I did that (yesterday), I couldn't finish my lunch. (I did end up drinking a lot of tea, though.)

However, I am typing this out now to let you guys know. I'm currently deeply anxious and feeling a little shaky, but I finished my dinner and had three of those little prune-plum hybrid things afterwards. My faith on this front is not something I would've expected, or had, back in high school. For that, no matter what the fall out in the next few months will be, I will always be grateful.

Oh and just so you know, despite of the fact that I am comfortable enough with this aspect of myself to write a post on the internet, I'm not at that point where I'm okay with people teasing me about it yet, however well meaning they may be. At a word, I'm twitchy. Partly because okay, I'm nervous, and partly because I've come to the realization within the past six month (well since I've started working full time in a lab, so I guess that's almost a year now) that I'm going to have to foray into the world of internet dating if I do want to date. This is based on the fact that I don't go to bars or go out like my classmates do in their little groups, and I'm not going to venture out by myself, after dark, and that I don't have the time to try anything else. The people I meet daily are...well...there're very good rules about dating people you have to work with, and most of the people I can be interested in are in a long-term relationship, anyway. (On the plus side, I'm much more adept at fending for myself online than in real life, and this way I'm planning to set up a systematic approach so that I can even be scientific and compare across dating sites and gender in terms of response and overall experience.) (I won't graph it though, I'm strange, but not that strange.)

How's that for mind-blowing? Hopefully I haven't made anyone's brain hemorrhage, or anything equally horrific. Again, I did warn you all, but if you're reading this then you've made it through this entire monster of a post. Thank you kindly for your time and attention. This took me hours. I am exhausted. I will try to sleep now.

fin

P.S. I'll take any questions now.