What is a kiss?

So, I have an interesting experience with pride. Because I've reached this point in my life where I've never been in a relationship. And I always wondered about myself. Why it has taken so long for me to be in a relationship with somebody romantic, not necessarily sexual.

So, I started questioning myself I would say around middle school when boys were being really weird about their bodies and I didn't know what was the fascination that other girls had. I personally really like gentlemen and males, but as far as being with them more than just romantically, I never had that desire. It has always been about cuddling or just spending time with them. Maybe even a kiss would be really great to have, but I'm more so enjoy really long hugs and really long discussions.

High school was terrible. High school was, I would say the worst part of my life. Because everybody was putting on a face to fit in and a lot of people were trying to adhere to these male and female roles. And I didn't fit in with being male or female. I was just me, and for that I was made fun of a lot and I was really picked on and extremely bullied. I presented a lot as female because in the private school I went to we have to wear the gender appropriate uniforms. So I had dress shoes, a skirt, and a blouse. Sometimes with a sweater, sometimes with a jacket. But I was really big into doing my nails, because that's what I like to do. And at the same time there were girls who were telling me I was doing something wrong because I would play video games and they said that's what boys do. But growing up as I did, that did not seem strange to me to play video games because there were games that were very important to me. Like Mario, Call of Duty, Harvest moon, and many, many others I can't think of right now. But high school was really bad and I got a lot of rejection.

College was the first time I had friends and there was again, a lot of pressure to fit in with certain groups and certain cliques. So, I was at first a computer science major, which was really heavy into male dominated roles of careers. I was overwhelmed with a lot of masculinity. And not too many women to talk to. I had a difficult time with the math and the science portion of that computer science major, so I switched to an art major in animation. Which still had a lot of masculinity, but it was like a feminine masculinity. It was a healthy masculinity. And so, I went on to continue to do art.

One of the things that I learned was that people in art and people in creative fields are very expressive and very sensitive. But can also just be really, really harsh. So I went through animation classes and I had this one professor that was really big into the feminine body and the feminine body parts. It took me back a bit when they asked what my earbuds were. I had these cupcake earbuds and when I told them that they were cupcakes, they just whispered to me that they thought they were mammaries. Let's leave that at that. So when they found out that I knit and crochet, they asked me how could I make those things in the size of a large pillow. Which again, took me back a bit. But I explained to them that they could just make a round pillow and then make a smaller pillow to go on top and have the different colors to make it look like that. I don't know what happened to that professor. I don't know if they went on with their project. But I do know that it was my junior year of being an animation student in the art department where I decided this wasn't for me. I was failing my animation classes, but all my other art classes were fine. But I had to make a decision or else I was going to get kicked out of the college. So I decided to go into English literature and from there, I graduated.

Again, I didn't have any relationships that were romantic. Never been kissed, never been accepted by anyone romantically. And then, I took a certain medical test recently that all female bodies have to take eventually. It was very painful, almost excruciating. I really didn't like it. From there, it just stuck in my mind that it was like, “I don't think I would want to be sexually involved with someone. I think I would just enjoy the cuddling and the kissing and just being intimate in that closeness that we would have.” But again, I've never been in a relationship so I don't know if this is from true feelings, or if it's from me having a bad experience with the medical field. Or bad experience with other people's impressions being left on me.

So that’s what I’ve been through in my short life about 30 or so years on this earth. I would say that I have been fortunate to not have any bad romantic relationships because I’ve never been in a romantic relationship. But I do know that there’s probably someone out there for me that understands how I feel. I think people refer to it as being asexual because I’m definitely attracted to men as a female presenting person so would it be like asexual heterosexual?

There was one thing I looked at that was called orchid sexual and it describes having a sexual attraction to someone but not having the actual desire to have sex with them and that describes me almost perfectly. Where it’s like I can look at someone, be attracted to them romantically and sexually, and I’m only interested in the romantic side. But I haven’t lived that long and I think that most of what I’m going through is normal for someone who’s never been in a relationship so I probably shouldn’t take on more then I need to.

I probably shouldn’t over complicate things and I would really love it if society would ease up a bit on pressuring people to be in relationships or pressuring people to make up their mind when it comes to how they want to live their life. People say life is short but if you live to be 100 years old life is a really long time. 100 years is a long time to live for anything, so you have the freedom to change, you have the work around to be a different person, and to explore yourself.

I’ve never intimately explored myself in terms of pride in terms of the LGBTQIA+ community. I’ve met many amazing people in that community and I’ve met people who were not so amazing that. I’m very thankful that the people I’ve met that have been amazing completely outweigh the literal one person I met that was horrible and they themselves didn't like themselves. So that says a lot more about them than it does me that they were afraid to express themselves out of fear of judgment from other people whereas I wear a lot of rainbow things as I support people out loud. There are times I am shy, there are times where I am scared of getting retaliation from the jerks of the world, but I have a lot of buddies, I have friends I can count on who are also part of that community and I know for sure that I am an ally to the LGBTQ community. I’m not afraid of them and I hope I will never have a reason for them to be afraid of me.

I am going to be a merchant at a pride convention later this month and I’m really excited for it because they will have a lot of people from the community. It’s the first convention of my area for that community and I worry about a lot of mean people showing up and trying to intimidate other people. But I have faith in people that there is good in people that they want to see other people succeed. So as long as I keep that faith, I should be good and as far as myself and my journey - I think I’m doing good.