I Am Asexual

I wrote this in the game room at TOY during the poetry slam earlier tonight, inspired by the truth that so many others freely shared. I'm not sure if it's a poem or a monologue or prose- it's just a response to their truth with my own. Take it as you will.

I am asexual.

The world told me for so long that I wasn't quite right, that I should see others in the way I wanted to see flushed cheeks and clothes coming off, but I could not. So many of my friends' obsessions, and I looked at them and they looked like any other. I pretended men were hot, one after the other and so many names and faces that I just couldn't care about in the same way as they did.

I don't remember defining myself. I don't remember the day that I found a word that could be me.

The media sure as hell never told me. I cannot be defined with cold and cruel white men whose assurance in their superiority over their fellow man and woman make them so, so alone.

I am a creature born of love, and I love so strongly it breaks my heart. My friends and family, two groups that have always overlapped, have grown to know me for who I am. 

And who I am is love, laughter, child of light with the stars in her eyes and no need to have sex with someone to love them more deeply than the so many words in my head can say. I hold the sun in my hand and the moon dances down my veins and love without sex, that's the only thing I want.

I've never found that in someone who will hold my hand and kiss my forehead and wipe my tears when I cry and walk my path with my hand in hers, but I think that if I cound them I would be the happiest girl in my ever-expanding universe.

I am still learning to love myself for who I am. There are so many days and nights when the real world, damn you, crushes me beneath its weight, but ice cold and red lines on my skin and the warmth of a small body next to me can hold me up until I can truly be free.

I am asexual.

And I am me.