Aro Culture Is Realizing That Instead Of A Romantic Relationship You Just Want To Mean Something To Someone

i tried to make a funny but unfortunately i can only make bad puns.

lgballt

*through gritted teeth* every day i choose to be kind *barely restraining myself from violence* i choose to have compassion *tamping down the vicious bloodlust inside me* i choose to care and to be kind and to love

Growing up aromantic is

Thinking romance is something others do. Thinking romance is a set of socially constructed behaviours. Thinking romance is friends who agree to call themselves a couple. Thinking I will marry my best friend when I grow up, because we get along well and what more would there be to it?

Thinking romance is a fictional trope, and hating Disney movies because they’re all about it. Not relating to the other kids at school because they dream of fairytale endings and true love’s kiss. Not understanding when my friends start blushing and asking who I like. Thinking “liking boys” is a trend, the result of too much Disney, not an orientation.

Thinking romance is picking a boy I want to know better and calling it a crush. Exaggerating my feelings so I can fit in. Telling a friend how I can crush or stop crushing on people at will, and laughing when she says that’s not how it works. Wondering why she pines for months over a boy who doesn’t like her back.

Thinking romance is a game and scoring a partner is winning. Getting confused when others care about what comes after. Wondering what secret rules they know that I don’t. Telling myself I must be playing the wrong way, and restarting.

Thinking romance is the fiery devotion, the deep care I have for my best friends. Trying to explain it, and the words catching in my throat. Not wanting to call it romantic love, because somehow that feels wrong. Not knowing what else to call it, because if this isn’t romance, what is?

Thinking nobody really understands romance anyway. Reading and re-reading the description of a crush in my sex education book and coaching myself to feel that way. Assuming everyone has to teach themselves how to love. Being jealous of those to whom it comes so naturally.

Thinking romance is a compromise, words and gestures that must be given to prove I care. Trying to give them and feeling out of my depth. Convincing myself I have intimacy issues. Never questioning why love feels so wrong with my boyfriend, yet so right with my friends.

Thinking romance is a happy ending written for others. Watching all my friends pair off. Staying awake at night, terrified that this means I will never matter to anyone. Asking the darkness why my own kind of love isn’t enough.

Thinking romance is something I will be taught, one day. Writing stories about heartless, empty, broken characters who are fixed by true love. Meeting the right person and still not feeling the right way. Exploring various fears and traumas because one of them has to be causing this, right?

Thinking romance is something I have to feel, or what would I be? Convincing myself I can’t be aromantic because, because, because… Being afraid of a blank slate future with no other half to hold onto. Feeling like everything I thought I’d understood is falling apart.

Thinking romance is something others do. Allowing myself to let go of what was never a part of me. Crying when an aromantic friend tells me they love me like I do. Feeling, finally, like I belong, like I am enough.

Knowing aromanticism can mean happy endings too.

A Twitter Thread from David Bowles:

[Text transcript at the end of the screenshots]

I’ll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the field’s basically just a 100 years old. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.

Most classroom practice is astrology.

Keep reading

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”

one of the top ten Aro Experiences ™: being very touch-starved while also feeling like a small, bitey animal that’s been poorly socialized and has like a 50/50 chance of reacting badly to physical affection

I think it’s very important that everyone knows that palaeontologists keep small fossils in little gelatin capsules:

You know…like these things:

No comment on whether or not they grow in water, though.

I don't know what I'm doing..

I basically had a fever dream about metaphors and drew this comic, I have like. 20% of an idea what its even about 🤙