Building My Own House

It took me years to sort out my own sexuality.  I could tell you that was because I didn’t have Google when I was a kid, but I feel like that’s too flip an explanation. I’m glad that there is so much to see and hear these days. There are so many more safe places to go in the real world and online now. Don't get me wrong, I know it's not a perfect world. Way too many of us still can't marry who we love, and  I used to think that the closet had just gotten bigger.  Now I think that’s not the case. I work with twenty and thirty-somethings now, and I am amazed at the combinations and relationships that I see.  A woman my age at work, even told me that her child had told her “in an email” that they were pan sexual. That “no Mom, that doesn’t mean I’m attracted to pots and pans….” This woman didn’t tell me this because she was angry or ashamed. She was proud of her child, and working actively to get the pronoun of choice down.

Wow.                                                                                                                             

But, what was I talking about? Yes. This. I spent my twenties and thirties, desperately trying to fit somewhere. I wasn’t comfortable with most men, and I did love women, but I felt out of place as a lesbian, like it wasn’t quite the right skin.  I didn’t want to be alone, needed intimacy, and sex was something that seemed necessary to get that.  But I wasn’t ever really much for it, you know? In my head I’ve always heard a well-meaning ex of mine saying to me, in what I’m sure she didn’t intend to be a condescending tone, “It’s okay if you’re asexual.” When it was very clear it was not okay.

I couldn’t have been asexual, I thought because clearly it’s not okay.

That was thirty years ago, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes over that time. It’s taken decades to come to the place I am now. It took a long time for me to be comfortable straddling the line, instead of trying to fit myself into one box. 
I completely understand that there are always reasons you make the choices you make. That sexual preference is just that, and it's fluid.  Now? Now I know that I'm bi-asexual. Did I just make that up? Maybe. and I'm okay with that.