Discovering a New Identity as I Become Middle Aged
Written by Rachel
Word count: 1005 words
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Content warning: Mentions of bullying, mental illness, and suicidality
This piece was written by Rachel of the AUREA Book Project as a part of our Carnival of Aros topic: Mental Health. AUREA plans to include a chapter on mental health in its forthcoming book and is interested in including quotations and personal narratives from individuals who feel that mental health and neurodivergence have played an important role in shaping their aromantic identity. For those of you interested in sharing, submissions are being accepted until May 31st.
Image: the non-partnering flag
At 39, I don’t remember as many details of my childhood as I would like, but I do remember the events surrounding the realization that I never wanted to get married and have children. I was only 11, but sixth grade was an important year for me. It was the worst year of bullying that I had ever experienced, and it was the year in Reform Jewish Sunday School that the life cycle events are covered in the religious school curriculum.
I had experienced bullying in school ever since the first grade. It was petty at first, but around adolescence, the bullying became more hurtful. It seemed like everyone hated me for different reasons. Some days they bullied me for my frizzy hair, other days it was because of my personality or anger at my mother. My mother was the school’s volunteer computer teacher and was much more of a disciplinarian than the paid teachers. Since everyone knew that she was my mom by the time I was 11, they bullied me because they hated her. The emotional pain made me feel so hurt and shocked that anyone would be so mean, that I felt frozen inside. I pretended to be sick so I could stay home often and contemplated suicide. I stopped talking to my friends, even to those who were nice to me. I was too hurt and scared to tell my own parents. All my brain seemed to be able to do was stay silent in a state of shock. I tried to make new friends in middle school and high school, but I never could bring myself to be very social. Most of the time, I couldn’t and still can’t think of anything to say to carry on a social conversation.
I didn’t learn until this year, that this feeling of being frozen and having nothing to say had a name: selective mutism or situational mutism. It’s mostly known for affecting younger children. However, selective mutism can begin in adolescents. If untreated it can affect adults by rendering tasks like college presentations, job interviews, and speaking in public impossible. Luckily for me, it only affected my ability to socialize. I always felt fine speaking in school and at work. I could cope. So, the problem went undiagnosed.
Yet, as an 11-year-old, the combination of selective mutism, not understanding crushes (like many asexual adolescents), and learning about Jewish laws of marriage and divorce had an important role that it played in shaping my aromantic identity. I don’t remember all of my thoughts from that year, but I distinctly remember feeling that I wasn’t social enough to want children or attempt to get married. Without knowing the words for asexual or aromantic, I felt like I was beginning to discover my identity. Although, I did go through a period as a teenager in which I wondered if I was a lesbian or a different gender if I didn’t feel sexually attracted to men. Throughout my teens and 20s, I did try to date. Chronic pain and mental illness influenced me to set an important boundary that I needed for myself; I chose to be non-partnering.
It wasn’t until a 2013 Huffington Post article on asexuality began circulating around Facebook, that I learned of the term and began to think about myself as asexual. I did try to find other asexuals as I moved to other states for jobs but didn’t have luck in states with small populations. I chose to move back to Illinois in 2020. When COVID-19 caused Illinois to implement a stay-at-home order in 2020, I had a lot of time to think about my identity and mental health. The Chicago AVEN Meet-up group was actively having online book discussions. This provided me with an excellent opportunity to meet others like me. The first time that I attended, one person introduced me to the LGBTQIA+ Wiki site with asexual and aromantic flags on it, and I discovered the aroace label and flag. I immediately felt like that was me.
Because of my experiences with bullying and mental illness, I wondered if caedsexual and caedromantic, neuroromantic or requisromatic should be my microlabels. My feelings with chronic pain influenced me to want to create a new microlabel that explains the influence of health on my arormantic identity: sanitaromantic. This comes from the Latin word for health, sanitas. As someone who felt this way since I was a child, these microlabels don’t fully encompass my feelings. The feelings related to these microlabels seem to have influenced my decisions to be non-partnering, but many people who have the same chronic experiences as I have are not aromantic. Personal narratives of adults with chronic illness, selective mutism, autism, and schizophrenia who always desired relationships show me that it is not the illness or the health problem that should be blamed for the aromantic identity. Support groups for people with chronic pain support those who desire advice on maintaining relationships, while I clearly don’t want to be in one. While researching mental illness, it became clear that there’s a difference between those who have fears about having relationships and want therapy to help them achieve relationship goals, and those like me who have had social anxiety disorder but no desire for romantic relationships. Aromanticism should not be viewed as a diagnosis that needs to be cured. It is an identity that has helped me to set the boundaries that I need to take care of myself. The boundary that I have set to be non-partnering is the self-care that I need.