The Longing™ Is Back And It Hurts (a rant)
Most of the time I'm totally fine with the way I experience attraction. No sexual at all and romantic attraction is few and far between. Heck most of the time I don't even long for a romantic partner. I've got amazing friends, family, and a QPR partner. For the majority of my life, it's a feast of love and I'm satisfied.
But then the romantic radar will finally ping on someone and it brings The Longing. This deep gut wrenching twisting heart aching *pull* to be with that person and it HURTS. Because is that one single radar ping ever someone who's available or that I even know? No! The last 10 years it's exclusively been minor celebrities (and only three of them). And the way my gray-romantic radar works is that it won't just ping on someone once and move on, it gets stuck on them. For YEARS sometimes.
"There's plenty of fish in the sea!"
Yeah? Well what happens when your radar doesn't register fish as FISH. The ocean is a big wide empty space where everyone else sees all these potential connections. What happens when your radar only pings once in a rare couple years and then stays locked on that person? Despite there being absolutely no chance?
"Just get on the dating apps!"
Listen every queer allo friend of mind who's still single has struggled with the dating apps already. You think my nonbinary gray-ro ace ass stands a chance?? The likelihood of my radar actually pinging on someone who likes me back is about as hopeless as searching for a needle in the forest.
And even so... I don't know that anyone would actually want me. Not because I think little of myself, thank god for therapy we've gotten a lot better there. But because I'm 37 and have never been on a single date. Never held hands. Never kissed. Who at this age is going to want to work through all that uncertainty and lack of experience? Would anyone actually openly and honestly want that without fetishizing it or seeing it as a conquest?
I wish this piece of me would just die. Like... If you're going to be that weak and unreliable, just go. Just leave. Stop making me feel like this and yearning for something that has so little chance of ever happening. Stop tearing me up inside. Just let me live with the love I have in my life and let that be enough without throwing daggers into my soul.
Just let me live without this pain.
(Sorry to anyone who got this far. I don't have any other gray-ro folks in my life and I don't think the rest of my friends fully get it. I just needed to scream into the void. Thank you for listening, internet void. 💛)