we are nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. we are young and growing into our limbs, into our heights, into the rest of our lives. we are nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, growing older with each second and minute and moment that passes. we grow up. there is no stopping it. we grow up in every way possible—in age, in body, in mind. we grow.

but here’s the thing. we can grow up and find ourselves unsure. we grow up and know of love. we learn it doesn’t always work out. we learn that love is riding into the sunset with someone. we know that love is giggling and smiling and deciding that this is how we want to live the rest of our lives. we know that love is kissing and sex and having a family. we know what being in love means and what it looks like.

our friends fall in and out of crushes. they always, always end up in another at some point though. and we are stuck watching on the sidelines as they fall into something good and then out of it. we are left to pick up the pieces with nothing but words.

and we see this and we think about love. think about love being shoved down our throats, about a society that makes us think that we want love, want to grab it from the stars and let it huddle in our cupped hands. let its warmth fill our chest and survive off of it.

and i think about it. i think about the way i don’t get it.

i think about that a lot.

see, society takes love and makes it grand, talks about kissing and sex and marriage and relationships and crushes. talks about this being normal. talks about normality. talks about nothing else. doesn’t let anything else be spoken about. society grabs love like it is something it needs, like it can’t live without it. society doesn’t say romantic love. just love. that’s all there is, don’t you know? romance is love. love is romance. and it teaches this to kids and everyone it can reach. it provides no alternative options. there is only love. there is only romance.

i don’t get it. logically, conceptually, i understand it. i watch people fall into crushes and relationships and say they’re in love and cry when it’s all over but get back up anyway. i listen to them talk about butterflies in their stomachs, about wanting to hang out with someone all the time. and i think about how it sounds familiar but also not. i think about wanting to spend time with my friends. i do want to grow old with someone beside me, with people beside me, with my friends beside me. i think about growing old. not about kissing anyone. not about having sex. i think about not understanding it and how none of it makes sense. i think about being young and i consider that being the reason why.

and then i’m thirteen. thirteen and reading and hating books with romance in them, not understanding how romance drives a plot forward. i’m thirteen and i’m on ao3 and i read something small and—everything stops.

i almost cry. because, right there, right on the screen, on the webpage, is something i can understand. something i can relate to for the first time. it feels like me. it resonates within me so strongly. even years later, the feeling has yet to fade.

there are words there, tags that can identify me and how i feel. googling, i learn about aromanticism, asexuality, queerplatonic relationships. and i think, maybe this is it. maybe this is me. and i think about society’s romance and about friendship, about platonic love, and yeah, i think maybe this is right. because maybe society is wrong about love. maybe this language lacks words to describe different types of love. maybe society should pay attention to the fact that there are different types of love and talk about having one or not having one. and we should talk about how none are more important than the others. they just are.

so, i have these labels and i think they fit, and i make them part of me, engrave them into my bones, into my identity. i think of society and scoff at its love, think about others like me because there must be others. i can’t be alone.

and then, i’m sixteen or fifteen or seventeen or just older and once again, i’m unsure. i’m growing and i still don’t understand and the labels no longer seem to fit. or maybe they do, but it doesn’t make everything better. i’m looking at people and wondering if i want to kiss them or if i want them to kiss me and maybe i’ve just forced my mind to ignore any attraction. and i’m stuck wondering if i’ve made myself into this, wonder if i’m wrong and now i can’t tell what’s real and what’s false. and i wonder and i think and nothing works out because nothing changes. and i’m confused and unsure and uncertain and nothing clicks. there isn’t a solution offered. this is real life and there are no happy endings, just uncertainty and worry. there’s the general fear of living alone and dying alone and growing old alone. there’s the fear that our friends will drift out of reach and we won’t be able to pull them back, that we will fall out of their orbit and they will lose sight of us and that will be the end.

i know there are no happy endings coming for me. there are not endings without a flicker of romance, without a hint of romantic love to come. so, there’s just me, staring out at the world and not knowing who i am or what i am. i just know there aren’t happy endings for people like me.

except, i refuse to let my ending rest here. fiction or non-fiction, it doesn’t matter. this isn’t the ending i want. there’s more to this story, i swear it. yes, we could let it end there, but we don’t have to.

i could tell you about the way i do not plan to come out to my family. i could tell you about how sometimes i think i should be braver or more courageous or just better. i could tell you about the slurs and awful things that i have heard in my own home—not directed at me, but directed at a community i am part of, and would love and appreciate even if i wasn’t. i could tell you about that and how sometimes it makes me hate, just a little, and how it makes me scared as well.

i could tell you about the day i was out with friends and one of them checked that i didn’t care for romance, didn’t experience that kind of love. i could tell you about the way they accepted it without question. i could tell you about how i managed to find some amazing people who don’t care, who can’t really help but will stand beside me anyway. i could tell you about finding another ace person and feeling glad i’m not alone. i could tell you about communities online who seem to be filled with people like me, who i can relate to.

the future is unknown but sometimes we don’t let that bother us. so yes, let’s say the labels don’t seem to fit, that nothing just clicks. so what? there is more to us than our sexualities. there’s more to our lives than thinking about romance and how society has failed us multiple times.

the future is unknown but that can be comforting. the future is what we make of it. we take the present into our own hands and we shape it. we can impact the world.

maybe one day i will be eighteen and still unsure and having felt this way for years. maybe it won’t even matter. maybe it isn’t about being certain but about that uncertainty. nothing in life is certain. perhaps that, in and of itself, is the only certainty we have in our lives. and you know what? i think that’s alright.

because i have friends. because i have love. because i have a future that i will claim with my own hands. because i have a life of my own making. because i exist and sometimes that’s enough. sometimes we make that enough.

tell me about love and i will tell you that we love our friends. tell me about romance and i will tell you i am uncertain. i will tell you that we’re going to try and make society better, that we’re going to believe that life won’t always be confusion. ask me about society’s view of love, and i will say that we need to teach kids that there are more types of love than romantic love. and, most of all, that it’s okay to not feel romantic love. that we aren’t alone.

we are nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. we are growing. this is how it will always be. we are nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen and so are millions of others.