anonamouse

Well, technically yes. I wasn’t a young kid, though. The most embarrassing thing about this story is, I was like 17 when it happened. I was definitely old enough to know this was not a good idea. But nonetheless, here’s the story. It’s a bit long, so I apologize in advance…
So, this particular summer, I went to Vancouver, Canada with my family for vacation. It was our first night there, and we had gone out to dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. It was a great time, but my cousin and I, afterwards, wanted to stretch our legs and walk around a little. My aunt told us to stay close, as they were about to pay, and we would walk back to the hotel as a group. We agreed, and left the restaurant. As soon as we got outside, we started chatting and mindlessly walking around the area. We got completely distracted by the conversation, lost track of where we were, and also, lost track of time. So we came to a junction of sorts, and neither of us recognized any of the buildings, nor did we recognize the streets as the one’s we’d taken to get from our hotel to the restaurant. Now, my cousin is 3 years younger than me… So you have a 17 year old and a 14 year old girl walking around a huge city, alone, with almost no protection.
Luckily, my cousin had her phone on her. But that was all we had. So my aunt is texting my cousin, and asking if we wanted to just meet everyone back at the hotel. In an effort not to worry anyone, my cousin said that were close and would see them in 10 minutes. But, we had no such luck. After almost 30 minutes of attempting to find our way back to an area that was even remotely familiar, we ended up more lost than when we started. As if this wasn’t bad enough, we had also noticed that an older man was following us from a distance. We continually tried to lose him, but I’m pretty sure he could tell we weren’t actually walking anywhere specific. So, now we’re really starting to panic. We continued walking fairly quickly so he was kept at a good distance from us, and called my aunt. As you can probably guess, she was very upset, as was my mother. So they told us to sit tight, and they were coming to get us. While we were waiting, we snuck into a crowd of people and ducked into a store, in hopes we would lose this man still following us. Somehow, it worked. We don’t know where he went, but we never saw him again. When my aunt and mom found us, we were sitting on a bench nearby that store. It took them almost 40 minutes to find us, and by that point it was pretty dark. And yes, we got in a lot of trouble. Then, we continued our stupid decision, by not telling our family that were followed by a creepy man for most of the walk… And if I’m being honest, as far as I know, they still don’t know the full story.

View more

No, never have. For a few reasons.
First, I have always said I’m straight… Which is true, I am romantically attracted to men, always have been. However, I don’t feel sexual attraction to anybody of any gender, hence the term, Asexual. Though, I should mention that Asexuality is not that black and white for everyone, I’m just speaking for myself.
Second, I feel like classifying myself as LGBTQIA+ is me trying to adapt a struggle that was never mine. Or insert myself into a community that I don’t know if I’d fit into. And it’s nothing anyone has ever said or done that made me feel like that. It’s just me. Third, I’m extremely privileged… I’ve also never had to face the discrimination and at times, violence, that some people in the community face on a daily basis. I’ve never had to worry about being a target. Never had to worry about anyone holding it against me for whatever the reason.
And finally, I’ve been super conflicted on how to identify because I continually question myself. I think “maybe, I just haven’t found the right person” or “maybe I’ll learn to like it” or “maybe I’m wrong.” I think it was engrained in my head for my whole life that sex is something I WILL want eventually… And beyond that, I SHOULD want it. So now, I’m an adult, and I battle with feeling like something is wrong with me because, I truly do NOT want it. At all. I have no interest in it. So, yeah, it’s hard for me to know if I’ll ever say I am a part of the community or not. At this point in time though, I just don’t feel like I can comfortably put that label on myself and be okay with it.
Hope I explained that in a way that makes sense… 🙂

View more