Sometimes I wish I weren’t aromantic. At various points in my life, I have wished this. Unspoken, because it is unspeakable: I would that I were not, that I were something else. I have fought so hard for so long to create understanding and pride and well-being about myself as an aromantic in an alloromantic world, and yet this is a secret that I have never shared: sometimes, even as an adult, even more than a decade after I first called myself aromantic and realised I wasn’t broken, realised I didn’t have to dread being broken or un-broken or broken in… sometimes I wish I weren’t aromantic.
I was wishing it just last year—I wish I weren’t aromantic—and then I realised for the first time that, no, while that is how I have mentally worded my wish, it is not what my wish is.
My wish, when I really thought about it, is: I wish I had narratives of aromantics making it through traumatic events. I wish I had stories of aromantics surviving depressive episodes. I wish I had legends of aromantics living well. I wish I had a dream of aromantics living.
When I was in my teens, my father was very ill and I was told he could die at any time—he might live 20 years, or he might live 20 weeks. He did not die. He has not died, yet. My mother died, though. One morning, we woke up, and she did not. And then followed many mornings—many, many mornings—where I only got up because I did not want to worry my father. I got out of bed and I ate food and I said words and I pretended to be a functional human being for the sake of my father until, eventually, I grew into that lie. I wished I were not aromantic because I knew that, if I had a romantic partner, I would have been able to more easily weather this period of life.
An anxiety I developed—a constant, gnawing, buzzing, screaming anxiety—was that one morning I would wake up, and my father would not. I wished I were not aromantic because I knew that, if I had a romantic partner, I would have someone there, someone I didn’t want to worry, someone I would get out of bed and eat and speak and pretend for.
A realisation I had, a couple years later, was that this wasn’t just grief. This was, uhhh, clinical depression actually, and looking back, I’d actually been struggling on-and-off with it for close to a decade, and I found out some chronic physical health issues were integrating themself into that mess too and, uhh, actually it’s really difficult to feel any motivation when you are constantly severely sleep deprived. I wished I were not aromantic because I knew that, if I had a romantic partner, it would be easier to fight the depression, easier to get to the stage of asking for help, easier to want to fix myself for someone than for me, easier to have someone to help me.
Instead I had some excellent friends, eventually a good psychologist, and medication. And things were going okay. And then last year my father had a terrifying surgery where he went to sleep, and several times nearly did not wake up, and I was back at that point again: I wish I weren’t aromantic, I wish I had a romantic partner who would be obliged to talk me through this, I wish I had a romantic partner whom I would be obliged to ask for help instead of lying or burdening my friends, I wish I had someone I would be obliged to live for if my father dies, I wish I had any way of imagining me coping with this.
See, it’s there. I wish I had a story to cling to.
I know, having thought through this, that it is a story because, well, what if I weren’t aromantic? That wouldn’t guarantee that I would want a romantic partner, that wouldn’t guarantee that I would have a partner, that wouldn’t guarantee that I would be healthy enough to have gained or kept a partner, that wouldn’t guarantee that I would have a partner physically/emotionally available right at that moment, that wouldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t self-sabotage and distance myself from them, that wouldn’t guarantee that I would have a partner who’d want or would know how to help. But it would guarantee that I would have the fantasy. The weight of stories of people surviving—only surviving—because of romantic partners.
I wish I weren’t aromantic in this world where it’s impossible for me to imagine myself living by myself for myself. I wish I weren’t aromantic in this world which can only imagine my future as a bitter crazy cat lady. I wish I weren’t aromantic in this world where my heart’s reaction to awful things in my life, to crashes in my mental health, is “I wish I weren’t aromantic”.
I wish I were stronger and healthier, more resilient and more able to ask for help. I wish I were able to believe that things will be okay, or that things will be better. But I don’t wish I weren’t aromantic.