As a child, I would read the most beautiful and profound love stories and ballads that would send my heart into a fluttering frenzy. It would send these jolts down my body – you know, the type that escape through your fingertips. I would think about those stories all day, and grin like a fool. I would obsess over fantasies of getting swooped off my feet by someone and giggling at their bad jokes. But it remained just that. A fantasy.
I remember getting jealous of my friends when they got into romantic relationships. That always seemed strange to me. Why was I jealous when my peers celebrated that relationship so much; when all they would do was giggle over every aspect of that relationship?
Initially, my answer to this was lesbianism. My queer friends would smile and say, “Society has conditioned you to believe that you can only be friends with a woman, while you actually had a crush on your friend.”
This would often make my jaw drop. Usually, when your friends say something this profound, you believe it. Because they have a point. Because…it happened to them. Because…. you have no self-awareness.
The actual problem began when everyone around me started actively dating. And here I was, still single. As a teenager I used to think that my ugliness was stopping people from dating me. When I was 20, I blamed my college for not having a suitable dating pool. Then, I got on Bumble, as one does. And I saw the problem staring at me. Why did I have no interest in talking to anyone whatsoever? Aren’t you magically supposed to start going on dates once you get on these apps? Isn’t that featured in their advertisements? I was flabbergasted. Here I was, 24 years old, with absolutely no desire to date anyone. Was I broken?
The answer to this problem came to me one night while I was scrolling through Instagram. It was as if it descended onto me from the heavens, a message carried by angels as a choir sang in falsetto in the background. The answer – aromanticism.
Like me, at first, many people assume that it describes someone stoic, cold-hearted, rude, and devoid of any desire for physical affection. Someone lonely, and isolated. While I was most of those, yes, did it have to mean that I was living my life as a Disney villain who gets saved by ‘love’ in the end?
Absolutely not. Suddenly a huge chunk of my life started making sense to me. I remembered that whenever I talked to someone way cooler, and smarter than me for the first time ever, I would feel this impatient, jittery, fluttery urge consume me. It would scream at me “BEFRIEND THEM NOW”.
I remembered trying to find every chance I could get to talk to that person, even if it was to mutter the most inconsequential of things. I would go out of my way to do things for them if only it meant that they would like me more. I remembered that I would feel devastated and disheartened when their tone would be slightly off. I remembered acting like a sick Victorian child when they wouldn’t respond to my texts. I remembered relating to angsty breakup songs when I would have a fight with them. I remembered the jealousy over being sidelined to make space for their partners. I remembered it all too clearly now. There was no deep, latent meaning in all of this that had to undergo rounds of psychoanalysis to be pulled out and brought to comprehension.
It was very simple: I was always living in the beautiful and profound ballads and novels that I used to obsess over as a child. Like the character in those tales, I felt what it was like to care for, dote on, and feel cozy around a person. Because I felt it around my best friend, my sister, and my friend group. I felt it around sweet acquaintances who would talk to me with sweet smiles and gentle touches. I felt the rush of love in the acts of platonic intimacy, holding my friend’s soft hands, and receiving a warm hug after a long day while laying on my sister’s lap.
If my childhood self saw me today, they would be absolutely heartbroken that the fantasies cooked up by their escapist mind were just that, fantasies. Myths. Tales. But I will always take relief in telling them the equally transcendental version of love I have experienced. That, if they had the grandiose lines from Pride and Prejudice to make them giddy, I had 5 little words that did the trick:
“Would you be my friend?”
