So I'm Aromantic, So What?
Some Closing Thoughts
It was hard to figure out how to write what I wanted to share here. In part, it's because it's hard to know how to write about an absence of something, especially when one has no experience with the something that is absent. I actually initially started this as an essay, but that wasn't working. In my eyes, it lent too much of an exact air to my words, while—for me, anyway—poetry cuts to the emotion that lies at the core of all of this, which let me express the sentiments I was feeling free from the pressure to provide logical justifications for those emotions. However, after finishing the poem, it felt necessary to write this commentary on it precisely because I felt it needed an afterword to share thoughts in addition to feelings.
Something I do want to state clearly is that my experience of being aromantic (or "aro," as it gets abbreviated) is my own. For those who, like me, are aromantic without also being asexual, I'd be curious to hear how my poem may resonate with your own experiences. (You can comment here, or follow links on the left to other places you can contact me.)
To be the voice of the author for a moment, I use the name "Eros" a lot in this poem, both as a representation of romantic love in general, but also as the social structures society has built around romantic love. Because I don't understand romantic love, I don't understand those structures from that angle. Instead, I interpret them as moral imperatives, since that's the aspect of them that I can at least understand. However, as God has given me a genesis of imagination as I look upon those moral structures, I find myself realizing that they are built by those who are fundamentally different than I am, thus resulting in a structure that does not match my values.
As I think more about these things, I find myself feeling like an alien. The rules around romantic love, and its rules around sex and sexuality by extension, are unintuitive to me. These rules feel like landmines all around me, which is an apt metaphor, as violating these rules seems to carry with it grave consequences. It can even seem dangerous to merely speak about such topics for fear that a misunderstanding (or an assumption on the part of my reader/hearer) could have dire consequences. This is fairly consistent with who I am, though—I'm very scared of violating nebulous social rules with potentially life-altering consequences. Since I don't feel like I have a good sense of where the lines are, I find myself pulled towards what feel like safe spots, but the problem is, those aren't authentic places, which means God doesn't want me there. In fact, He's been leading me away from them by causing me to question traditions. While this has opened up a beautiful vista of possibility, it's also scary.
There is more to say about these things, but I believe that is a greater topic, and one in need of a foundation that is beyond the scope of what I'm wanting to say here. I do intend to write that follow-up, and to do so soon. Processing the things I express in this poem has been a necessary step for me in preparations for that next work.
Comments
Post a Comment