Lara from Germany
I grew up in a rural area in the deep south of Germany. And with rural, I mean *really* rural.
There are twice more cows than people in my village rural.
My parents get free days from work because we sometimes can’t leave this place due to snow rural.
My parents were okay, I think. My mother was a goodie two shoes stay-at-home mom until my sister and I attended high school. My father worked an office job in the next bigger town, and my grandparents and uncle ran a farm just across the street. There were no other children in the village.
Everyone around me was deeply Catholic. They were so Catholic it took me until second grade to get that you could be something *other* than Catholic. It never crossed my mind I could end up anything else than a good, Christian stay-at-home mom.
I didn’t spend much time thinking about it until I went to high school. I always figured I would get married one day and have children, like my mom, my grandma, my aunts, like every woman I knew.
But I always felt a little… *odd*. I was always the strange kid, I had no friends and always sat alone and I didn’t know why. I didn’t like girly stuff, I hated pink, didn’t play with dolls, didn’t like dresses. I was always a little tomboyish, but my mother did her best to not let it show. She dressed me like a perfectly normal girl, bought me pink stuff, dolls, dresses… Being odd was not tolerated here.
I had only one friend – Vi, who lived in the next village. Her parents had moved there from a city and were regarded by everyone with suspicion, because they were neither traditional nor Catholic. Vi was a real tomboy, always running around in shorts and bare foot and she had short hair. I admired her.
(Retrospectively, I had a huge fucking crush on her, but closeted little me didn’t even know that it was possible to crush on girls)
When I went to high school, I was still the odd kid. The girls in my class all started to wear makeup, to care about how they looked and dressed, to have celebrity crushes, to care about if the boys liked them.
In the beginning, I tried to fit in. I made up a crush on a boy who was… well, he existed and he was pleasant to work with because he was polite. I didn’t feel anything particular towards him, but hey, that’s how a crush works, no? You pick a random guy and say he’s your crush.
Of course the other girls still noticed my oddity. I wore baggy and out-of-style clothes, I didn’t listen to popular music, I didn’t watch popular shows, I didn’t swoon over boybands and I had weird hobbies like reading, writing and art. I never truly made friends with the other girls, they all seemed stupid to me. I hated makeup, the TV shows, the love stories, popular music, how they dressed and how they were all boy-crazy. They disgusted me.
I started to voice this. I became a real teenage edgelord who looked down on all the shallow idiots and let them know how I despised what they stood for. I was always odd and to cope with that, I told myself I didn’t even want to be like them. That romance was stupid, that trying to appeal to boys was disgusting and stupid. I slut shamed girls that dressed sexy. (I’m not proud of how I tore other girls down then. I’m ashamed, but I’m also glad I learned better)
Secretly, I started to feel broken. Why was I so odd? Why did no one have a crush on me? Why did I not have a boyfriend? What if I never found someone who liked me? What if I never found anyone who would marry me? I would end up a sad, single woman with eleven cats that everyone laughed at. I worried a lot, but I never told anyone. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe one day I would meet a boy I would fall in love with. But the idea always felt odd to me. Boys were stupid and childish; the thought of kissing one disgusted me. I didn’t really want to be with a boy, but I had to be, right?
When I was fifteen, I joined a drama club and for the first time, I had real friends other than Vi, who had moved back to the city with her parents. The drama people were all were a little odd and we got along really well.
There was a boy in my drama class who I got along with especially well. We read the same books, laughed about the same stuff, and I really wanted to be his friend.
“This must be a crush,” I thought. “I want to spend time with him so badly, and I like him, this must be a crush.” (He was just a decent person, that’s all.)
I told a girl from the drama club and she was like “Uhh, tell me, what do you want to do with him?” and grinned smugly, clearly expecting something dirty. It flew right over my head. “I don’t know,” I went, “maybe watch a cool show on Netflix and order pizza?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Don’t you want to kiss him or something?” I didn’t. He was nice and all, but kissing him. Yuck. That thought still didn’t feel right. Kissing was icky.
“Then it’s not a crush,” the girl decided.
I was left feeling broken again, but then I stumbled onto the word asexuality in a fan fiction forum and it felt like everything felt into place. I did have a crush on my friend, I was just asexual! (someone who experiences low or no sexual attraction to others)
(I didn’t have a crush on him but heterosexuality was so deeply entrenched in me, it was easier to think I had no sexual attraction at all rather than maybe towards girls)
I identified as a hetero-romantic (someone who wants to be romantic with the opposite gender) asexual from then on.
My friendship with the drama dude ended pretty quickly after that because he turned out to actually be really shitty, but I found a circle of friends I was happy with and for the first time in my life, I felt whole and happy. I started thinking about different ways to lead my life and swore off marriage, because hey, the only marriage I would accept was a strictly platonic one and if I didn’t find another asexual guy, this was not going to happen. I swore off kids, because in order to have a kid, one must have sex, so definitely not happening.
My parents were not exactly thrilled. I never came out as asexual to them, I just told them I would never get married or have kids. My mother wasted a good amount of time trying to convince me otherwise. We argued a lot and I started to feel broken again.
But the asexual community online gave me comfort. I learned about other people and their identities and other ways to lead a life. I spent a lot of time reflecting and came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t mind a platonic relationship with a woman or non-binary individual either.
So I started identifying with first bi- and then panromantic (someone who is romantically attracted to others but is not limited by the others sex or gender) asexual. It felt right to me and I finally took the step and told my friends. They were all very supportive and nice about it, they went out of their way to learn about asexuality and gave me so much love and support I actually cried.
Soon after, my best friend came out as bisexual. I had the best friends in the world.
But I still didn’t tell my parents. They still thought I was going through a rebellious phase and would get married and have kids one day. I didn’t dare to talk anything queer with them because whenever something about gay people was on the news, my father would make ugly remarks. I started to feel sad and angry because they made me feel ashamed and guilty for who I was, and deep, deep down, I feared that maybe I was still broken after all.
The year before graduation, I had a major depressive episode. I felt lonely despite my friends, I felt like the situation at home and the stress in school would crushed me. Luckily, our school had a psychologist who offered free sessions and after my friends gently nudged me in the right direction, I made an appointment with him. It helped so much to talk about it.
I had weekly appointments for almost a year and I kid you not, he saved my mental health and my grades. I’m still incredibly thankful. He talked me through my anxiety and self-doubts, told me to get away from home as soon as I could after I finished school, to live my life and not the one my parents wanted and to stop feeling guilty for who I am. I started feeling so much better about myself, even though my parents were still dismissive and condescending.
At the same time, I started to have feelings for my best friend. I spent almost a year in denial and kept telling myself everyone loved sleeping in their friend’s arms, everyone would share a bed on a school trip with their best friend, everyone felt all warm and soft and giddy about their best friend. But I noticed I didn’t feel like that about all my other wonderful friends, and most importantly, I have never felt this about a boy. I was convinced I could never feel this for a boy. All girls looked so beautiful and sweet and soft and lovely and I never thought any boy was more than mediocre-looking. Actually, I was even a bit afraid of boys, the thought of one actually liking me filled me with disgust and fear.
I thought, maybe I was an asexual lesbian after all. That felt right.
After I spent so many years fighting my internalized homophobia and compulsive heterosexuality, I allowed myself the thought that I loved my best friend, this wonderful, smart, funny girl with a beautiful smile.
I even dared to tell her and she told me she was in love with me, too.
We entered a relationship and I felt so incredibly happy and relieved. I was not unlovable or broken after all. When she hugged me, I felt safe and warm. We kissed, and it didn’t feel icky at all, it felt good and beautiful and right. But we both kept our relationship secret. Both our families were traditional and religious and we both knew they wouldn’t take it well. It hurt having to keep all that happiness and love to ourselves but we had to.
Some time into the relationship, we had a sleepover at my place. We waited until my parents had both gone to bed and then dared to kiss. We kissed, and kissed, and the kisses became more than chaste. Hesitantly, we explored each others’ bodies, hands slipping underneath shirts, and I started to feel something new, a confusing feeling low in my belly, something weird, but not bad. It was an exciting feeling. I wanted her to touch me in a non-platonic, very sexual way.
This confused me so much I pushed her away, but she wasn’t mad. She gently coaxed me to tell her about it and I explained to her that I had always thought I was asexual and now maybe I was not and I was so confused and maybe I had just been lying to myself all along. She was gentle and patient with me and promised to never go further than I absolutely wanted.
We did sleep with each other, clumsily and without much knowledge about lesbian sex because where would we have gotten it from? But it felt good and we both enjoyed it.
So I definitely couldn’t be asexual, could I? I was tired of having to change labels. I had always felt like a liar, like an idiot craving attention, like I couldn’t change labels without betraying my community, like I had to settle on one label and be that for the rest of my life. It was so tiring to always tell people “Oh, hey, yeah, remember what I told you? That was untrue, here’s the new version.” I felt broken yet again.
But everything gets better.
We’ve been together for almost a year now, we graduated, enrolled in university and I move out from home in a few weeks. We both mustered up the courage to tell our families and while they are not exactly happy, they at least accepted the fact.
I identify as a lesbian at the moment, but who knows if that might change again. I learned it’s not shameful to change labels as you grow and learn more about yourself. You are always changing, so why shouldn’t your labels change accordingly? Sexuality is too fluid to be neatly put into categories and if you find out something new about yourself, why not accept it and be thankful you made one more step in your journey towards being your truest self? And even though I can’t shake the feeling of being broken completely, I work hard to forgive myself, to surround myself with positive people, to cut toxic shit from my life and just be who I am.
It feels right.