"Hello, my name is Alyssa. I'm a senior and I'm straight, but not narrow."

I got a few giggles out of my pun as I introduced myself at my high school's Gay Straight Alliance group. I said it because I thought the pun was cute. But I also said it because, all through high school, I thought that I was straight. Not only did I think that I was straight, but I also thought that I was broken. I thought that I was broken because I never felt sexually attracted to anyone.

Like everyone's high school experience, my high school years were weird. They were strange in different ways, but my internal battle with my sexuality made many situations awkward for me. People I knew would get frustrated when they would point out someone they thought was sexually appealing. They would say "Wow! Don't you think they're hot?" My response would have been to the effect of "Sure, like yeah." They would get defensive and say "Oh come on! You know what I'm talking about!" The truth was that I really had no idea what they were talking about. I could tell if someone was physically attractive, but I could never connect the dots of how finding someone attractive leads to sexual desire. Sometimes, for the sake of normalcy, I would pretend that I knew what sexual attraction felt like. I'd play along with my friends who would fill in the blanks with innuendos and keep a straight face. But every now and then, sexual references would fly over my head and I could not tell the difference between someone who was friendly and someone who was flirting. I did not know what was wrong with me. I thought that there was something wrong with my reproductive system or that some part of my brain was missing or that I had a hormone malfunction. But I was wrong. There was nothing wrong with me.

During my first year of college, after browsing through the internet for articles, I discovered asexuality. Apparently, there was a entire spectrum of sexualities that I never knew existed. In the asexual spectrum, there were identities for people who felt sexual attraction only once and awhile, for those who felt it only with an emotional attachment, and for those never felt it at all. I read up on it and, for the first time in my life, I was comfortable with my own sexuality. There was an identity for people who do not feel sexual attraction. My identity was perfectly normal. I was not straight and I was not broken either. I was asexual. I embraced my identity and never looked back.

Ever since I became comfortable with the notion of asexuality, I never kept it a secret. I came out to my friends and family right away. They had a lot of questions and were a little confused, but everyone in my life was accepting for the most part. I was very grateful that I had found an identity that I could relate to 100%. I was happy to know that there were others like me and that my feelings were both acceptable and natural.

But as I became more open about being asexual, I began to notice how little awareness and visible asexuality has. And even when we get visibility, we face prejudice. I noticed just how strange our society is about talking about sexuality. Our society is dangerously hetero-normative that only recognizes the prejudice of the homosexual, bisexual, and transgender communities. The awareness efforts towards these communities is essential and important. The issues in these movements are similar to the issues in the asexual communities as well. The only issue I have with asexual awareness efforts is that these efforts are not as visible. They are so scarce that some people do not think asexuality exists or that it is a valid sexuality. Because of this, asexual awareness and visibility efforts are very important.

I notice that in my own life and through my individual research on the asexuality community, we are not as included in the queer community. There are so many misconceptions about asexuals. There are people who not only disregard asexuality as a valid sexuality, but draw unreasonable conclusions on what it actually is. Ignorance causes some to think that asexuality is simply low sex drive, a hormonal issue, a desire to be "special", a mental illness, or even going as far to say that asexuals are just virgins who somehow can not find anyone to have sex with. These sort of views are not just wrong, they are sad and disappointing. These are the reasons why we need asexual awareness.

We need more awareness for the kids who do not fit into the boxes of more recognized sexualities. We need to let the rest of the world know that asexuality exists as a valid sexual orientation and that it is not just how plants reproduce. People should know that asexuality is not a mental illness, a hormonal disorder, a need to be special, nor is it a simply refining from sex. We need awareness for the kids who think that they are broken because they do not feel like everyone else. Asexuality is not a choice, but simply ignoring another human being is.

Awareness for anything is important. The more you educate yourself and other people, the better everyone's lives get. At the end of the day, asexual people want the same thing as everyone else: acceptance, love, and the validation that their feelings and identity matters.