• Lust.
• Infatuation.
• Passion.
• Obsession.

You will feel these things. But you will never feel love.

Sure, you care for your family and friends and you’d do anything to protect them; but that’s a devoted respect. That’s not love. Your palms get sweaty and you feel butterflies in your stomach, but that’s infatuation. That’s not love. You become consumed, your body mind and soul absolutely dedicated to something you enjoy doing; but that’s passion. That’s not love. I can understand how many would confuse these things for love, but they’re not love. None of them are.

So I guess you’re asking, “So, what is love?”

“Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more,” I’d reply.

Sorry, I had to. But in all seriousness, let me fill you in on a little secret that would be a handy thing to remember: Love doesn’t exist.

• “You’re so heartless!”
• “That’s unnatural, you need help!”
• “You just made that up to put yourself in a label.”
• “You’re just upset because you got dumped.”
• “Oh, you just haven’t found the right guy yet.”

And you haven’t found the right fist in your mouth. I mean it, saying things like that doesn’t make you have good advice, it just makes you sound unbelievably ignorant. I’ve felt passion, sure, but it wasn’t to another human being: it was to my hobbies – specifically, writing. Lust is the extent of my non-platonic emotions toward other homo-sapiens.

“So you’re just a slut.”

You call me a slut and then say I’m the heartless one? I hate to break it to you bucko, but just because I would like to have sex doesn’t make me a slut. It makes me a horny teenage girl with raging hormones. Especially since I’m a virgin and I would like to remain that way until I’m married.

I hope now you’re starting to see some of my conflict. That’s right: the only way for me to feel satisfaction from lust is for me, an aromantic, to get married. It’s the irony of all ironies. I mean technically, premarital sex is still an option for me, but that is not a safe nor appealing option at all. Plus, I’m Catholic. I need to at least try to stop sinning, am I right?

Anyways, back on track here. As far back as I could remember, I never wanted to be one of those people that could never find love and never feel love in return. I mean, that’s every Disney villain ever! Hide the children! But I always pitied the villain. It took me years to get a grip on who I was, and it took me years to destroy the idea that romance was the key to happiness – because it’s not. I’m going to be real here when I say that I became a Disney villain in the aspect that I could never feel “love;” because, to put it bluntly, love doesn’t exist.

There it is, the almighty statement that makes all my friends angry at me. I don’t understand how this belief offends so many people like it does. Michelle actually threatened to stop being my friend if I mentioned that I don’t believe in love again. Plot Twist: I said it again. I don’t understand the taboo behind my belief. Very few people accepted my mindset, even then, they’re confused about it. I can tell you why they think this: and it’s because they’ve been brainwashed since the very beginning of their life that romance is the key to all happiness in life. I’m not going to lie, even I’m brainwashed. Or at least, I was. It took me a long, long time to shake myself from the cookie-cutter type mindset that the world had shaped for us ever since we were small.

It took me a long time to realise that I wasn’t like the rest, and that I didn’t feel what everybody else is feeling. It took me years to figure out who I am. I took me ages to know that I wasn’t alone, much less there was a word for it.

Aromantic.

I first heard it when I was at my friend Ashley’s house. She was throwing a post-show party to celebrate our success of the fall play and invited the whole cast. I was the first one there, of course, I always was early. At one point, there was only four of us for a short while: me, Ashley, Kegan, and Sandy. We all had gathered around the table, talking about relationships as Ashley would dip her hands in the melted candle wax beneath the flame by the wick, which was surprisingly relaxing to watch.

“Back when I dated Stacie,” Ashley spoke as she peeled the red-orange wax off of her fingertips, only to dip them again to repeat the process, “She always avoided things like holding hands and kissing. She would downright refuse to do anything that was really lovey-dovey. It made me feel horrible. I cried almost every night while I was with her.”

“Isn’t that abusive?” I asked, trying to determine what was wrong with Stacie with my limited knowledge of love and romance.

“No, she’s aromantic,” Ashley stated matter-of-factly with a shrug. Then, seeing the look of confusion on my face, she elaborated, “she doesn’t feel romantic attraction.”

Aromantic.

Instantly, I could connect. I could relate. I felt like I found a way to describe myself…but I refused. I tried so desperately to shove that word into the farthest place in the back of my mind, frantically searching for a reason why I wouldn’t fit into that category.

At that time, I was dating somebody named Kenneth. I knew he felt at least something for me; I could see it in his eyes (later on I found out it was just infatuation and lust). He was my first kiss, my first boyfriend I held hands with, my “first love,” in a sense. But, I felt nothing with him.

I had to lie to him and lie to myself whenever I said “I love you too;” I never said those words first, they were always my reply words. And I knew, deep down, that I didn’t feel anything for him. My heart leaped once with him, during my first kiss, but it wasn’t the way everybody else described it. It was that leap when that roller coaster you’re riding takes a swan dive down a slope you didn’t see, that leap your heart does out of the unknown. The leap was like the Spanish Inquisition – nobody expects it, and it’s two weapons are fear and surprise. Surprise and fear.

But other than that? Nothing. Every time he kissed me, I felt uncomfortable. Every time he tried to hold my hand, I would always look for ways to let go of it. Every time he would give me flowers and other cliche romantic things, I didn’t appreciate them as much as a gift he put some thought into, like a keychain to add to my collection. Every time he would tell me “I love you,” I would have to lie to the whole world and say “I love you too.”

I felt nothing.

Yet, I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t an aromantic, that I wasn’t a “broken” individual or a sociopath like my father. I tried so hard to find a reason why I couldn’t feel anything, why I wasn’t “heartless.”

Still, the day came, and we broke up.

Honestly, I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t unhappy or miserable. I cried, sure, but because I felt betrayed; because I thought one of my closest friends thought they’d rather be with someone else because I wasn’t good enough for them. After the initial shock left me, I felt relief. I felt like I wasn’t chained down to someone I didn’t care about in the way they cared about me. I felt like I wasn’t forced and obligated to kiss him, to hold his hand, or to say “I love you too.”

I felt free.

I still couldn’t accept myself for being an aromantic, I couldn’t come to terms with the fact I couldn’t feel romantic attraction. I remember being in this phase of confusion, a lost sixteen-year-old trying to figure out who she was.

I refused to identify as an aromantic. I refused to be somebody I had always feared of becoming since I was a child. I became desperate, asking anyone and everyone what love felt like to them. They were all different answers, ranging with various intensities, but they all fit into the four categories.

Lust. Infatuation. Passion. Obsession.

They have felt these things, but they have never felt love.

The night, when I asked the last person I could think of, I remember going into my bedroom and sobbing on my bed for about an hour. I couldn’t be aromantic! I refused! But yet, that night, it seemed that everything came crashing down on me – who I was, who I am – the reality. I couldn’t take it.

It took me weeks after that for me to accept myself. I wasn’t able to handle the fact I was that Disney villain that I always vowed to avoid. The first person I told was Michelle, one of my good friends at the time who had repeatedly ditched me for her boyfriend she obsesses over. Her love fits into that category. (Here recently, she and I are no longer friends due to said boyfriend.) I explained to her that I have never felt her definition of love, or of anybody else’s, that I have never felt that form of attraction.

“Then you must be a sociopath.”

There it was. The word I dreaded to hear in regards to who I was. What’s worse was that it came from her, of all people. I spiraled into this dark pit of self-loathing, sobbing to myself almost every night because I thought I was some freak, some abnormality living on this planet that couldn’t feel love.

I thought I was just like my father.

The next person I came out to was my sister, Isabella, a gender-neutral, demiromantic asexual. She accepted me at first, but then as time went on, she began to judge me and make fun of me and tell me that aromanticism isn’t real. I specifically remember one night when she was screaming at me for claiming to be an aromantic but yet I had dated Kenneth in the past.

She wasn’t the only one that belittled and invalidated me – when I came out to my parents as an aromantic, they just laughed at me and told me the same things Isabella had told me. When I told them I didn’t feel anything during the relationship either, they just laughed some more and mocked me about how I said that I enjoyed my time with him and that I thought I loved him.

But I didn’t.

After prying myself out of a period of self-loathing, I plunged into the realm of apathy. I cut my heart out from the rest of the world, refusing to trust another soul and overall refusing to show any emotion. To everyone around me, I seemed fine. But in reality, I was dead inside. I have been in countless theatrical productions and various drama clubs all my life – I know how to express fake emotions and yet pass them off as real.

I treated emotion as a sin in itself – constantly punishing myself over and over whenever I felt the desire to feel romantic attraction like everybody else, or any emotion for that matter – positive or negative.

The very idea of romance repulsed me, and it still does. It’s like I cut out my heart and stabbed it myself, so that nobody else could stab it from the back and take me by surprise.

I had grown tired of the toxic relationship Michelle and I were having, and so I cut her from my life. I deleted her and 95% of everybody else I decided was toxic for me. In doing so, I isolated myself from the world and from other people – it was then when I decided something that I’ve followed through on ever since.

I’m not going to let anyone hurt me ever again.

I decided not to let myself get stupid enough to trust others – I decided that the best way to protect myself was to shut myself out from the danger to begin with. It’s honestly sad at how well it worked out. The lack of conflict and pain I had since then has gone down to nothing, and I’ve shut myself out for more than a year now.

After six months, I realized exactly how unhealthy it is for me to do this to myself, and I started to try and work myself back into society, all while remaining under the aromantic label to avoid the mistake of forcing myself through a relationship again.

I’ve been struggling with this just as I struggled with my self-harm addiction a few years ago, and this time, I have help with me so I won’t have to push through it alone.

I have my best friend – we’ve known each other since we were born (our mothers were best friends), and she’s pretty much my sister. And yet, calling her a sister or calling her my best friend isn’t doing justice at how close we are. I don’t know how to describe it, but I love her the same way you love your family, but not quite on that level. It’s more along the lines of a best friend type of love, but more than that, but less than family, all while being completely platonic.

This isn’t making any sense to you, is it? I apologize, I’m confused on what to call her too.

But, her name is Lily.

I told her how I was aromantic, and she was genuinely interested in learning about me so that she could try to relate to me. She did not belittle me, she did not judge me, she did everything in her power to try and understand me. Lily and I are currently planning our future together – in five years we were going to live together in a little flat in Seattle.

She may not have had the answers to everything I’m looking for, but she is there by my side every time to offer her unconditional love and support. Seriously, Auntie Laura should have named her “Actual Cinnamon Roll” instead of Lily.

She’s stuck with me through my worst, and she’s pushing me to get me to my best. I can’t thank her enough for being the best friend someone could ever ask for in their entire life. My best friend, my little flower, my Lily.

By this point it must look like I’m rambling on and on and this story has no point to it – well, it does.

Remember the emotions you feel instead of love. Remember that it doesn’t exist. Remember my actions and remember my mistakes – don’t trust anyone. Remember that the world is out to get you.

But don’t end up like me.

If you can feel love and romantic attraction, embrace it and accept it, since I most certainly can’t. Don’t close your heart out and isolate your emotions – that’s probably one of the worst decisions I’ve made that I’m still trying to recover from.

Remember my actions and remember my mistakes – don’t end up like me.

The world is out to get you, but that doesn’t mean you should let it take you to leave you hanging upright by the middle of your neck. Remember my actions and remember my mistakes.

Learn from me.

Love,

The Loveless.