When I step into my first days of classes, I want to be my most authentic self. I want to address the long list of things I've been working on since middle school one last time, ending with the most terrifying confession. It's fitting, since middle school is where most people start figuring out their sexuality. For me, I was 16 and a half searching the Internet to figure out what was wrong with me.

Let me explain. Around those preteen years, people tend to catch onto their interests by figuring out who they want to kiss. If you're gay, attractive guys will catch your eye. If you're lesbian, those attractive girls will become very interesting. Heterosexual people will be daydreaming about the opposite gender and so on.

But what if you never wanted to kiss anyone in middle school? What would you be then?

I honestly could not have cared less about kissing or whatever people were doing in middle school...or Freshman year...or Sophomore year... At first, I figured I was straight but just a "late-bloomer". I had to pick some team to bat for, right? The thoughts that I just hadn't met someone who was my "type" yet would pacify my confusion. After all, wanting sex was natural - an instinct, according to some.

One of the biggest reasons I never worried about my lack of sexual attraction, however, was that I had felt romantic attraction. In elementary school, I remember having a crush on one of the guys in my class. In middle school, I felt that warm fuzzy feeling once or twice, too. In high school every now and then, I'd think someone was aesthetically attractive. I figured that since I was heteroromantic (romantically attracted to the opposite gender), I would eventually be heterosexual.

I think you can guess where this went better than I did. After WebMD said I had cancer and a few other blatantly wrong diagnoses, I found my way down some rabbit holes to asexuality.org to see if this "asexual" thing was for me. An LGBTQ+ video series later (thanks, Ashley Mardell!), I was ready to identify as a gray asexual or gray-ace.

A plot twist, I know! When I first realized that I fell on the asexuality spectrum, I was not ready to fully accept the fact that sexual attraction was not a thing for me. I wanted to leave myself room for when I finally met my "type", that special someone that society is always trying to sell to whoever is buying. Honestly think about this for a minute, beyond picturing hypersexualized advertising campaigns.

We live in a sexual world. Sex is sold as appealing, romantic, and even medicinal (feeling stressed?). We're conditioned to believe that love and sex go hand-in-hand happily off into the world of relationships. In pop culture, people who don't have sex are shown as weird and socially awkward. Pretty much every movie and TV show features the dynamics of a new (sexual) relationship somehow.

With so few representations of people living happily without sex (asexuals) or romantic relationships (aromantics), just talking about it feels revolutionary. Considering that asexuals make up around 1% of the global population, that really shouldn't be a thing. The entire population of Canada is smaller than the population of asexuals, but we don't ignore our northern neighbor and pretend hockey is not real. The Internet helps bring aces together to make our own little communities with witticisms and acceptance, but even then we have to deal with people calling us amoeba or plants and insisting that we're all just confused, abused, or repressed.

My breakthrough moment in accepting myself came from a late-night party question. During an intense game of Apples to Apples, I made some comment about being ace. I guess it can be strange to people, but after an initial shock pretty much everyone moved on. One guy, however, kept asking questions and I knew he was just curious and confused on some level. Another part of me was slightly offended because these were rude questions. The couple I remember were along the lines of "How do you know?" and "You've never thought someone's hot?" as if his interrogation would make me admit I was lying. After struggling to answer these really personal questions to a room of people, I couldn't help but think about my answers over and over once I left.

When you're a member of the LGBTQ+ community, it often feels like you've got to educate everyone you come across if you want to talk about yourself. Since I never want to be ambushed after making an ace pun ever again, I decided to go on Tumblr to find some asexual/aromantic blogs. As I kept reading, seeing affirmations and jokes and genuine support out there, I realized that I didn't need to accept sex as unavoidable and worry I will be wrong about my identity.

Even though I still haven't technically "came out" to most people in my life, just being honest with myself has been incredibly liberating. And after not getting pop culture things for years, it's nice to find somewhere the people understand that cake and ice cream and chocolate are all so much better than sex.

Coincidentally, this will also be posted while I'm away from the Internet. Anyone who tries to tell me I am an amoeba or lying to myself with be promptly ignored.