Queer
I’m queer. More specifically, I am:
asexual- meaning I do not experience sexual attraction to any gender.
aromantic- meaning I do not experience romantic attraction to any gender.
(Other people might define themselves differently with these same words. That’s OK. I’m only speaking for myself here.)
It has taken me most of my adult life to come to these realizations. At various times during that adult life, I’ve thought I might be “different”, but I never fully felt like I might be gay or bisexual. I knew I wasn’t completely straight, for whatever that was worth. I spent a long time with no romantic intentions at all, then fell in love with a woman and remained married to her until her death. I never felt like I was a woman, but never felt much like a man either, in spite of being born with male parts. (It’s said that having a penis doesn’t make you a man. Very true.) All of this to say is that sex, romance, and gender are things that have meant varying things to me at various points in my life, but right now, they mean very little if anything.
I like the word “queer”, as it is now used in its reclamation from being a slur, to describe myself because it is not hyper-specific. I use the a-spec terms as well because I feel they do a good enough job of describing me, but I like that “queer” doesn’t come with a set of rules and expectations, unlike some other identities. I’ve never felt like one of the stereotypical LGBTQIA+ “stock characters”: not a leather man, not a twink, not a bear (although if I was a gay man, I’d probably be a bear, but I’m not.) Overall, I’m a person and not any label, so I chose labels that work with my sense of who I am, and that don’t ask me to check off a bunch of boxes. (If you do choose these labels, that’s totally fine! They work for a lot of people, including you, so go right ahead. They just don’t work very well for me.)
As I’ve come to realization and acceptance of my queerness in late middle age, my goal now is to be my authentic self for whatever time I have left. I’m still working on finding “my people” in this mental territory. Mostly, I’m just trying to relax, have fun, don’t worry about the “rules”, and just be myself. What more can I ask of myself?