There are some days when I feel like a teenager again, awkward and uncomfortable with my identity. Today was one of those days.
I've struggled with one of my... problems since I was about thirteen. It was around that time that I realized that while other guys felt attraction and even arousal toward girls, I had a perfectly fine best friend of the gender and felt absolutely nothing romantic about her. I figured if I was going to love someone, it would be her, since she knew me best and I enjoyed her company much more than any other female I'd ever met. But there was no spark there. There was nothing to incite the quickened heartbeat others experienced, and while I've never considered Lorraine ugly in any way shape or form, I didn't find her particularly breathtaking in appearance. I didn't find any girl to be that way. I didn't feel as though I loved anyone.
Now, granted, at the time I did find one of the instructors and a few of my colleagues to be quite attractive, but I wasn't informed about sexuality at all. I didn't know I was one of the few that felt this way, I just knew that the other guys thought girls were attractive and I didn't. I didn't know a thing about how they felt about other males. I thought maybe it was just something you didn't talk about in public or something.
When I was fifteen we received education on sexuality. Well, I suppose I should clarify. We were informed of heterosexuality, and why a boy and a girl fall in love, and where their parts go, and to be frank I was a little awkward about the entire ordeal. I was horribly confused about everything, and for a time I considered asking a girl to... "perform" in order to understand what the big deal was. But every time I was going to, the very thought of asking some girl I hardly knew to perform an apparently intimate act, one usually indicative of affection, made me recoil in disgust.
A few months later I was quite shocked to find that the feelings I had previously been talking about were taking up residence in my heart, but not toward girls. I was starting to stutter and my hands would get cold and my heart would race, but only while around certain people of my own gender. This was an extremely confusing time for me as I wondered what the heck was going on and why I wasn't feeling the same way as everyone else. I disclosed these feelings to Lorraine, who merely shrugged and told me I was different, that it wasn't something I should worry about. I took her advice and pushed the anxiety concerning it out of my mind for a while.
Early in my seventeenth year, around November, we were informed of the "other" side. Of the people who didn't love anyone of the opposite gender. Those geared toward their own. They stated it was an "abnormality" and referred to it with a technical coldness I'd never seen while referring to such a warm emotion before. One of the people in my class stood (looking back on it, quite bravely) and admitted that he was, in fact, not heterosexual. For a moment, I felt like I wasn't alone anymore.
Within seconds, the entire class erupted into jeers and name-calling. The boy was put into therapy to "rid" him of the "disease," which I suppose failed as I never saw him again. He may have killed himself, considering their treatment toward us, but I don't really know what happened to him.
During almost my entire time being seventeen I kept my emotions totally under wraps, trying my hardest to appear "asexual," as they had described at one point, without affection or desire for anyone. Even this was more acceptable than loving one of your own, but some still seemed to know. Or maybe they just assumed so because I didn't want to sleep with them, even though they looked atrocious. Like they'd taken their makeup case and just thrown their head into it recklessly, then walked out for all the world to see. Not to mention the complete lack of decency in clothing.
When I was nearly eighteen the emotional and sexual tension that I'd been holding in started to overwhelm me and break me down completely, making me unstable and tense. I was in a sparring match one day, and as I was much better at it than most of the other students (and I was terrible at using weapons), I was being shot at. I hate guns. I've always hated guns. So crude. Pointless. If you have powers, why not use them? Why take something that isn't a part of you, something you likely have never trained with, and attempt to kill someone with it? It's never made sense to me. Anyway, I was off my game that day due to the fact that one of my "attackers" was particularly attractive and I was putting most of my effort into holding in my affections. During my time distracted, I was shot in the leg and fell unconscious.
I was hospitalized for a time, during which Lorraine had apparently disclosed that I needed someone to monitor my mental health as well. As a healer, I was given Fritz.
That was the first time I ever really experienced being in love.
I would continue but I'm quite tired of writing for now. I suppose Fritz is a tale for another time.
Until next we meet.
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