Dear Wendy

by Ann Zhao

“You know … something I once heard that I still think about sometimes is that … when you’re asexual or aromantic or both, to accept your sexuality, you have to accept that you’re probably going to question it for a really long time, and possibly the rest of your life. “Because there’s that part of your brain that goes, like, who’s to say it can never happen, right? What if that person made me nervous because I like them, what if liking romcoms makes me—sorry, what if it means I want that for myself. Or … or what if I’m an extremely late bloomer? It’s so hard to prove a lack of something, much harder than to prove something exists. “So those thoughts might never go away. They haven’t for me, and I’ve identified as aroace for almost five years. But you know yourself. And you know the way you feel. So … let those thoughts run their course. They’re not real unless you make them real, but they’ll happen, and you just need to accept that they’ll be a part of you, but they don’t define you.”