Loveless

by Alice Oseman

If I tried to explain it, I knew I would just start crying. It was still so new. I’d never tried to explain it to anyone before.

Deep down, I knew this was an unfair question. You didn’t have to try something to know for sure you don’t like it.

She was trying to be a good friend, but she was saying all the wrong things because she didn’t have the faintest idea what it was like to be me.

what I was doing wasn’t “giving up.” It was acceptance.

“I don’t want you to feel like you’re going to be sad and lonely forever!” she said, and that was the moment I broke a little. Was that all I would be? Sad and lonely? Forever?

Had I doomed myself by daring to think about this part of me? Was I just accepting a life of solitude?

tried to imagine doing this with a person I liked, but it was a mirage. The harder I tried to think about that scenario, the quicker it disintegrated. I was never, ever going to enjoy this. With anybody.

This was a part of me. I did not feel the feelings of attraction,

I had fucked everything up in my quest to understand who I was.

Was everyone just having sex and falling in love all the time? Why? How was it fair that everyone got to feel that except me? I wished everyone would stop. I wished sex and love didn’t exist.

Don’t really know what to do about that.”

“There’s nothing to do, Georgia,” he said softly. “There’s nothing to do at all.”

“You’re gonna be OK. There’s nothing you have to do except be.”

“But … what if what I am is just … nothing?”

“You’re not nothing,” Sunil said. “You have to believe that.” Maybe I could do that. Maybe I could believe.

deserve someone who worships you.

it means i’m not attracted to anyone romantically or sexually no matter their gender

Are you feeling okay about it? G—to be honest not really. but i think i will be in time?

guess I can’t really relate but I’m here for you. Like, if you ever wanna rant about it or just talk things through!!

It was too much. Too confusing. Too new.

after finding a group of Indian asexuals online, he’d started to feel proud of his identity.

he too had felt some anxiety about being asexual. People didn’t always love who they were right away.

this new identity felt like a loss, when in reality, it should have been a beautiful discovery.

have always felt lonely, I think.

I felt even lonelier when I started to believe I never would.

I loved them because I didn’t have to think around them. I loved that we could sit in silence together.

loved how Jason knew exactly what to say when you were upset and could always calm you down. I loved Jason and Pip. And now they were gone.

I had been so desperate for my idea of true love that I couldn’t even see it when it was right in front of my face.

she lived by herself and had never had a long-term relationship.

had always wondered whether she was happy.

“I don’t want to date, and I don’t want children,” said Ellis.

know you think you’re happy now, but what about ten years from now?

“if you hadn’t spent my entire life brainwashing me into thinking that finding a husband and having babies is the only way for me to feel my life is worth

I can still do amazing things with my life. I have friends.

If you tried, and I mean really tried, you could actually be proud of all the things I’ve done in my life and all the things I’m going to do.”

“You mean, do I ever feel like my life is worthless because I won’t ever have a partner or children?”

“Having a partner is what some people want. For others, it’s not. It took me a long, long time to figure out that that’s not what I want.

It’s not a choice for me. It’s a part of me that I can’t change.”

Sometimes I confused friendship for them, or just thinking a guy was really cool.

It just felt wrong on a fundamental level.”

“There was the fear too. I didn’t know how I was going to function in this world alone.

You know why people pair up into couples? Because being a human is fucking terrifying. But it’s a hell of a lot easier if you’re not doing it by yourself.”

“Like the way friendship can be just as intense, beautiful, and endless as romance.

Like the way there’s love everywhere around me—there’s love for my friends, there’s love in my paintings, there’s love for myself.

“I have a lot more love than some people in the world.

“There’s definitely love for ice cream, let me tell you that.”

every time I said them, they felt a little more at home in the air around me.

“Two things. Hm. Two in one. Buy one, get one free. Love that.”