qwanderer aka Irene Wendy Wode

idk I just

I’m all for “it’s valid to identify as ace/other identity/orientation because of trauma” and even “it’s good to take a look at why you identify the way you do based on your past/social context”

but I just get a little touchy when that strays too close to “what went wrong?” or “why are you like this?”

because looking at my life it would be super easy for someone to say “well she seemed perfectly cishet until her marriage fell apart and suddenly xe’s queer as heck”

but looking back from my perspective at my school days, the signs are pretty clear that I enjoyed pushing the envelope gender presentation wise (enough to get the “it” pronoun thrown at me at least once), I was never that interested in romantic relationships except as another thing I wasn’t managing to keep pace with my peers at, and the whole kerfuffle over sex just baffled me most of the time

a lot of my college years were spent discovering how to connect with my emotions as an autistic person and there was a lot of listening to people going “you’ll find someone to marry” and “you’ll know what being in love is like when it happens to you” “you’ll just know” and going “well I’m finding all these new ways to feel, I guess those will come too eventually”

and like having one of my best friends, who could usually read my emotions better than I could, read my demisexy squish on him as romantic attraction and try to let me down easy while I was just sitting there internally like “but I wouldn’t know what to do with you if I had you, friend” was pretty clear at the time (he was so concerned and I was so “why are you so concerned??? I Don’t Feel That”) but I think it kind of made me rethink whether I was interpreting romance correctly in the long run

because I went and married the first demisexy squish of mine who was willing to take a chance on me and would have happily remained one and only sexy friends with him to the end of eternity but apparently he was expecting some kind of romantic??? support????? which remained mysterious to me?????????

so yes. I am queer. and have always been queer.

and I just feel like hearing “yes, some people are just like this.” would have been really good for me to hear

that it wasn’t necessarily something missing about me, something I could find or fix or grow into

so yeah, I’m touchy about the “why?” questions

because I spent my teenhood waiting to feel something that everyone else said would come and my twenties thinking I had found it but maybe couldn’t feel it quite right and the first half of my thirties sifting back through everything and trying to figure out what it actually was and if I’d ever felt one iota of it

and there is no reason in that pile of sand

no relationship advice that could have magically made me a good wife

there is no “Why did this fail? What went wrong?”

there is just me trying my damnedest to do life The Right Way

and finding out very late that what is right for me was nothing I had ever been told was an option

I am not a woman. I am not a wife. I was never going to be. And there is no “why.”