I thought it was a good idea at the time...

I have been watching and listening to quite a bit of true crime shows and podcasts recently.  Mostly just because it is there and other people seem to be consuming it too which means more articles pointing me at it and it is higher on entertainment rating lists. One common theme that pops up fairly frequently at least in serial killers and cult leaders is repressed sexuality. Why repressed? well parents and society was and is super harsh on stuff they don't like. It just so happens that homophobic male-fixated male serial killers get shows made about them. Lots of shows. 

Repressing things does warp you inside. I thought I was broken for over a decade because I negatively reacted to dates and I didn't actively seek them out. I am SURE that being aromantic but not knowing what aromantic is did contribute to low self esteem and my sense of belonging and community. If I lived in a more dictatorial society (Aka my family 90 years ago) I would have been married off at 19, and even as a theoretical I have no idea how I would have survived....though at least I can take comfort in the fact that with my health I wouldn't have lived to 16. How warped is that? I find it comforting that theoretical me would never have been married. But to know of Aromanticism and be told it is bad and wrong?

I wonder how many people broke under the strain of internalised hate, of feeling isolated, of feeling wrong.
I wonder how many people would make different choices if they knew about Aromanticism and Asexuality.
I wonder how many domestic violence victims and survivors are aromantic or asexual. 
I wonder how many domestic violence perpetrators are aromantic or asexual. 
I wonder how many pick-up artists are aromantic or asexual. 
I wonder how many incels are aromantic or asexual.

 So I am wondering If I should go back through my posts and make quite a few of them private. I won't delete what I have posted, but I am wondering if I should make this more streamlined. Another option is to shift my aromantic stuff to the aromantic group, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with that because know most of my posts are personal brain farts and then my very few greysexual/apressexual posts will seem more out of place and disconnected. 

The reason is I am hosting next month's (June) carnival of aros and the blogs I find appealing are sort of on a vague theme with few other topics, and at the moment my blog is a bit of a mess all over the place. Not to mention all the things I haven't followed through on like more Strine stories or supposed book reviews from my booklist or movie reviews. 

I am also worried because it seems like DeviantArt is crashing and burning at the moment and I have my book lists there that I want to save, though this blog format is not conducive to an active book list. I might just post the historic lists, but oh, there would be more people here to read them and I shall wallow in shame at some of my erotic literary choices! I only posted on DeviantArt because I don't write on there so I don't have a reading audience, and people are less inclined to read when I have so many pretty pictures to look at. 

Recently I have gone through emotional changes and this past week I seem to keep finding the same topics popping up again and again, which I choose to take as a sign that I should try to work through some of my feelings. 

I grew up in an environment of conservative and progressive influences, I'm sure many people have but all in our own unique recipe of the two. Since the deaths in my family I have found I am more body confident than I had been in years. I am also feeling much more settled inside myself as a person. For the first time in forever I feel like my internal storm has truly abated and I can see the internal scene and all the accumulated debris. Which lead about the terrible realisation that much of the dissatisfaction was actually external input. Semi-regular flippant comments about hair and weight, dating and boys, physical ability and life goals, that I thought I had ignored actually cut me deeply. Now those thoughts which were not my own are now literally in the grave with the persons who made them.  

I am not a good self-critic. I can only analyse things in hindsight if I am prompted to do so. Basically much of the time I flail and hope I come across other people who give me ideas to make sense of my reactions and life. 

I have discovered I do in fact have quite a lot of internalised misogyny linked to a sense of inferiority related to my disability (Internalised Ableism Alert!). I don't even know if misogyny is really the right word, a more apt term might be Toxic Femininity. I push back against amatonormativity a lot. I feel that expectations of romantic love force themselves on me all the time, but might I be letting them in to torment me? My last post 'Females Love' talked about this. I have internal expectations of what women are, very traditional European ideals. If I write them out specifically I see how silly they are and can rebuke them but there is still this deep vague sense that they are correct. 

Being in Queer spaces has exposed me to many people of different genders and many different journeys those people have made to get there. I have no gender journey, do I? How am I female then? How do I know? up rises the 28 year old monster of memories of comments, expectations and traditions (this monster it seems has always been present lurking beneath the surface and informing my experiences, but it lets itself be seen every so often). I have no role models who are aromantic or disabled in the same way I am, let alone both. Truthfully I was never really interested finding any. One group I am intrinsicly connected to is my bloodline, so they sort of became my 'best fit' role models for certain things, and it certainly makes sense when it comes to health history. But what of the rest of history?

Half of my family migrated to Australia after WWII, and they kept almost nothing of their old home countries, very little sense of culture was passed down. So I, wanting some sort of anchor clasped whatever I could. Much of that is from a time almost unrecognisable, but I absorbed it and in many ways I thought it applicable to me. Deep inside I still think it is applicable to me, but that is just causing me pain, but is it worse to keep pushing against external factors I invite in or to remove all the internalised issues themselves?
Here is a list of some which I abstractly know are not true to my experience but they are specific to my sense of who my family is and in turn who I am. 
(TL;DR I've had this list of stuff subtly reinforced in me for 28 years, now I'm deciding to try to purge it. I'm so screwed) 

• Love can grow from passion
• Certainty-of-marriage-partner at first sight/Love at first sight is real
• a long-term relationship is the most significant relationship you will have outside of children (Sometimes not even children)
• a partner gives you better social status
• families arrange suitable suitors 
• family approval is of the upmost importance
• you must master the duties of a housewife
• sacrificing everything for love may improve your future
• Being submissive is better
• being slightly masochistic will serve you well because life/love is painful
• get married as a young virgin 

Recently I have been going through some bad stuff so I dropped many of the activities I previously participated in and enjoyed. One thing that I dropped fairly early on was my participation in Aromantic spaces. Even on the rare times I did post something I didn't read much of the conversation before and I doubt my comments made much sense because I just couldn't function at the higher critical thinking to make sure they were universally clear. 

So, Sorry to anyone who came across comments I made in the past....lets say 3 months? that should cover it. I still am not too good but I am trying to get back to normal. 

I hope next month's carnival of aros topic is not a depressing one, or that will be another month I am skipping.