in 2015, i wrote a random, word vomit of a post about being “WhenTheStarsAlignHyperRo[mantic]” while offhandedly reflecting back on what little ‘data’ i had to work off of in trying to figure out my own experience of romantic attraction (or lack thereof). it was the first second (in so far as i remember) time i had questioned not being (allo)romantic outside of my head (& journal) while shrugging off identifying as being on the aromantic spectrum. after that post, i went back to keeping my random thoughts on the topic to myself for a while for various reasons, one of which being the fact that there wasn’t any new ‘data’ coming in for me to have gleaned anything new with which i could progress such random thoughts, so what would’ve been the point? i mean, such thoughts had been fueled by nothing more than faint memories of stale emotions from years gone by even then, so. yeah. years later, equipped with ‘feels’ that i have seemingly never had to navigate before and subsequent ‘data’ that is fresh off the press, i can’t help but take notice of the fact that now, much more so than ever, i have zero fucks to give about finding a prefix / orientation with which to put a name to my experiences and / or identity– despite the irony of there probably being a word for such experiences now whereas there hadn’t been before. instead of having random thoughts along the lines of “am i grayro / demiro…?”, i now have random thoughts along the lines of “ogod, have i…. become a clichè??” and let me tell you that having such thoughts is not a kind thing for my brain to be doing to me, because it’s like jumping out of a pan and into a fire while simultaneously having zero fucks to give that you are in said fire. just silent, inexplicable feels as the room fills with carbon dioxide.