With a dash of cinnamon

Hello! I go by Cinnamon and it’s nice to meet all of you. I found arocalypse through constantly lurking on r/aromantic. I’ve been questioning being aroace for a long time, but since I’m in my mid teens I’m not too sure about if I’m a late bloomer or now or to identify with it irl. When I was little, romance was always the thing that happened in movies and romance was just a thing expected of adults. I never had crushes and never even thought enough about them to think I was out of the ordinary until I was 12 and got told I was lying because I had never had a crush. That night I remember thinking about the word aromantic and finding old tumblr reposts of it. I did the song and dance of them constantly trying to find out as much as I could without letting myself admit I identified with it. Even now I doubt myself constantly with the imposter syndrome and trying to convince myself my squishes are crushes. I’ve always had one squish at a time and they were all very strong to the point they could be confused for a crush. I confused the two for years and I probably still would be if I wasn’t romance repulsed most of the time. Luckily my doubts always go away around those people because when I’m spending time with them I’m always like “oh this is all I want being friends. I’m completely happy here” Of course I could always figure out more about myself because I’m so young, but thank you if you’ve read to the end of this and I can’t wait to see what this place is about.

Hello, this is my first post here so I apologize if there’s anything strange. Getting straight to the point, I was once watching a movie with some people I knew. One person was going on about how much she loved one of the characters (romantically) and I was just kind of ignoring it like I always do with these kinds of things. However, she later mentioned that she had a friend that looked exactly like the woman she had been going on about earlier but that her friend was straight. That was when someone else responded with word for word “She doesn’t realize what nature made her lose.” I don’t know what it was, but in that moment I felt completely singled out by that comment. I think it was just the fact that not having attraction was viewed as something lost. I try not to let things like this affect me but my mind in the moment started going to the “How would they view me? Would I just be something to be pitied because nature made me ‘lose’ what’s so important to them?” I hate that people think like this so so much. I don’t want to be someone viewed as less so just because of the way I am. Even if it wasn’t aimed at me it really hit me hard. This mindset I’ve seen in a lot of people, and all it really does is make me feel like an outsider to everyone else and their lives. Does anyone else have similar experiences to this, or is it just me?