not at all!
my initial bout of intensely looking stuff up was caused by watching Jaiden animation’s video titled “being not straight.” i was interested in it because i regularly watched her videos at the time, and was surprised to find that i related heavily to the video. i wasn’t actually sure at first what parts i related to and why, but it was enough to make me aware of my own reaction to it. still, i didn’t relate enough to immediately say “yes i am definitely aroace,” and i don’t think i would’ve even started looking into it had she not put something at the end of the video along the lines of “aromanticism and asexuality are both broad spectrums with a variety of experiences, so if you related even a *little* with this video, maybe you should look into that.”
about a week after i watched that video, i realized that it was practically all i thought about for the entire week, so i decided to start looking stuff up. i quickly learned some vocabulary which explained a whole lot — i realized both why i initially related to the video, and why i later thought i didn’t, “must’ve been the wind” style. it also helped explain my own previous behavior to myself, allowing me to come to terms with some stuff that had been bothering me from my past (some of which i hadn’t realized had been bothering me until that point). a lot of vocab helped me at this stage, but particularly notable were the different kinds of attraction, especially aesthetic and sensual, as i feel these often and strongly, and had been confusing them for romantic crushes. for a while i thought i was inherently morally wrong having romantic interest in a bunch of people, but with new definitions and new sources from which those definitions came, i realized that 1) it’s not morally wrong to romantically like more than one person (i had not previously been exposed to poly relationships) and 2) #1 doesn’t matter in my case ‘cuz i didn’t romantically like them anyway — it was just that looking at them made me happy and i wanted to give them hugs (and also probably be friends; i feel strong platonic attraction often too)
looking back on it, i had a lot of clues that i missed from before i saw jaiden’s video, and while i’m happy to share them if asked, this is already very long and i don’t want to drop my life story on you lol
tell me if you want me to elaborate on anything :)
