No Charm Done

Lily didn’t think there was anything wrong with her, exactly, but the lack of a romantic life made her different, and everyone knew being different made life harder.

he carried himself the way most boys did—with total confidence, as though they knew they’d won the gender lottery and were playing the game of life on easy mode

Strange that Luke would be the reason for it. As much as Lily liked his company in a friend kind of way, there was something irritating about her battle with Chrysanthemum escalating over a boy. It felt very anti-feminist.

Life was always simpler when you could pretend other people, especially those who had hurt you, didn’t exist. If you pretended hard enough, then no one could ever hurt you again. You could see right through everyone around you, like they were ghosts. Their words and actions became an inconsequential shimmer in the passing breeze.

Undoubtedly part of that was developing an understanding of why Lily craved validation, but Chrys knew now that it was also much simpler—Lily was a geek. Learning new things made her happy. Just like it did Chrys.

Chrys felt less panicky this time, but still unsure. As an introvert, she didn’t mind being alone (helpful when one didn’t have many friends), but there was a difference between being alone and feeling abandoned, and Lily clearly leaned toward the latter.

She must have stopped breathing for a moment, her entire body too devoted to processing this information to remember how to sustain life. Then Lily gasped, and oxygen flooded her lungs. She was going to scream. Absolutely lose her shit.

third degree

Did I succeed? Well, I think I conveyed my personal experience through Lily, but there is no one way to identify as asexual, just as there’s no one way to identify as anything. Everyone’s experience is unique, and asexuality exists on a spectrum and in many forms